Be careful taking those little bastards apart. The flyback transformer in those will hold a jolt that will stop your heart for many years after being unplugged.
What, nobody has corrected this in all these years??! A transformer or an inductor will not hold a charge. A capacitor will. And frankly I'm a bit surprised that Steve was just blatantly "I'm not touching that". It is not hard to discharge the big capacitors! Well maybe Steve has not much knowledge about analog/power electronics...
Engineer's tip: You don't screw something back together *UNTIL* you've tested it as fully working, or you'll waste A LOT of time unscrewing and screwing it back together.
Oh, man, flashback city. I worked on these a lot back in the day. Worked the iMacs, too, when those came out (and everything between, but must those didn't integrated crts). I learned how to 'safely' drain the capacitors on the crt using a pair of screwdrivers, but every time I did was with my heart my mouth. I knew a guy who forgot to drain the crt once. He survived but had nerve damage in his hands from the discharge and a concussion from whacking his head on the wall behind him.
The CRT can contain a high voltage charge for a while, but its easily discharged with a screwdriver under the anode cap and a wire to earth. I've had quite a few shocks working on CRT's in the past and I can confirm that it will not throw you across the room and it will not kill you.
It also had 16 bit ALU. I personally view it 32 bit as later pure 32 bit CPUs ran exactly same code. While it could use "only" 16 MB memory, in principle it could have used full 4 GB if it had had enough address lines so same code could use full 4 GB on later models. Intel 8086/88 on the other hand was hard fixed to 1 MB. To use more on later CPUs one needed different code, first 16 bit protected and then 32 bit. Original Mac had 128 kB memory.
"No screwdrivers? Grab the saw!" I did some work for a university computer hardware reutilization program. Some things you'd get in weren't worth enough to do anything but "does it work, and if not will it cost more than five minutes to get it working" (old XTs and ATs). Before we had the super long torx drivers (which were on order), any time one of the old unibody Macs came in with something not worth repairing (broken monitor is a good example), we'd open it with a small circular saw to get at the RAM, since that could be used to upgrade other Macs. I'd be lying to you if I didn't say it was highly satisfying.
An unwritten law of opening computers is that every time you do it, you will lose one screw! My old ST ended held together with just one screw because of this and pretty much every PC after that suffered a similar fate. My current Mac laptop has been opened once and still has all it's screws, so maybe this law doesn't apply to modern systems? :)
for me as person who was born in the 90s i wonder what i will learn from the first macs even though i don't like them for that matter but i do find it interesting to see the internal parts of macs
I'm not sure, but I don't think the RAM was socketed until the Mac+ and the original Mac's memory was not upgradeable, so you may have to wait two more years for that unit's 30th birthday. In March 1984 the first Mac 128k's were a required purchase for all students at Philadelphia's Drexel University, the first college to so. The discounted student price was $1,000 (a bargain, the list price was $2,495!). It took only a few years before the entire campus was networked.
A late comment - no-one seems to mention that the 5 torx screws are actually not identical! The two set deep on top are "self-tapping" screws because they go into plastic, and the other three are "metal-thread" because they screw into the metal chassis. Inserting them the wrong way destroys the thread they screw into.
Hate to be a stickler, he keeps calling it the 'original Mac' - he is dismantling a Mac Plus - I believe it is the third model of the Mac. 1. Original Mac 2. 512K 'Fat' Mac 3. Mac Plus I had the original in '84 and upgraded it to 512 and then the Plus.
If you're interested in seeing a full teardown of this mac, some guy called Ben on here - The Ben Heck Show - was doing a similar video. His is a bit newer, but more parts were not functioning and so he's going through the process of finding the parts and rebuilding it. Pretty cool stuff! :D Thanks Computerphile! this was very educational :)
Fun fact; Apple had the computer case, including the monitor, made in Asia and shipped to the US before the motherboards, drives etc were fitted. But because of the US import tariffs on 'computers' at the time, Apple claimed the shells were 'monitors' in shipping. Saved them millions!
+THEtechknight 24 bit mode just refers to how everything was converted from 16 to 32 and from 32 to 16 whenever it entered and left the chip. When you say something is 24 bit, everyone knows you really mean 16/32. It is just easier to say 24.
540iDavid Not in the Apple world. it has an entirely different meaning. The databus is 16 bits, but the Address bus is 24 bits wide. it can address up to 16MB of space total. Thats what 24-bit mode means in the apple world. 32bit address capable CPUs came out, but early Apple machines defaulted in 24-bit mode, and the ROM was dirty meaning the last byte of the 32-bit word was used for other things instead of addressing. MODE32 fixed this.
I wouldn't recommend licking those caps or anything, but if Apple did a half-way decent job with the Mac Plus' hardware design, they added bleeder resistors to discharge those caps within a few moments of losing power. The odds are actually pretty slim that you could get a fatal shock from an unplugged Mac Plus.
Kinda cool My Sega Genesis uses that CPU. I believe the Sega CD uses a newer version clocked at 12 Mhz. But I can't remember what version of the 68k it was.
torx screws make things more difficult? every screwdriver set you buy contains torx screwdrivers... they're so common now it's never ever gonna be a problem to open them
A "story" I'd _heard_ was that Apple were offering a 'Free Upgrade' to Macintosh users. The 'Free Upgrade' didn't actually change any of the computing performance of the machine, however Apple 'upgraded' the machine by removing one of the signatures engraved inside of the case...
When did the Macs start using SIMMs? I swear I had to solder the new memory in for my Mac Plus. (The computer was originally a 128k that got an upgrade to a Plus)
It's fun to think of how much has happened with computer since then. Just the little fact that I have 4000 times the memory. Not to mention the processor speed. =)
The signatures were a nice touch, pretty cool :) Also it`s strange but fun to think that, I have 2.000 times more RAM than that in my 4year old laptop :p
Whether a CPU is 32 or 16 bit has nothing to do with the data bus. It always references the address bus and registers. The original Pentium has a 64 bit data bus, nobody considered it a 64 bit CPU.
In all fairness, opening up the old toasters does involve a certain amount of danger; somebody with a screwdriver but not enough knowledge could get themselves hurt or killed, and then lawsuits... so it may have been a good thing all told to make them hard to get inside.
+theRealPlaidRabbit no, that doesnt make sense. if you put a warning in the manual than you shouldnt be able to get sued over it. if thats not the case the legal system should change because thats the way it is here. there are safety standards but as long as you comply to them and nothing dangerous can happen with instructioned intended use you shouldnt be able to get sued over it.
I've taken a Macintosh classic apart because it was broken and leaking some kind of fluid, I still have the casing (and some other stuff like the hard drive). Anyone have an idea of what to do with it?
I have searched everywhere for a picture of the "busy bee robot" brand 30 pin sims i had in my first computer, a 386sx 16mhz machine.. mine also didnt have 4 MB ram, only 3~or so and i could never get the virtual ram working right so i couldnt play jazz jackrabbit on it.. :( Windows 311 worked fine though ;)
This reminds me of the Ibook I have in the cupboard. Got given it for free. Why? It's so old it won't do anything. Oh, it works perfectly, but is not compatible with 99% of websites, programs or media. It could be used as a DVD player if I had not put Linux on it, and then realised I lost Hardware support (software playback is to slow). Still, it's a solid laptop, I'll give them that. It is/was well built.
I once decided to try to disassemble a camera for fun... Turns out there was this thing inside that contained energy for the flash... Maybe 230 volts? .-. Paralysed me for a few seconds -.-
The Mac Plus was the cadillac of macs back then... esp. that one with the external drive. Not really an old Mac. To have a really old Mac... you need a 128K... which I have several... or a Lisa... or... an Apple Ii, or Apple 1. My oldest Apple is a rare black Apple II. Its definitely not the oldest computer i have, however. That would be a pristine TRS-80 Model 1, which came out in 1977....
I miss those days back when you could have a 4 megs machine and do much of the things we still do today that now requires 4 gigs to run... The original Mac had its OS on one or two 3.5 inch floppy disks. Compare that to stupid Yosemite that takes over 5 gigs to do basically the same thing today !!
Ishan Dwivedi No, it's easy. FULLY folded out with every feature, OS 7.1 weighs in at 10.7 megabyte. With the useless stuff removed it was far smaller. The entire Finder plus System together, are 1.4 megabyte and easily fit on a high density floppy. In fact, even they were bloated, with the boot up disk weighing in at 400 kilobytes and able to do all kinds of multi-tasking, memory management, media vectors, graphics and GUI, music and voice, and everything we've come to know as 'Mac'. Its modernity, ...the need to run other people's bloated stuff, that has pushed these wonderfully elegant systems under the carpet.
The teddy bear toss to Professor Brailsford is epic.
??
??
My first PC had 4 MB of RAM ... but that was almost 9 years after the Mac was released. At the time it must have been ginormous amount of memory.
This is EXACTLY the sort of video I've been waiting for.
my 1985 amiga 1000 also has the case signatures. interestingly noted a team member worked on both machines! same sig..
Be careful taking those little bastards apart. The flyback transformer in those will hold a jolt that will stop your heart for many years after being unplugged.
What, nobody has corrected this in all these years??! A transformer or an inductor will not hold a charge. A capacitor will. And frankly I'm a bit surprised that Steve was just blatantly "I'm not touching that". It is not hard to discharge the big capacitors! Well maybe Steve has not much knowledge about analog/power electronics...
false.
Engineer's tip: You don't screw something back together *UNTIL* you've tested it as fully working, or you'll waste A LOT of time unscrewing and screwing it back together.
??
Oh, man, flashback city. I worked on these a lot back in the day. Worked the iMacs, too, when those came out (and everything between, but must those didn't integrated crts). I learned how to 'safely' drain the capacitors on the crt using a pair of screwdrivers, but every time I did was with my heart my mouth.
I knew a guy who forgot to drain the crt once. He survived but had nerve damage in his hands from the discharge and a concussion from whacking his head on the wall behind him.
Did you know that we will run out of TH-cam URL's in 15 billion years. That is alarming.
SirCutRy Computercraft servers can solve everything.
+Cherry Pepper lol
false.
@@Triantalex What makes it false?
Besides being extremely interesting, all your accents are so goddamn pleasant to listen to.
false.
The CRT can contain a high voltage charge for a while, but its easily discharged with a screwdriver under the anode cap and a wire to earth. I've had quite a few shocks working on CRT's in the past and I can confirm that it will not throw you across the room and it will not kill you.
It also had 16 bit ALU. I personally view it 32 bit as later pure 32 bit CPUs ran exactly same code. While it could use "only" 16 MB memory, in principle it could have used full 4 GB if it had had enough address lines so same code could use full 4 GB on later models. Intel 8086/88 on the other hand was hard fixed to 1 MB. To use more on later CPUs one needed different code, first 16 bit protected and then 32 bit.
Original Mac had 128 kB memory.
The teddy bear transition, 10/10
It was so bad, but so adorable.
??
This was a true treat to see the inside of such a vintage pc. Thanks
I am not surprised he already lost some screws, the way he treated them when he opened the thing :D
There's something special about updating ancient hardware/software you used to use
"To make things harder - just as Apples still do today..." made me smile.
??
Woah 4Mb, sounds expensive!
"No screwdrivers? Grab the saw!"
I did some work for a university computer hardware reutilization program. Some things you'd get in weren't worth enough to do anything but "does it work, and if not will it cost more than five minutes to get it working" (old XTs and ATs). Before we had the super long torx drivers (which were on order), any time one of the old unibody Macs came in with something not worth repairing (broken monitor is a good example), we'd open it with a small circular saw to get at the RAM, since that could be used to upgrade other Macs. I'd be lying to you if I didn't say it was highly satisfying.
ok?
2.5 MB of ram was a lot in those days, my pc back then had 1 kB upgraded to 16 kB. I was 9 years old.
An unwritten law of opening computers is that every time you do it, you will lose one screw! My old ST ended held together with just one screw because of this and pretty much every PC after that suffered a similar fate.
My current Mac laptop has been opened once and still has all it's screws, so maybe this law doesn't apply to modern systems? :)
I love the 68000 it was so well made and far better than any Intel at the time.
We often use the 68k as a simple cpu/example system in comp-architecture classes, i didn't knew it was used in the apple 2 !
Great vid !
It wasn't. This is the Macintosh.
Holy crap, all those signatures.
Adding "Unless you're willing to die" to the end of the "Don't try this at home" warning definitely made it more effective.
4MiB of RAM?! It must be the future!
Don't want to see Job's signature, show us the WoZ
Difficult because I don't think its there… Woz wasn't involved with the Apple Mac.
Ah yes, there's only one 'Steve' in the About Finder.
That’s Steve Capps, one of the main programmers of the Finder, not Jobs or Wozniak.
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2:39 knowing about the signatures got me my first job, thanks Byte Magazine!
for me as person who was born in the 90s i wonder what i will learn from the first macs even though i don't like them for that matter but i do find it interesting to see the internal parts of macs
Steve Bagley is my favourite guy on here.
I'm not sure, but I don't think the RAM was socketed until the Mac+ and the original Mac's memory was not upgradeable, so you may have to wait two more years for that unit's 30th birthday. In March 1984 the first Mac 128k's were a required purchase for all students at Philadelphia's Drexel University, the first college to so. The discounted student price was $1,000 (a bargain, the list price was $2,495!). It took only a few years before the entire campus was networked.
please make a video about why u cant use some combinations of keys at the same time
Torx is ergonomic. Torx is life.
I would have every screw in the world of sufficient size be a phillips/torx/slot hybrid.
thumbwarriordx Got Shrek?
This reminded me that I have an iMac G3 sitting under my depths. I should revive it.
Lol I love it when he says.... "Please don't try this at home unless you are willing to die"
A late comment - no-one seems to mention that the 5 torx screws are actually not identical! The two set deep on top are "self-tapping" screws because they go into plastic, and the other three are "metal-thread" because they screw into the metal chassis. Inserting them the wrong way destroys the thread they screw into.
Hate to be a stickler, he keeps calling it the 'original Mac' - he is dismantling a Mac Plus - I believe it is the third model of the Mac.
1. Original Mac
2. 512K 'Fat' Mac
3. Mac Plus
I had the original in '84 and upgraded it to 512 and then the Plus.
This Mac has been upgraded - Professor Brailsford talks about that in the original film: The Little Mac with the Big Bite - Computerphile >Sean
It's fun to see how those old machines worked back in the day :D
If you're interested in seeing a full teardown of this mac, some guy called Ben on here - The Ben Heck Show - was doing a similar video. His is a bit newer, but more parts were not functioning and so he's going through the process of finding the parts and rebuilding it. Pretty cool stuff! :D Thanks Computerphile! this was very educational :)
After watching the Ben Heck Show in the beginning of the week, you made me feel a bit deja-vued.
I love old computers! Because they are so hands on
Another great video. Looks good Steve!
68000 :) Always brings a smile on my face. Brilliant chip.
I've never used any antistatic and never had anything damaged.
ok?
ok?
@@Triantalex Ok.
little known hack, open up and remove the motherboard and you can find a complete ipad inside some models, older models were just emulated.......
Fun fact; Apple had the computer case, including the monitor, made in Asia and shipped to the US before the motherboards, drives etc were fitted. But because of the US import tariffs on 'computers' at the time, Apple claimed the shells were 'monitors' in shipping. Saved them millions!
Holy shit this is awesome, more old computer videos!
And to further add to the confusion, apple ran that 16/32 chip in a 24-Bit mode....
+THEtechknight 24 bit mode just refers to how everything was converted from 16 to 32 and from 32 to 16 whenever it entered and left the chip. When you say something is 24 bit, everyone knows you really mean 16/32. It is just easier to say 24.
540iDavid Not in the Apple world. it has an entirely different meaning. The databus is 16 bits, but the Address bus is 24 bits wide. it can address up to 16MB of space total. Thats what 24-bit mode means in the apple world. 32bit address capable CPUs came out, but early Apple machines defaulted in 24-bit mode, and the ROM was dirty meaning the last byte of the 32-bit word was used for other things instead of addressing. MODE32 fixed this.
The 68000 has a 24 bit address bus so it's not like you could use it any other way.
??
It's so ridiculous how much Apple prevents people from customizing their OWN hardware that THEY bought with THEIR OWN MONEY.
false.
Ben Heckendorn from the Ben Heck Show is currently also taking apart his Mac. But his one doesn't have the signatures, it's too new.
I wouldn't recommend licking those caps or anything, but if Apple did a half-way decent job with the Mac Plus' hardware design, they added bleeder resistors to discharge those caps within a few moments of losing power. The odds are actually pretty slim that you could get a fatal shock from an unplugged Mac Plus.
Damn, you just voided the warranty. Thanks for the vid.
Taking apart a Mac. I too like to live dangerously.
I have three of these Macs - I also have a load of other Macs as well.
"I should probably be wearing antistatic while I let the screws roll around the flat desk." If it wasn't a Mac I'd be heartbroken.
And I know nothing about computers (but do have an iPhone 6... not sure if that's relevant) but i found this video extremely interesting!!
Kinda cool My Sega Genesis uses that CPU. I believe the Sega CD uses a newer version clocked at 12 Mhz. But I can't remember what version of the 68k it was.
torx screws make things more difficult?
every screwdriver set you buy contains torx screwdrivers... they're so common now it's never ever gonna be a problem to open them
and now Apple uses Pentalobe screws
anyone know if the FOX chip has any relation to foxconn ?
Foxconn probably made all of the external connectors as they are used in Amigas around the same era.
A "story" I'd _heard_ was that Apple were offering a 'Free Upgrade' to Macintosh users. The 'Free Upgrade' didn't actually change any of the computing performance of the machine, however Apple 'upgraded' the machine by removing one of the signatures engraved inside of the case...
Interesting, very interesting.
??
When did the Macs start using SIMMs? I swear I had to solder the new memory in for my Mac Plus. (The computer was originally a 128k that got an upgrade to a Plus)
I remember these getting absurdly hot on one side. Never opened one up, but now I know why.
what a coincidence, this week Ben Heck did the same teardown.
This was great!
Oh cool I just played Temple of Rah on one of those things like a few weeks ago before we sold it.
I find it really odd that the Ben heck show channel also uploaded a video about disassembling this exact computer model.
Purely a coincidence, we filmed this a couple of weeks ago! >Sean
It's fun to think of how much has happened with computer since then. Just the little fact that I have 4000 times the memory. Not to mention the processor speed. =)
The signatures were a nice touch, pretty cool :)
Also it`s strange but fun to think that, I have 2.000 times more RAM than that in my 4year old laptop :p
+jan christian Frodahl I have the newest macbook pro and it has 48000 times the space as the mac they showed lol!
CheezeIII odoy
Yeah I remember we had a 486dx2 at school, and it had a 40Mb HDD lol :p
jan christian Frodahl lol *sighs*
Hey Dr Steve, I have the exact same machine. Where can one find the RAM?
"I've already removed and lost one of the screws." Happened to every computer I've ever owned.
You haven't really owned a computer until half of the screws are missing.
My computer is running on the box of the motherboard on my desk, no pc case. I turn it on with a spoon no joke ^_^
ok?
Whether a CPU is 32 or 16 bit has nothing to do with the data bus. It always references the address bus and registers. The original Pentium has a 64 bit data bus, nobody considered it a 64 bit CPU.
That MUST be the macintosh plus...
In all fairness, opening up the old toasters does involve a certain amount of danger; somebody with a screwdriver but not enough knowledge could get themselves hurt or killed, and then lawsuits... so it may have been a good thing all told to make them hard to get inside.
+theRealPlaidRabbit no, that doesnt make sense. if you put a warning in the manual than you shouldnt be able to get sued over it. if thats not the case the legal system should change because thats the way it is here. there are safety standards but as long as you comply to them and nothing dangerous can happen with instructioned intended use you shouldnt be able to get sued over it.
"Steve jobs never really liked the idea of upgrading things" *Upgrades Mac*
Great channel! Keep the excellent videos coming :)
"Sequence Shortened"... Good use of Apple's advertising term there :)
My phones made by that Motorola company!
I've taken a Macintosh classic apart because it was broken and leaking some kind of fluid, I still have the casing (and some other stuff like the hard drive). Anyone have an idea of what to do with it?
It's not just Apple... where I used to work, we called torx screws "Compaq screws".
Anyone watch the exact same thing on The Ben Heck Show?
What is that battery for is it for the cmos?
I have searched everywhere for a picture of the "busy bee robot" brand 30 pin sims i had in my first computer, a 386sx 16mhz machine.. mine also didnt have 4 MB ram, only 3~or so and i could never get the virtual ram working right so i couldnt play jazz jackrabbit on it.. :(
Windows 311 worked fine though ;)
Did Acrobat ever make it?!
I don't get it the Mac had 2.5 megabytes while the c64 only had 64 kilobytes at roughly the same time?
This reminds me of the Ibook I have in the cupboard. Got given it for free. Why? It's so old it won't do anything. Oh, it works perfectly, but is not compatible with 99% of websites, programs or media. It could be used as a DVD player if I had not put Linux on it, and then realised I lost Hardware support (software playback is to slow).
Still, it's a solid laptop, I'll give them that. It is/was well built.
Sir I can install my computer game on this apple?
The Motorola 68000 was actually 32 bit inside and 16 bit data bus.
I once decided to try to disassemble a camera for fun... Turns out there was this thing inside that contained energy for the flash... Maybe 230 volts? .-. Paralysed me for a few seconds -.-
Lmao. Doh!
Damn man, glad you're fine. You probably did it to learn something and in the end you learnt something :D
maybe it's a capacitor because they can discharge absurd amount of voltage and flashes need that.
Yeah, probably! :P
230 volts? Trust me, you wouldn't be able to write this here then.
It was called 32 bit because IBM’s 8 bit machine, they called 16 bit because of it’s internal register. Marketing stuff.
The Dimms used are the same as these in my random computerstuff box^^
Why not just ground the CRT before working with it?
You know, that would kinda make it safe to touch an' all.
excuse my ignorance. no ground wrist band?
my fingernails still have nightmares of removing 30pin SIMMs
"don't try this at home unless you're willing to die"
Lucky me
kinda funny seeing this after blowing one up for a video
Any ben heck viewers? Strange that the same video was uploaded by 2 different channels in the same week!
The Mac Plus was the cadillac of macs back then... esp. that one with the external drive. Not really an old Mac. To have a really old Mac... you need a 128K... which I have several... or a Lisa... or... an Apple Ii, or Apple 1. My oldest Apple is a rare black Apple II. Its definitely not the oldest computer i have, however. That would be a pristine TRS-80 Model 1, which came out in 1977....
So what is the battery used for?
keeping dates and time
+PCgeek486 funny how your username says PC, but you have a apple profile picture.
eh, i prefer macs, i should change the name but im scared people will forget its me
Standard connectors on an Apple product??
I miss those days back when you could have a 4 megs machine and do much of the things we still do today that now requires 4 gigs to run...
The original Mac had its OS on one or two 3.5 inch floppy disks. Compare that to stupid Yosemite that takes over 5 gigs to do basically the same thing today !!
+AlainHubert Go write your own OS that takes 4 megs to run. Have fun
+GTR xConfusion huh!? Easy!
+doceigen no, very hard. You have to make the space taken up by the OS very little.
Ishan Dwivedi No, it's easy. FULLY folded out with every feature, OS 7.1 weighs in at 10.7 megabyte. With the useless stuff removed it was far smaller. The entire Finder plus System together, are 1.4 megabyte and easily fit on a high density floppy. In fact, even they were bloated, with the boot up disk weighing in at 400 kilobytes and able to do all kinds of multi-tasking, memory management, media vectors, graphics and GUI, music and voice, and everything we've come to know as 'Mac'.
Its modernity, ...the need to run other people's bloated stuff, that has pushed these wonderfully elegant systems under the carpet.
doceigen Do it then, prove your worth :P
"Let's live dangerously." :o)
Today I learned these old MACs had an embedded Operating system.