Most interesting about your 512ke EDs being platinum. I had always
thought the 512ke ED was the last of the old style case back and was
discontinued shortly after the conversion to Platinum which I thought
only the Plus made. Whatever the reason the Plus was released in the
PMS 453 color, it made an easy case back upgrade to the Plus possible
on the earlier Macs without a dedicated production line for the upgrade
case backs. The fact that the 512ke ED was released in platinum means
that Apple went to the expense of maintaining a separate production
line for the old style case back after the color change, or more
importantly BEFORE any other Mac went platinum (making it the first to
do so), the latter meant two sets of keyboards and a mouse too if the
PMS 453 colored Plus 1MB was still in production. Another reason it's
surprising is that all of the peripherals for the 512ke were never made
in platinum AFAIK: i.e. HD20, 800k Disk (though you could buy the Apple
IIgs 3.5 drive in platinum), DB-9 serial cables and devices. Not such a
big issue with the Plus ED since all the parts were the same. It would
help to know when both it and the Plus ED were both actually introduced
to better understand the color choices and configurations. As for the
Mac Plus configuration on an ED labeled case, I agree that the most
likely scenario is that the original 512keEd was upgraded to a Plus via
the standard OEM upgrade (I would be surprised to see a OEM "ED"
upgrade label). However, Apple could have stopped production on the
512ke logic board, but wanted to continue a low-end education model
that did not have the expense of a full MB of RAM. If you did not know,
the Plus logic board can be configured to use only 512k RAM by adding
an additional resistor in the 256k SIMM configuration. Or, they simply
could have had left-over ED case bezels when they discontinued the
512ke ED and used them since there was only one ED at that point which
could easily be distinguished by the SCSI port (and perhaps dropped the
"Plus" from the ED name altogether in much the same way they dropped
the "1MB" from the original designation). I suspect if the former is
true, the case back would have a unique model number on both the serial
number on the case bottom and the sticker in the back center like the
512ke ED does -- ask him what the case back says and that should clear
that mystery up. If it says just "Macintosh Plus" M0001A, or M5880,
then it was most likely an OEM upgraded.
GYounk's 512 pages has some good details about it:
http://www.mac512.com/512ked.htm
On Jul 10, 2005, at 8:28 AM, Stuart Bell wrote:
I have had for some time one of the 512ke based EDs, which is in
platinum and has a 'newer' front case from the Plus (i.e. with the
logo for the long keyboard, not short + numeric).
He also has an ED labelled just 'ED', not 'ED Plus' which is to Plus
specification. However, I don't think that it's possible to tell if
Plus-spec EDs were sold like that, or whether such models were sold
with a 512ke spec and were later upgraded to Plus spec, like so many
other early Macs.
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