Even as much as Lori loves her Macintosh, I don’t think she understands this recent purchase of mine. As I mentioned earlier, I have a bit of a computer museum going on in my garage. Starting with my Commodore 64, and an original IBM PC, the progression then moves through a series of Apple Macintosh computers that I have owned. There was one glaring hole in the collection. My first Macintosh, a 512ke, I traded to my boss at Dataphile so he could afford to buy me a more powerful Mac II.

The 512ke was the third model in the Mac progression. The original model, the 128 was replaced by the 512 which was identical other than the increased memory. The 512ke had the newer roms that allowed it to use the 800k floppy disks, and you could attach a hard disk to it.

This model that I bought though is an original 128, similar to the one I used at I-Squared. The cool collector value with the 128 is that inside the case are engraved signatures of the first Apple employees. I got lucky and found one that came with the original MacWrite and MacPaint disks and manuals, the original training tapes, and even a sales brochure. This particular 128 does have a problem with its disk drive so it isn’t usable, but it will still have a place of honor in my museum.