davintosh

Here’s a photo of my latest acquisition; the dash 30fx! The dash is one of the first computers that was “mine” professionally. I moved into the Electronic Prepress area back in ’92 or ’93, and since I was low man on the totem pole, I got the dash.

When it was new, it was the hottest thing available anywhere for any price, and it had a heck of a pricetag; I’m told it cost $40,000. Back in those days it was used as a workstation and an image scanner station. But it soon was outgunned by newer/faster machines. It was sent home with a couple of different employees for use as a training unit, but it was too slow for even that. People get spoiled. It sat in a closet unused for a long time.

I think it was about 2000 when I pulled it out, dusted it off & put it to work as a domain name server for our department. It pulled duty there until early 2005 when I was prepping to leave CCL. It may have been a little selfish of me, but I wanted to take it home, so I made sure it wasn’t doing anything productive when I left. Predictably, it sat there unused until last week when my buddy Jerry stopped by Cimarron & dropped it off. No matter what anybody says, Jerry is OK!

So now I have the behemoth at home. Here’s a photo of it standing next to a Color Classic to give you an idea of its size; it is monstrous.

A funny thing happened with it when I got it home, and is a testament to it’s durability. I was carrying it in the house from the garage, holding it by the top lid at the back and the lip on the door above the drive bays on the front. The door must’ve shifted a little bit which allowed the top to shift a little bit which allowed the top to come loose. The top stayed in my hand but the rest of the machine came crashing down on the threshold of the garage doorway.

Bang!

The result wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The doorway threshold took the worst of it; two creases where the case hit. The case only had a minor scuff line across the bottom where it impacted the metal threshold. Inside, one of the Nubus cards got knocked loose, as did some of the RAM cards. I’m glad it didn’t come down on my bare foot; I’m sure that would’ve put me in the hospital!

Once I put it back together (and snapped a few photos of it) I plugged it in & it booted right up. No damage done. Yup; built like a tank. Wonder if a new Mac Pro could handle a fall with that kind of aplomb.