“A teardown usually means a glimpse at the newest tech, but today we’ve got something even more special — a peek into yesteryear. January 24th, 1984 marks the date the original Macintosh computer went on sale; we felt there was no better way to celebrate its 30th birthday than for all to revel at its glorious guts,” iFixit reports.
“Today’s blast from the past is brought to you with the awesome help of Cult of Mac and The Vintage Mac Museum. Cult of Mac will have us note that no vintage Macinti were harmed in the making of this guide — although with a pretty awesome 7 out of 10 repairability score, they didn’t have to worry much about us breaking it,” iFixit reports. “Disassembly was straightforward once we figured out how to open the case.”
“Apple originally called this computer the Macintosh, but it became known as the Mac 128K once the 512K RAM variant entered the market,” iFixit reports. “There’s no active cooling on this daddy Mac. Inside, the Motorola 68000 processor has a little breathing room, but nothing more. This processor, commonly called the 68k, is a surprisingly popular chip. Aside from the Macintosh, it can also be found in the Sega Genesis, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, and even the TI-89 graphing calculator.”
Much more in the full teardown here.
iFixIt is so completely irrelevant that they take lessons from Luddites. The would have every single transistor and pixel mounted in a ZIF pad and stop all miniaturization. Ignore anything they say.
And what is exactly wrong with wanting a machine that you can get into to upgrade, or exchange a part?
I am very grateful to iFixit for their teardown guides
I have relied on iFixit and other detailed teardowns on the Internet ranging from sources on the web to YouTube videos to learn how to:
– open the back (bottom) of a MBP to replace RAM,
– replace the HDD with an SSD in the primary drive bay,
– move the HDD to the optical bay and remove the SuperDrive to an external USB housing so I can retain the use of it, albeit as an external device,
– combine the SSD and HDD to make a homemade Fusion Drive,
– replace the battery for an iPhone by unscrewing the retaining screws on the bottom of the housing and removing the back.
How can the teardown guides be categorised as anything but useful?
It’s nonsense to talk about not knowing how to do anything yourself. How do you learn how to do anything unless you learn from the experts who have taken the time and trouble to show you how to do it correctly without breaking apart the wrong components. And how would you know what tools to use, what screwdrivers to use where and how the parts slide apart without a detailed teardown?
You’re the one talking nonsense here.
I use Other World Computing. They are progressive.
As I’m sure you know by now, the “P” word nearly verboten here.
Now now, by nice and no dissin’ Flo
I rely quite heavily on iFixit to help me repair not just my machines, but those of friends and family as well. Far from irrelevant, they are the gold standard for DIY repair manuals and teardown videos.
If you prefer poorly executed and excruciatingly awful repair videos, go to YouTube and get your fill of poorly lit shaky-cam “experts” to help fix your machines.
It is their ratings of Apple equipment that I can’t stand.
There ratings reflect the tear down/ upgrade-ability of the Apple products. They say nothing bad about the product, or how it performs. In fact its kinda obvious that they love their Apple stuff.
Again, nothing wrong with wanting a level of self sufficiency, nothing wrong with wanting or possessing the knowledge and skills to repair and upgrade a computer yourself. Win-bigots can shut up now, cause no amount of DiY-ability can make up for a p!$$ poor excuse of an OS
That was great. The 80’s fun times, what I remember of it.
I still have my Mac 128k and it still works.
Long live the Mac!
Repairability should have been at least a 9.
Yeah Mark Hamill is going to be huge
A teardown? I was hoping for an unboxing.
I did not get a 128, but I still have my 512 that I bought in 1985. I had given it to my son many moons ago and he recently gave it back to me. Also still have a 20 meg hard rive that cost me $600 in 1989. That is 20 megs, not gigs BTW. Also gave my son my Cube and he gave that back as well. The Cube still runs but cannot get the 512 to boot. I was one of the first to bring my Mac and my Apple dot matrix printer to work. Soon there were Macs all over the office. I sure wish I had kept all of the Macs I have owned, would make a pretty nice collection.
They have minus points for case been too difficult to open. We spent countless hours designing a similar product with high voltage inside that would be nearly impossible to open by a curious owner but a 15sec job by a repair tech with a one special tool and knowledge.