iFixit has made a name for itself tearing down the hottest gadgets as soon as they become available. The company will even fly across multiple timezones just to get its hands on the technology first. This week, iFixit is switching its focus completely. The company is celebrating 30 years of Mac with a teardown of a Macintosh 128K.
Initially released as just the Macintosh (it was later re-named the Macintosh 128K when the Macintosh 512K launched in September of '84), the Macintosh 128K is Apple's first PC and was released in January of 1984. Though it was discontinued just under two years later, in October of 1985, the machine holds a special place in personal computer history. Under the hood, it had a Motorola 68000 processor clocked at 7.833 MHz and, as the name suggests, 128 KB of RAM. It had just 400 KB of storage and shipped with System 1.0.
The model in iFixit's video actually comes courtesy of Cult of Mac writer Adam Rosen. Rosen actually cobbled this Macintosh together from parts he had at home before shipping it off to iFixit to be taken apart all over again. Not quite as special as tearing down a brand new product, but Macintoshes are rather hard to come by these days, and no one does a teardown quite like iFixit.
The computer scored a respectable 7/10 on iFixit’s repairability scale. Unlike today’s Apple machines, iFixit said that once you got the case open, it was pretty easy to replace any of the components, from logic board to display. There was also no adhesive. Something else modern Mac users aren’t used to. What remains the same is that the case is pretty hard to open. Though Apple wasn’t using its infamous Torx screws to keep tinkerers out, iFixit did say that the screws were deeply recessed and the panel fit in general was quite tight. Check the video below to see for yourself:
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