Endangered Classic Mac Plastic Color Returns As 3D-Printer Filament (arstechnica.com) 53
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Tuesday, classic computer collector Joe Strosnider announced the availability of a new 3D-printer filament that replicates the iconic "Platinum" color scheme used in classic Macintosh computers from the late 1980s through the 1990s. The PLA filament (PLA is short for polylactic acid) allows hobbyists to 3D-print nostalgic novelties, replacement parts, and accessories that match the original color of vintage Apple computers. Hobbyists commonly feed this type of filament into commercial desktop 3D printers, which heat the plastic and extrude it in a computer-controlled way to fabricate new plastic parts.
The Platinum color, which Apple used in its desktop and portable computer lines starting with the Apple IIgs in 1986, has become synonymous with a distinctive era of classic Macintosh aesthetic. Over time, original Macintosh plastics have become brittle and discolored with age, so matching the "original" color can be a somewhat challenging and subjective experience. Strosnider said he paid approximately $900 to develop the color. "Rather than keeping the formulation proprietary, he arranged for Polar Filament to make the color publicly available [for $21.99 per kilogram]," adds Ars.
The Platinum color, which Apple used in its desktop and portable computer lines starting with the Apple IIgs in 1986, has become synonymous with a distinctive era of classic Macintosh aesthetic. Over time, original Macintosh plastics have become brittle and discolored with age, so matching the "original" color can be a somewhat challenging and subjective experience. Strosnider said he paid approximately $900 to develop the color. "Rather than keeping the formulation proprietary, he arranged for Polar Filament to make the color publicly available [for $21.99 per kilogram]," adds Ars.
Endangered? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think that means what they think it means.
Re: Endangered? (Score:2)
Pick a color and have some paint mixed. If you use the right kind of paint you should even be able to approximate the surface texture.
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Well, I agree, and to me the yellowing of classic macs is actually kind of charming. It's aggressively vintage.
But, it's not for me to decide what people should do for their hobbies. I certainly waste my own time.
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Well, I agree, and to me the yellowing of classic macs is actually kind of charming. It's aggressively vintage.
But, it's not for me to decide what people should do for their hobbies. I certainly waste my own time.
A historical note - as a person who was doing work with personal computers at the time, the Platinum color was a real breath of fresh air, among the beige boredom that was pretty ubiquitous at the time. I didn't buy them because of the color, but it didn't hurt either.
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Sure, I remember when it happened too. We had Apples in schools and I used to walk past a mac store a lot, and I'd occasionally go in. They hooked me up with a copy of Disinfectant once when we later got a IIci in the house. (My mother was a graphic artist.) Later I installed a cache card in and netbsd on that machine.
On the other hand, there were interesting-color PCs before Apple even did that. One of my friends had a MAD SFF 286 that was in a nearly-charcoal color... They lived on a smallish boat and spa
Re: Endangered? (Score:2)
Colorblindness is so relaxing sometimes. About the same color. Not my problem.
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For a long time I had a Commodore 64 set up ready to go in my rooms, connected to a 1541 snail drive and a C2N cassette. I had a Mac/SE 30 an d a Mac Plus. I had an Atari ST. I enjoyed them all, and I can absolutely appreciate wanting this kind of thing.
For myself I've moved on (played the C64 version of Portal? That was developed on hardware I donated) from phys
UV stabilised ABS would be good (Score:1)
Why use shitty PLA then? Why not ABS so it doesn't melt when you leave it in the car or, say, have hot computer parts running inside it?
Here Here, and make it UV stabilized as well.
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I'd almost say ABS, or maybe something like ASA (which is better for UV issues). Even PETG wouldn't be as bad.
I do think the main reason for PLA is that it is the easiest to get the custom color for it and have it match. Even with it being "just" PLA, being able to have the right color is a lot better than nothing.
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For me, I purchased a few rolls of the filament, and going to make an external enclosure for a BlueSCSI board, and make it look like an Apple external SCSI drive. Does this affect functionality? Not really. Same reason people buy and make hot rod kit cars... something from a bygone time that sucked less than now, or sucked differently.
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Dude, let it go. Get on with your life.
Re: Endangered? (Score:4, Interesting)
Pick a color and have some paint mixed. If you use the right kind of paint you should even be able to approximate the surface texture.
The 8-Bit Guy on Youtube has many videos about how to effectively remove the discoloration from old computer plastics. Without paint.
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The 8-Bit Guy on Youtube has many videos about how to effectively remove the discoloration from old computer plastics. Without paint.
I've watched him. Removing the discoloration is temporary. It will return.
Paint's not permanent either, but it will last a whole lot longer than just removing discoloration, especially if you use PU.
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I see a lot of people using a technique called Retrobrite, where the part goes into hydrogen peroxide, then is stuffed under UV lights for a period of time. This seems to get rid of the yellowing, but it isn't a permanent process, as stuff starts yellowing again. Some people use 303 Aerospace UV protectant because of this.
Other people don't bother, and just paint the outside. It works, but not a "true" vintage PC restoration.
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Other people don't bother, and just paint the outside. It works, but not a "true" vintage PC restoration.
There is no such thing as a true vintage restoration. You cannot restore the chemicals in the plastic, by definition you are not changing it back to how it was. But if you are uncasing it, painting the case well, and allowing the paint to cure fully before reassembling it, then you will wind up with a result that cannot reasonably be distinguished from the real thing — especially since there are no pristine examples of the real thing any more since they are all age-affected.
If someone made new reprodu
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Paint doesn't last if it's a continually touched surface - each touch rubs a bit of the paint off so no matter how much preparation you do, it will degrade and flake off.
Lots of examples of painted plastic things that degrade over the years as the devices were used.
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PLA is biodegradable. Good luck.
Beige? (Score:2)
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I thought it called Smoker Yellow?
I think that was what we called the beige cases that seemed to be required for PC's until Apple broke the rule.
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I thought it called Smoker Yellow?
I think that was what we called the beige cases that seemed to be required for PC's until Apple broke the rule.
Which consequently raised a beige alert among the community.
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For a while, we had some choice, depending on one's definition of PC. As I recall, the Micro, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad were all black.
If we only include IBM and clones, IBM had some models dressed in black from fairly early on.
But, yes You're still correct. I'm just remarking because they did exist, but were not so great in number. It was a sea of beige and the age of the cubical.
A video-editing friend of mine had some fancy computer dressed in blue. I forget the make/model and I guess it'd be a PC but was
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A video-editing friend of mine had some fancy computer dressed in blue.
Just a guess, but likely an SGI (indigo, octane, O2, Indy, etc..).
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That sounds right. They worked for a very famous studio at the time, perhaps even a couple of them, doing things like CGI.
Said machine was a beast in its day. The specs and specifics have long been forgotten but I recall that performance levels were quite high. They worked on some pretty famous movies and were good enough that they did so via remote work even back then. He did have high speed internet to his home but I think it was just a T1 or maybe some ISDN line. I don't think he had a full T3 but he mig
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That sounds right. They worked for a very famous studio at the time, perhaps even a couple of them, doing things like CGI.
Said machine was a beast in its day. The specs and specifics have long been forgotten but I recall that performance levels were quite high. They worked on some pretty famous movies and were good enough that they did so via remote work even back then. He did have high speed internet to his home but I think it was just a T1 or maybe some ISDN line. I don't think he had a full T3 but he might have. It's not like he was paying for it out of his pocket. We're talking 25 years ago, or something like that. So, the details are quite fuzzy.
I've never been into video manipulation or creating graphics but he was quite skilled and worked on movies I'm sure you're familiar with. I guess it's not doxxing him to point out that he worked for Pixar for quite a while. So, whatever Pixar used might be what he was using. I haven't heard from him in decades. He would sometimes talk about making his nest egg and getting out. He may have done that.
Yeah, as I think about it, SGI sounds right to me. The case was blue-ish but I'm partially colorblind.
Yes, it was a blue/teal case, not a bad looking computer.
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Yup. That's the one. I'm reasonably convinced (from pictures and Wikipedia) that was an SGI Octane.
I was impressed with the RAM that it had. At the time, there were still some servers that had less RAM and only expensive workstations had that much RAM.
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Yup. That's the one. I'm reasonably convinced (from pictures and Wikipedia) that was an SGI Octane.
I was impressed with the RAM that it had. At the time, there were still some servers that had less RAM and only expensive workstations had that much RAM.
Yup, that's the one we had. It was a babe of a PC.
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I've been doing some retro-computing stuff. It hasn't reached the point of 'serious hobby'. I just already had some old stuff and wanted to experience some stuff Id' missed back in the day. Like, I never owned an Amiga.
But, I think it might be interesting to get an SGI to play with. I'd like to see what it'll run today but, and this is something some folks overlook, it'll still do the tasks it was designed to do in the era it was meant to do so.
That or it seems like a good case to fit a modern computer.
You
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I've been doing some retro-computing stuff. It hasn't reached the point of 'serious hobby'. I just already had some old stuff and wanted to experience some stuff Id' missed back in the day. Like, I never owned an Amiga.
I owned several Amigas, the A500, 2000, 3000 and 4000 plus the Video Toaster. They were joy to use, but Commodore was badly run, and eventually died out.
But, I think it might be interesting to get an SGI to play with. I'd like to see what it'll run today but, and this is something some folks overlook, it'll still do the tasks it was designed to do in the era it was meant to do so.
That or it seems like a good case to fit a modern computer.
You were quite fortunate, I should think, to have used one of those SGI workstations at the time. Though, it must have made your home computer seem pretty slow.
Then again, if that was your home computer, you were doing quite well.
At the time, I had an Amiga 2000 at home, all tricked out with a 40 Mbyte HD, an extra RAM board and a video card. Yeah, the SGI ran rings around it. The SGI also introduced me to Unix (IRIX variety) so yes, I consider myself fortunate!
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It worked at a business class ISP in the late 90's that had several models from SGI - they were a *nix shop. They must have picked them up second hand cause the NOC guys were using them as desktops, myself included. I enjoyed working on them, even with the dated UI. In retrospect, it was quite an opportunity to get to work on SunOS, Solaris, Irix, HP-UX, FreeBSD, Cisco IOS, and a variety of Linux. FWIW, I remember using a purple one the most - I think it was the SGI Indigo 2.
Once, someone gifted me a couple
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You're right. Those are interesting.
For reasons, namely that they helped sponsor my research in grad school by providing hardware, we had a lot of DEC gear back then.
Then, there was the writing on the wall and you could see the demise of DEC coming, so we had a lot of Sun gear after that. At the time, depending on your position in the company, you could use a Unix or Windows. Even if you chose Windows, you could install X (X11) to access the server in a graphical way.
We did have people with beefy workstatio
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With the relative decline in smoking it's easier to tell that this is just how the polymers degrade in these plastics (especially in UV/sun light). It just takes longer without the chemical deposits from the smoke. This is also why you couldn't just wash the stains away.
Old Apple computers will outlast new ones (Score:2)
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My Apple 2+ is still going strong. My VIC-20 won't power up anymore. Probably bad capacitors, but I haven't had a chance to troubleshoot it.
Endangered? (Score:1, Flamebait)
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So we are considering beige iconic now? Just because you call it "Platinum" doesn't make it any less generic than any of the million other beige computer models that came out in the 80s. This is literally the same bland color scheme that Apple's running away from with all their might with the first iMacs finally led to the era of distinctive-looking computer cases.
You need to go to the link to see the difference. https://vintagemacmuseum.com/w... [vintagemacmuseum.com].
Two Macs, the one on the left is that boring beige that seemed to be required at the time. The one on the right is the Platinum colored Mac. The white color was a real breath of fresh air. Beige ended up being looked at as slow and old.
My favorite case is https://www.insanelymac.com/fo... [insanelymac.com]. (the black one is a User altered case), I had one of the G5 MacPros back in the day, Apple was on the verge of abandoning the Power
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I had one of the first 50,000 Macs. It was the Putty color.
Spray paint? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's good, but I find that my prints have too many print lines and other imperfections. I prefer to fill and sand and then paint them, first with a layer of primer and then with spray paint.
It would be nice if there was spray paint available in Platinum beige, or just anything that is remotely close. I have tried many brands throughout the years trying to mimic the vintage look but not really been lucky: it has either been too white or too saturated.
The closest I've found to any vintage beige was a beige primer. My keyboard is in dire need of a touch-up.
really? (Score:2)
> commercial desktop 3D printers, which heat the
> plastic and extrude it in a computer-controlled way
> to fabricate new plastic parts
Gee i always wondered how it worked.
But do the hobbyists really feed it into commercial manchines ? I'd have thought the professionals fed it into the commerical machines, and hobbyists fed it into hobbyist machines.
Re: (Score:2)
In this case they mean commercial as in commercially produced / mass manufactured. Some hobbyists assemble their own, though usually from mass manufactured kits. Shortening the phrase to just commercial does get confusing, without the very obvious context.
Whew! (Score:2)
Proprietary (Score:1)
>Rather than keeping the formulation proprietary, he arranged for Polar Filament to make the color publicly available [for $21.99 per kilogram]
If only one seller sells his color, and doesn't publicize the spec, it's still effectively proprietary, isn't it?
Dumbest story of the week (Score:2)
We're wringing our hands about a freaking color?
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+1
That's not platinum (Score:2)
This could definitely be a line of products... (Score:3)
As an old time Mac user, the switch from the putty (Pantone 453, IIRC) color of the //gs in 1986 and Mac in 1987 was a nice change.
Does it really matter to many people? Not really. However, it is nice to have the ability to 3D print retro stuff, be it relevant stuff like an external SCSI drive using BlueSCSI, or stuff that isn't as related, such as a USB HDD enclosure or NAS modeled to look like an external SCSI drive, especially the old school La Cie drives with the purple cylinder in it, or their other drives like the HD160 that Apple OEM-ed from them. Long lost styles that definitely would look unique.
Of course, duplicating designs can be have its difficulties, because all plastics were injection molded, and 3D printing is a different manufacturing process, and translating plastic pieces from one to the other takes some thought. Slant 3D has some good YouTube videos on this. However, it is tempting to make something that looks like an old Apple SCSI drive, but actually is a NAS, and have it be neat and well-fitting item that actually looks like a store bought product from an alternate-timeline Apple (an Apple that never dropped its Time Capsule line, perhaps.)
But what about Apple Fog color? (Score:1)