I don’t have much spare time or energy for vices, but when I pick one up, I tend to go deep down the rabbit hole. Alas, it is with much regret that I must inform you of my latest vice – the collection of vintage Apple devices.

This is a living post; I’m going to be making edits to this as I find time and add to my collection. Singapore is a warm and humid place, which makes it hard to find good vintage Apple devices in good condition. I’m not averse to soldering, splicing and tapping or some repairs as needed, but honestly don’t have as much time as I’d like to indulge in this nascent hobby.

My kids (used to) collect Pokemons, so why can’t I go down memory lane a bit more eh? 😉

Here’s my ongoing stock-take (accurate as of 25 Aug 2020):

• Apple IIgs circa 1986-1987 / powers on with no audible boot sound, display ports have corroded with green crust, CRT monitor and accompanying disk drives look unlikely to be in working condition. I didn’t dare to power on the CRT for fear of an actual mini explosion…
• Apple iMac G3 500Mhz, boots fine and runs Mac OS 10.4 (?) with accompanying keyboard and mouse / speaker-rot and keyboard support stand has broken off.
• Apple PowerMac “Quicksilver” G4, seems to boot but is missing a PATA HDD to restore Mac OS 10.2, comes with original OS (2) and Software discs (4).
• Apple iPod “Touchwheel“ 20GB, estimated circa 2002-2003, works fine.
• Apple PowerMac G5 single core, boots into Mac OS.
• Apple Mac Mini 2,1 circa 2009, works fine.
• Apple Cinema Display 30″ of unknown time period, works alright although panel is a tad too yellow and colour temperature needs to be pushed past 9000K to get decent whites.
• Apple Mac Pro 5,1 circa mid-2010, works great and has been upgraded to max dual X5690, 96GB RAM, with Pixlas mod to support a Radeon 5700XT, and Highpoint SSD7101-a NVME 16x PCI with 4 SSDs + 1 SATA HDD in it.
• Apple 13″ Macbook Pro 8,1 circa early-2011, works great and has been upgraded with 16GB RAM and SATA SSD with decent battery condition.
• Apple Mac Pro 5,1 circa late-2012, still on dual E5645 Xeons, 20GB RAM, with a Highpoint SSD7101-a NVME 16x PCI with 3 SSDs + 1 SATA HDD in it, an upgrade work-in-progress.
• Apple Mac Mini 6,1 circa late 2012, dual-core 2.5Ghz i5 with 4GB RAM, works fine and can be zippier with a RAM and SSD upgrade.
• Apple Mac Pro 6,1 circa late-2013, 6-core Xeon and 64GB RAM, 1 TB Apple SSD, Dual D500 graphics card. I have upgraded the RAM from 16GB, and have half a mind to replace the CPU with the 12-core Xeon (max supportable). Too bad I didn’t get the D700 version of this, even though both D500 and D700 versions are purported to have bad thermal issues over time.
• Apple iPod Touch (3rd gen), no camera, works fine.
• Apple iPod Touch (4th gen), front/rear camera, works fine except LCD panel has a dead spot and probably could do with a replacement.
• Apple Thunderbolt Display 27″ of unknown time period, works fine.

My daily machine is the following beast:

• Apple 16″ Macbook Pro 16,1 circa late-2019, 2.4Ghz 8-core i9, 64GB RAM, 4TB SSD, Radeon Pro 5500M w/ 8GB VRAM

That’s all for now. What’s your collection like?