Mac 512k and Mac Plus with Interesting Upgrades

  • It's #MARCHintosh 2025! Join in on the fun and post your project or play with some new stuff in our #MARCHintosh 2025 thread.

MeTheMac

New Tinkerer
Feb 20, 2025
24
2
3
retropods.io
Hello!
Just yesterday, I picked up two compact macs, a Mac II, and a first generation iPod. However, both compact macs have interesting upgrades. Both work (after a quick reflow of the analog board) and are pretty clean inside. They also have fan mods!

The Mac Plus has a 68000 16Mhz upgrade by Brainstorm, and possibly a RAM upgrade. I am not sure how much RAM it has before since I don't have a keyboard, mouse, and boot disk yet to check. I also notice the Mac Plus makes a clicking noise constantly after the macintosh bootup screen shows, not sure why this is. Is it bad? Also, how do I fix a slightly fuzzy screen?

The Mac 512k has a SCSI expansion, and a 2MB RAM daughterboard, both by "Prespect Systems Inc".

On a side note, the Mac II has a Dove Marathon 030 expansion and 5MB of RAM, but is missing both floppy drives and the bay. If anyone has the floppy drives + bay, I'd be interested.

So, I was wondering what sort of value they carry and what use they have. Do they need recapping? Anything I should watch out for (yes, I know about CRTs)?
Also, is there a good way to retrobrite the Mac II case?

Thank you so much!

--

The Mac Plus motherboard is pretty normal other than the CPU slotted on top an a resistor(?) connecting the CPU board and some component on the motherboard.

The Macintosh 512k has loads of wires and such everywhere:

Post thread IMG 0096.png
.
Post thread IMG 0097.png
 
Last edited:

vtgearhead

New Tinkerer
May 1, 2023
39
19
8
Burlington, VT USA
Can you post photos of that Dove accelerator? I recently removed and socketed the 030 chip in one of my SE/30s in order to install a Dove 030 accelerator. Works just fine, but I'm curious if yours has any bodge wires or other obvious differences.

FYI: The 512ke daughterboard is carrying 1.5 MB of memory which likely extends the on-board 512k to a total of 2MB.
 
Last edited: