The Macintosh 128K machine was the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. Its beige case contained a 9-inch (23 cm) monitor and came with a keyboard and mouse. An indentation in the top of the case made it easier for the computer to be lifted and carried. It had a selling price of US$2,495. The Macintosh was introduced by the now famous US$1.5 million television commercial by Ridley Scott, "1984", that most notably aired on CBS during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984. The sales of the Macintosh were strong from its initial release and reached 70,000 on May 3, 1984; afterwards, sales plummeted. After its successor, the Macintosh 512K, was introduced, it was rebadged as the Macintosh 128K.

The centerpiece of the machine was an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 microprocessor connected to a 128 KB DRAM by a 16-bit data bus. Lack of RAM proved to be a fatal constraint to much multimedia software, and although this baseline was similar to its competitors, it could not be upgraded. A 64 KB ROM chip boosted the effective memory to 192 KB, but this is offset by the display's 22 KB framebuffer, which is shared with the DMA video controller.

Our machine has Serial Number: F4041BDM0001

Manufactured in: Fremont, California, USA

Year of production: 1984

Week of production: 4

Production number: 1BD => 1544

Modell ID: M0001 => original Macintosh 1984 (128k)

Our original Macintosh 1984 (128k) was the 1544th Mac manufactured during the 4th week of 1984 in Fremont, California, USA.

This unit would have appeared to have been upgraded to 512K probanly from an outside source rather than Apple. This together with printer, single button mouse M0100, keyboard (M0110B0, Paradise system MAC20 hard drive and accessories was very kindly donated by Jean Lowe.

Manufacturer: Apple
Date: 28th January 1984

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH15282. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.