Vintage Computers: Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh

Submitted by florit on Fri, 07/22/2011 - 20:02

I enjoy tinkering with old computers; the 20th Anniversary Macintosh is one of my favorites because of the incredibly unique design and the amazing Acoustimass Bose sound system. When they originally came out, they were price targeted at the premium executive market (U$S 7500) making it financially inaccessible to most. Since I couldn't afford the computer, I purchased the poster!

The poster is quite elegant, unfortunately it was only sent out folded, so there are creases on it:

When Steve Jobs returned to turn Apple around in the late 90s, one of the first things he called for was to reduce stale inventory. Jobs ordered a drastic price cut on the remaining TAM units, and I acquired my first TAM in 1999. I ended up selling that system later that year when news came out that the new Mac OS X would not be supported on the TAM.

This TAM system was added to the collection during the summer of 2010; the 1st owner was an Apple employee whose office was located at the Apple HQ at Infinite Loop 1 in Cupertino, CA, where this system had resided for the past 10+ years. It wasn't booting, but hitting the CUDA switch on the motherboard brought it back to life. It was in original condition, with no upgrades: glacially slow 250MHZ Power PC 603e processor, a 2G IDE harddrive, and Box 1 of the original shipping boxes. This particular unit has not demonstrated the dreaded 'Buzz' mentioned by other TAM owners. Over the course of a year I purchased some upgrades: CommSLOT Ethernet board, USB card, Sonnet G3 400MHZ L2 CPU card, and a 40G IDE hard drive. Seeking better stability and support for all the upgrades (the USB card, specifically) I found how to install the technically unsupported OS 9 and its patches. In order to make it last longer I've added a small fan to move additional air over the Sonnet G3 CPU, using a LEGO constructed fan bracket. Best part of owning this system has been the people walking by my office, getting a glance of it and immediately asking 'What *is* that?'

"It's the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh!"

The setup in my office:

In my mind this was definitely the precursor to the modern flat panel iMacs:

The Subwoofer and Power Supply Unit:

The keyboard is laptop sized, with leather palm rests:

Box 1 of 3, contained the CDs, Manuals, the Fat Back and other items:

Had a remote to control audio and TV functions, and power the TAM on:

The Twentieth Anniversary Mac experience CD, and other discs that came w/ the TAM, such as the Bose music Sampler::

Very nice leather CD case:

The Crescendo L2 G3 upgrade:

Search eBay Sonnet Crescendo L2 Upgrade for TAMNote that there is a PCI version of this upgrade, it will not work with the TAM, you specifically need the L2 Cache replacement version.
The TAM Slim and Fat Backs:

The back of the TAM with the Fat Back off, showing the Ethernet, USB, and Crescendo CPU upgrades, with the LEGO fan mount: