The Macintosh 512k (nicknamed the “Fat Mac”) was mainly an attempt to address the memory shortcoming of the original Macintosh. The total RAM available was quadrupled from 128 KB to 512 KB and the new LocalTalk protocol was supported providing an interface to the new Laserwriter laser printer. Everything else including the 8 MHz Motorola 68000 processor and Sony 400k floppy disk drive, remained the same.

The Macintosh 512k was my family’s first home computer purchased new from The Computer Store. Complimented with an external floppy disk drive, an ImageWriter dot-matrix printer and a 1200 baud modem, it became my father’s terminal, my mother’s family tree and my school report writer.

This machine was acquired as surplus from Videx, a local company that started out making Apple II 80-column display cards in the 1980s. If you are an old Macintosh user, you may remember their MacSlots game for Macintosh.