- Here's A Little Background
On My Mac Plus
-
The Mac Plus, Apple Computer's first
truly graphical computer equipped with hard drive,
made its debut in January of 1986. It came with "One
Full Megabyte of Memory." With the release of the
Plus, came the ability to run memory-intensive
application programs. As far as storage, well the sky
was the limit. (Pocket book permitting of course.) The
Plus outshines its predecessors not only in RAM and
Storage, but also with a new disk drive capable of
accommodating double-sided 800k floppy disks. And if
that wasn't enough, it was the first model with a
built-in SCSI port on the back, to which you could
attach your expensive hard drive.
The Plus remained part of Apple's "Macintosh" product line longer than any other model. It was available for nearly five years. By todays standards, however, the Plus shows its age to some. It doesn't have an internal hard drive, uses the older-style keyboard (prior to Apple Desktop Bus,) and cannot be expanded beyond 4MB of real RAM. Nevertheless, thousands of Pluses are still around and still being used effectively. There is even a semi-weekly newspaper that's written almost entirely on dusty old Mac Pluses.
I am proud to exclaim that I still have mine. I still remember the day dad took us to get it. It was back in early 1988, while I was still in High School. Though not my first encounter with an Apple product, it was and still is today, a fascinating wonder in a world full of DOS-based machines. The most interesting part of it was the Mouse. What a wonderful idea, although I admit, hard to get used to at first. Dad paid around $2500.00 for the Plus with 1MB of RAM, a 20MB hard drive, and an Olympia dot matrix printer.
Since, 1988, I have Upgraded to 4MB of RAM and went from a 8MHz 68000 Processor to a MicroMac Technology 16MHz 68030 Processor, now running System 7.5.1. Yes, 7.5.1, believe it or not. I now use the Mac to print time consuming papers so I can use my new Performa worry-free. I also use it as a storage center , server, and to fetch stuff to my HomePage, via a US Robotics 14.4 modem. If nothing else, I keep it for nostalgia, the way a person might hang on to a 57 Chevy, or an antique train set. It truly is a valued and priceless member of my Macintosh Family.
Research and Information collected from the following: MacWorld "SECRETS" 2nd Edition., (299-300) - With the release of System 7.5.5 Update, Apple is
delivering its final system software release for the
Macintosh Plus, SE, Classic, Portable, PowerBook 100, SE
FDHD, SE/30, LC, II, IIx, and IIcx. These computers were not
designed to support 32-bit memory addressing. Future Mac OS
releases will require 32-bit memory addressing, which is
supported by all other Macintosh models.
Future System Software Support?
This Site is Hosted on a Mac at www.mia.net 
Need to contact me: macplus@mia.net Be sure to send your comments, suggestions, or any mistakes about this Machines history"