Racintosh Plus – Rackmount Mac Plus

http://www.identity4.com/2025-racintosh-plus/

by zdw • 11 months ago

147 42 11 months ago

drob5182• 10 months ago

Brilliant. Got my old Macintosh Plus out a few months ago and flipped it on and unfortunately that let out some of the “magic smoke” that keeps all electronics running. I think it’s an electrolytic cap that blew. Just too old. Will have to find time to refurb it.

burnt-resistor4• 10 months ago

Always look at caps and look for/test corrosion shorts before energizing old gear.

Caps are easy fixes if you can get the board out. Use quality electrolytic caps if bothering to go through the trouble, or I'd see if modern ceramic alternatives exist that will essentially last forever. (Don't get me started on how (vintage) tantalums suck.)

accrual• 10 months ago

Apt username :)

drob5182• 10 months ago

Yea, I should have done that, but I just flipped the switch. My bad. Yea, I’ll see what’s available. It’s a project that I probably won’t get to for a while, unfortunately. Plus, I don’t even think I own a soldering iron anymore, which is ironic for an old hardware engineer.

tantalic• 10 months ago

They had me at "4 months of work just to make a stupid pun."

johnklos• 10 months ago

I've preserved a number of machines by building them in to rackmount cases. It never occurred to me to make a faux product out of them. This is amazing! The graphics and detail are wonderful.

henry700• 10 months ago

Naming it Racintosh instead of Rackintosh is... Definitely one of the decisions of all time

t0lo• 10 months ago

I can't lie I love a good rack

lioeters• 10 months ago

I'm partial to the tosh but to each their own

throwawaysoxjje• 10 months ago

It’s not ‘Mackintosh’ tho

pmarreck• 10 months ago

I lost my beloved Mac Plus, the computer that made me become a programmer, because of COVID.

Shortly before COVID hit, I fired it up to see if it still worked, and within like a minute, a certain capacitor (that is a common and well-known failure point) fried, and it was dead. I brought it to a computer repair store to fix, and then COVID and its lockdowns hit.

When I returned months later to see what was up after my phone calls weren't returned, turns out the whole place had shut down and I to this day have no idea where my Mac Plus went. :/

wwweston• 10 months ago

Sounds like your Mac Plus died with covid (and really irresponsible customer property management), but not from covid…

dylan604• 10 months ago

out of curiosity, did you really think the GP thought COVID killed the computer which is an inanimate object that required this level of pedantry?

jedberg• 10 months ago

Unless they edited their comment, they never said it died from COVID, but because of COVID.

yabani• 10 months ago

How

bigyabai• 10 months ago

Capacitors die. The original Xbox notoriously suffers from this issue; very few will boot up nowadays without a hardware fix.

rzzzt3• 10 months ago

"RIFA madness"?

whartung• 10 months ago

No...no Programmer switch.

Close, they wired the Reset button!

But, no Programmer switch.

It's very hard to contain my disappointment. Bridge too far I guess.

abstractbeliefs• 10 months ago

Magic/More Magic switch required.

burnt-resistor4• 10 months ago

And it should be water-cooled and support overclocking. :)

sigma022• 10 months ago

It's crucial to label, in large, letters, "BUTTONS" and "MICRO-SD SLOT", in case you forget later.

kiddico• 10 months ago

Already bought the label maker, may as well use that bad boy.

EvanAnderson2• 10 months ago

My thoughts exactly. In my experience the first label should be for the label maker itself. Just continue with that mindset.

jacobgkau• 10 months ago

I zoomed into the photo to check that out after you pointed it out. I initially assumed it would've been placeholders that were labeled, since writing `DISPLAY` on your screen doesn't make sense, but the buttons and MicroSD slot are obviously there. The text for the MicroSD slot extends past the edge of the front surface, though, so it's not actually physically labeled-- just labeled in the image with a perspective effect. I assume it's because the buttons are a bit hard to see (and it's not obvious the display is a display without it being turned on).

prewett• 10 months ago

Oh fun memories! "Crystal Quest" and "Beyond Dark Castle", which I played on an SE are still some of my favorite games.

lproven3• 10 months ago

Crystal Quest was a legit all-time classic game. I remain amazed that, nearly 40 years after I first played it, nothing else has ever reproduced its precise control mechanics.

It's already 25 years or so ago but in the early 20-teens I fixed up a Mac Classic II and got it online on the Internet, running both System 6 and MacOS 7.6.1, both fully tricked out with every possible enhancement. A great learning and revision exercise, and still a lovely OS to work with in the 21st century.

But the most fun I had on it was playing CQ...

rzzzt3• 10 months ago

What (or why) is that end-of-level sound effect, though?

burnt-resistor4• 10 months ago

I love this so much. Space saved, hardware hackage, and improved with modern substitutes.

I kinda wished it had a panoply of external SCSI devices like a floppy drive, a CD ROM, and a ZIP drive (needs driver v.4.2 ) for good measure.

reaperducer3• 10 months ago

Reminds me very much of my college project where my roommates and I repackaged a Commodore 64 into an IBM PC form factor, complete with external keyboard.

Difficulty: College was in a town without a Radio Shack, and none of us had cars.

rzzzt3• 10 months ago

I think I've seen such a conversion, and am now frantically searching for it but with all the wrong keywords it seems!

There was also a "shucked" 1541 PCB and drive fitted in the top section of a tower case and IIRC in the post I've read they have served all power demands either from a standard PSU or an off-the-shelf power supply module.

lproven3• 10 months ago

Dana "Nanoraptor" Sibera designed a tower C64. In an ideal world, that's how a PC-cased C64 would look, complete with its keyboard:

https://bsky.app/profile/nanoraptor.danamania.com/post/3k47g...

Better still... someone built it for real:

https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/1iqth0...

ForOldHack• 10 months ago

I wish I still had my Mac Plus. Upgraded from a 512Ke, 40Mb drive, and a Radius 020 accelerator with 68881. Still limited to 4Mb, And I ran 7.0.1 and 6.0.8. Any testing with The two screen panning programs? Stepping out II? I played Spaceward Ho! to death on it.

Racintosh Plus – Rackmount Mac Plus

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