Apple Macintosh Plus

The Macintosh Plus, introduced in January 1986, was the third model in Apple's Macintosh line, offering significant improvements over its predecessors. It featured a 7.8 MHz Motorola 68000 processor, 1MB of RAM (expandable to 4MB), a 512 × 342 monochrome display, and was the first Mac to include a SCSI port, enabling support for external storage and peripherals. This pictured example booted from an external SCSI hard drive. The Plus also introduced a double-sided 800KB floppy drive, doubling disk capacity compared to earlier models. The Plus was the last compact Mac to use non-ADB (Apple Desktop Bus) ports. Its keyboard connected via an RJ-11 jack, similar to a telephone cord, while the mouse used a DE-9 connector. Later models, starting with the Macintosh SE, introduced ADB ports, allowing for more standardized peripheral connections.

This Plus was given to me for free from a friend in circa 2005 in working condition. I fired it up again in 2026 and the CRT display stopped working due to cold solder joints on the analog board connectors that fed the CRT and power supplies. This issue was easily remedied by reflowing the solder on the connector pins. I did not need to recap the board at that time but anticipate this repair will eventually be required.