Today I am very happy to announce CompleteSet, a new online resource for vintage Mac collectors and enthusiasts. The goal of CompleteSet is to provide a complete, accurate, and functional resource for determining the accessories, peripherals, software disks, and documentation materials that originally shipped with vintage Apple systems from the G3-G5 era (roughly 1998-2006).
It’s historically been notoriously difficult to make exact determinations about which exact materials shipped with vintage Apple systems (let alone at a part-number-specific level). This has traditionally involved lots of educated guesswork and consulting EveryMac, which only gets you part of the way there. CompleteSet aims to provide a definitive resource for making these determinations, where you can browse by system to find the components (including specific part numbers) you need.
When it is "finished" (someday long in the future), CompleteSet will cover three main categories: software CDs, documentation materials, and accessories/peripherals (cables, keyboards, mice, etc). At launch, the software CDs portion (“Phase 1”) is the only part available - I am looking for feedback from the community before moving forward with the other parts.
For each of these three categories, CompleteSet will comprise a main index/datasheet which is divided into tabs based on machine family (e.g., iBook G3, PowerBook G4). For the software CDs portion, I have also put together pages for each system which actually show photos of the discs. At this time I am undecided whether including these “photos” sections for the other two categories would be useful or feasible - looking for feedback on this.
Anyways, to my knowledge this is the first time a resource like this has existed in the community so it’s taken some work to figure out how to pull it all together. As such, I am looking for lots of feedback here:
Thanks for reading and I hope this will be a useful resource to have out there.
It’s historically been notoriously difficult to make exact determinations about which exact materials shipped with vintage Apple systems (let alone at a part-number-specific level). This has traditionally involved lots of educated guesswork and consulting EveryMac, which only gets you part of the way there. CompleteSet aims to provide a definitive resource for making these determinations, where you can browse by system to find the components (including specific part numbers) you need.
When it is "finished" (someday long in the future), CompleteSet will cover three main categories: software CDs, documentation materials, and accessories/peripherals (cables, keyboards, mice, etc). At launch, the software CDs portion (“Phase 1”) is the only part available - I am looking for feedback from the community before moving forward with the other parts.
For each of these three categories, CompleteSet will comprise a main index/datasheet which is divided into tabs based on machine family (e.g., iBook G3, PowerBook G4). For the software CDs portion, I have also put together pages for each system which actually show photos of the discs. At this time I am undecided whether including these “photos” sections for the other two categories would be useful or feasible - looking for feedback on this.
Anyways, to my knowledge this is the first time a resource like this has existed in the community so it’s taken some work to figure out how to pull it all together. As such, I am looking for lots of feedback here:
- Is the information in CompleteSet provided in an intuitive, navigable, useful way?
- Is having the photos pages useful?
- Are there other similar indices out there on the Internet already that I’m not aware of, and if so, how do they compare and how should they be referenced or incorporated (or not)?
Thanks for reading and I hope this will be a useful resource to have out there.
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