[HN Gopher] Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-p...
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Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament
Author : CobaltFire
Score : 246 points
Date : 2025-06-05 04:44 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| There is a wild assortment of modern hardware out there for
| keeping older hardware running. BlueSCSI is mentioned in the
| article and I have been a customer. I used a BlueSCSI to save
| pull some old sources from an old SCSI drive I had been hanging
| on to for 35 years or so [1].
|
| People are making replacements for the dead lead-acid batteries
| from the original Mac (so-called) Portable. There are USB-powered
| cables to charge/power early MacBooks. I'm sure others can rattle
| off several other devices.
|
| Now you have people 3D printing replacement bezels, etc. for
| these old machines. Very cool.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Did you make a full backup of that old SCSI device to modern
| devices? What did you do with all of the extra space as I can
| only imagine how small the old SCSI device was compared with
| modern media sizes
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, the drive was 20 or 40 MB, I think. Easily moved it all
| to an SD card.
|
| If anyone cares about old shareware game source code, I used
| the opportunity of recovering some old code to create a
| number of disk images (that you can mount from a modern Mac
| emulator like Basilisk II for example). Here is one (I think
| you can find the other three or so from this one):
|
| https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/SoftDorothy-
| UnfinishedTa...
| __del__ wrote:
| these look great. haven't heard the name soft dorothy in
| ages.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| Those screenshots make me miss Glider and Pararena. My
| brother and I used to be *so* competitive with our Glider
| scores.
| Kstile wrote:
| Very cool! Spent many an hour playing the original
| shareware glider.
|
| The Dorthy soft/Kansas connection makes so much sense after
| reading the Github repo. The logo was burned into my brain.
| I was always nervous about starting the game in front of my
| parents, but it turns out my dad was really good at glider.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Something that has been kind of funny for me, perhaps others are
| feeling this way: I see increasingly this "retro computing
| community" fawning over machines that I think of as ... just
| machines that I used once. Some of the machines were even kind of
| scorned at the time as I recall -- now they're sought after,
| lovingly restored....
|
| I don't know if my reaction is as one who is being made aware of
| just how old they are (61, BTW) or if it is a bit of a sweetness
| that I feel that younger generations are coveting these older
| machines instead of reflexively landfilling them.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Does that same feeling of wow still exist for kids today? They
| have grown up with computers there entire life. Some of us were
| introduced to computers in our teens, so there was prior
| experience of _not_ having a computer for that wow to hit. Even
| now, the wow factor has diminished for me with new computers
| /devices. They are not really doing anything new as much as
| they just do the things faster/quiter/cheaper/smaller. There
| are definite milestones for me that just made my socks roll up
| and down when they were first available on computers. Is there
| anything not done on a computer now?
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| > Some of us were introduced to computers in our teens, so
| there was prior experience of not having a computer for that
| wow to hit.
|
| The effect is similar for those of us whose exposure was
| earlier, but similarly devoid of computers prior.
|
| In my case it was a 1996 Mac tower w/internal 28k modem, at
| which point I was seven. It was not only the first computer
| of any sort in the house (no game consoles either) but also
| our first CD player. Up until then, the extent of tech for me
| was a late 80s Sharp VCR and an even older faux wood console
| Zenith TV hooked up to a roof antenna (no cable). Anything
| beyond that existed only in TV commercials and movies.
|
| It was such a huge shift that it's difficult to articulate.
| It sparked a lifelong obsession.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| In my case the computers I 'learned computers' on were old
| pre-xp 90's machines. Nobody cares if some kid wants to take
| apart a few old computers on their way to the trash. That
| feeling of 'getting something to work' on those old machines
| sort of never went away for me, which is why I like
| retrocomputing even though the internet, cell phones,
| youtube, social media was pretty much around most of my life.
| bombcar wrote:
| The key is that you used them. The retro community is for
| people who lusted after those machines, but we're stuck with
| something much more affordable and much less powerful.
|
| And now they're well into middle age and they have money.
| deadbabe wrote:
| I don't think it's that simple.
|
| Yes for some people who used these machines once, they might
| just think of them as old machines, the same way an ancient
| Roman still alive today might not think much of mundane Roman
| tech.
|
| But getting into retro-computing as a hobby is more like
| being a historian or archaeologist. There is endless lore to
| discover, and restoring old hardware is an art. Some of these
| people were never old enough or even existed to lust after
| these machines.
|
| Someday, all the people who used these machines will be dead,
| completely dead, and the machines will be all that remains.
| Blessed are those who keep them running in their memory.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Myself, I have passion for the KIM-1. Perhaps, as you
| suggest, because I saw it in a TAB book in the early 70's
| when I was a teenager, unable at that time to swing the $400
| or so to get it.
|
| But I think my current passion has more to do with the
| simplicity of it, and being forced (well, more or less) to
| learn 6502 assembly. (Oh, and Christ an original KIM-1 is a
| good deal more than $400 now, ha ha. But there are nice
| reproductions you can build yourself.)
|
| What a breath of fresh air the thing is -- having so little
| between its hex keypad and its six character display.
| ehnto wrote:
| The same thing happens with cars. There's a somewhat
| predictable spike in used car prices for what become cult
| classics. Cars that are otherwise pretty mundane, and have
| since been well surpassed.
|
| It's the people now with full time employment, who couldn't
| afford them when they were 16. Now they can, and the cars in
| good condition are more scarce.
| flomo wrote:
| You're right about the money part, but it always seemed more
| like a 30-year-old pursuit than middle-aged.
|
| But once I went through Vogons and had the impression that
| many of them lacked any taste. A lot of PCs (and Macs) were
| total shite back then. If you want to dink around, you can
| now get the best old stuff.
| icehawk wrote:
| I don't think that's entirely it. A lot of the things I've
| been collecting in the hobby are _just_ things that I had
| used a the time. I 've got more weird variants of Mac SEs and
| Mac LCs which were things I had at home, or used at school,
| than the Quadras and Power Macs I dreamed of.
| qoez wrote:
| For me I did use them but it was during very early childhood
| so they have a special place in my heart.
| bandoti wrote:
| There's a lot more to it actually. When given the knowledge
| of today, a lot can actually be done with vintage computers.
| I would say it's an artistic medium.
|
| Take a look at the Commodore 64 developer manual and quickly
| realize that without much difficulty, one can learn the full
| assembly instruction set along with all BASIC commands.
|
| https://www.commodore.ca/manuals/c64_programmers_reference/c.
| ..
|
| The machine is completely open to experimentation. You can
| write to memory anywhere including the active display
| terminal. The chips are easy to mix, match, swap. Hardware
| and software is malleable, not a locked-down black box of
| complexity and TPIM modules!
| bombcar wrote:
| That's the second order fascination which comes less in the
| actual original hardware but in rebuilds and equivalents
| and other "not collector but operational".
|
| Those are how younger people are going to get excited for
| the hardware - the software is available to anyone willing
| to run an emulator.
| bigpeopleareold wrote:
| I have become slightly more interested in the software, that
| is, the GUI, the operations, etc. I miss some of the
| simplicity of classic mac, and the silly ideas I had trying
| to program it (which I sort of understand better now.) The
| hardware is physically demanding and costly (space in my
| apartment is precious).
| bombcar wrote:
| The emulators available are top-notch, and you can get a
| quite functional "developmental setup" running and even use
| file sharing to be able to target old Mac OS with modern
| IDEs.
| steamrolled wrote:
| There's a ton of hobbies like that. There are people who
| collect out-of-print comic books, sports memorabilia, old
| militaria, etc. What's the point of any of it? It's the joy of
| having a hobby and being a part of a community, not the utility
| of the gear itself.
| donatj wrote:
| I feel this way about the keyboard community and their love of
| old IBM keyboards.
|
| In the mid-to-late 90s I had probably fifteen of them laying
| around and couldn't give them away. No one wanted these heavy
| bulky noisy keyboards. Now people pay hundreds of dollars for
| the originals and there's even a company[1] devoted to making
| new ones.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a Model M and still have a couple,
| but I would never pay these insane amounts for one.
|
| 1. https://www.pckeyboard.com/page/SFNT
| fidotron wrote:
| I am not quite that age but notice a similar phenomenon, and
| have indulged slightly in it myself. My gut feeling is the
| motivation relates to how computing evolved, particularly in
| the 80s and 90s.
|
| Essentially people used to feel that their inability to perform
| a given task was gated by their lack of access to a certain
| sort of machine, such as a UNIX workstation or LISP machine.
| Now we all have surplus computing power and cheap peripherals
| the sense is that we must be missing some essence that was lost
| since these machines, because that is the nicer explanation
| than that given access to tools far better than those in
| previous generations most of us have no idea what to do with
| them, or worse that we allow ourselves to be distracted
| entirely.
|
| The musical equipment world is just like this too.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Yeah, it's kind of weird.
|
| I had a 386 with 4MB RAM and am not the least nostalgic about
| it. In fact damn near everything about that machine was
| limiting and something I couldn't wait to replace with
| something newer.
|
| I even didn't care for the beige color schemes of the day -- I
| remember going for the brushed aluminium case way back because
| I was excited it wasn't freaking beige.
|
| Watching some of the channels though I'd say a lot of the retro
| experience isn't quite what most people had. A lot of modern
| retrocomputing is putting together what would have qualified as
| a "dream machine" back in the day. Some are specced up to the
| absolute best one could get, some are unrealistic (1990 Monkey
| Island on a 2000s Pentium 3), some are jazzed up with scifi
| tech like floppy emulators.
| inejge wrote:
| > I had a 386 with 4MB RAM and am not the least nostalgic
| about it. In fact damn near everything about that machine was
| limiting and something I couldn't wait to replace with
| something newer.
|
| It is difficult to be nostalgic about the machines lacking,
| for want of a better term, a soul. PC compatibles are as
| soulless as it gets. Quite soon after introduction, they
| became part of the endless treadmill of faster CPU - more
| memory - better graphics - larger HDDs. (That doesn't stop
| people being nostalgic about _software_ running on PCs, again
| with that same basic characteristic.)
| flir wrote:
| I had the weirdest 286 clone I'm quite nostalgic about - a
| tiny little thing with a 9" monochrome screen and 40Mb HDD
| that I learned C on. Whole thing was shrunk in the same
| proportion as the monitor, so it looked like a shrinky-dink
| version of a standard desktop of the era. The CPU component
| would have been about 8" wide. I tricked it out with a
| 28.8k modem so I could get to local BBSes.
|
| This "tied an onion to my belt" reminiscence may go to
| support your theory.
| philistine wrote:
| The people in the retro community do not require these machines
| to perform all their tasks. They're not filing their taxes with
| a Macintosh LC III. They have modern computers! This allows old
| computers to be appreciated very differently. And retro
| enthusiasts will often love a machine because it is such a bad
| machine. It gives it a different appeal, its history and poor
| reception part of its charm.
|
| Ultimately, they're collectors. They collect the good and the
| bad.
| wincy wrote:
| If you're driving around in your 1971 Ford Thunderbird and
| the vacuum line fails, making it so your headlights doors are
| stuck closed, that would have been super annoying in 1977 as
| you were driving home in the evening.
|
| In 2025 it's just "the charm of owning a classic car".
| Instead of an annoyance, you might think of it as having a
| unique and endearing quirk.
| nemo44x wrote:
| A lot of this stuff was beyond reach for people back in the
| day. A Neo-Geo game system is something a lot of people still
| want because it's something they can finally acquire.
| Ezhik wrote:
| for some of us computers used to be something special
| tinco wrote:
| Perhaps it's related to what age you were when that particular
| computer caught your attention. I don't have any attachment to
| any hardware that came out after I was 18 or so. But my parents
| bought the Compaq Presario 5030 when I was like 10, and even
| looking at a picture now fills me with excitement. A computer
| could not be less important to computing in general: A bog
| standard mid market Pentium II from one of IBM PC clone
| companies. But to me it represents my first connection to the
| internet, and a huge part of what grew into my identity.
|
| Perhaps you'd feel the same way about a machine or tool or toy
| that you used when you were 10?
| testing22321 wrote:
| Some people are passionate about cooking. Some dancing. Others
| mountain biking, snowboarding, hiking, painting, music,
| gardening, .... Literally endless list of hobbies and passions.
|
| These people are passionate about old computer hardware. I'm
| not, but it makes me happy to know they are happy doing what
| they want.
| wpm wrote:
| Polymaker's Panchroma Matte White is also a very close match to
| Classic Mac plastics.
|
| And since I didn't actually see a link to the filament in the Ars
| Technica article, here it is
| https://polarfilament.com/products/retro-platinum-pla-1kg-1-...
| zargon wrote:
| Panchroma Muted White is the one that is somewhat similar to
| the Apple platinum color. Someone sent Polymaker an RGB color
| code instead of a sample, so it's pretty off in reality. That
| would be fine, because all machines are yellowed to some degree
| anyway, so colors vary widely. More importantly, it's just
| terrible filament. Layer adhesion is virtually non-existent,
| compared to Polymaker's Poly Lite filaments. I have wasted so
| much time trying to print that awful filament. Hopefully this
| manufacturer is better.
| wpm wrote:
| Yep, you're right, I meant Muted White.
|
| I've not had too many issues with it on my crappy Ender 3
| clone. I print at 225C with a 60C bed, which lowers to 55
| after the first layer. Never had any problems other than
| typical bullshit with my Z-offset.
| zargon wrote:
| I don't have bed adhesion issues. The prints are just
| extremely fragile, features peeling off at the slightest
| provocation. The filament binds to itself a little bit
| better (but still not great) if I print at 230deg with a
| cooling profile that tops out at a max 20% fan speed, but
| one can't print details or overhangs in those conditions.
| ghushn3 wrote:
| Not gonna lie, I was expecting to see something in translucent
| bondi blue.
| peteforde wrote:
| This article is peak Jeff Geerling territory.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| Looks like he did comment on the original post:
| https://bsky.app/profile/jeffgeerling.com/post/3lqt52wh4ec2t
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Heh, this morning my roll arrived (looks good, but don't have
| time today to unwrap it and fire off a print). I checked HN,
| saw this post... the rest is history :D
| amelius wrote:
| Is anyone having success printing keycaps with filament?
| chubs wrote:
| I printed a few for a friend. They seem to work just fine, but
| if you look close you can see the 'terraced' steps in the
| printing. Probably feels a bit rough. I guess you could smooth
| that with acetone vapour and ABS filament if so inclined.
| ehnto wrote:
| With an ender 3 it's easy enough, but it does not feel as nice
| as shot ABS plastic caps.
|
| I am sure though, if you spent time polishing and painting the
| surface it would feel much better. It's still similar plastic
| after all.
|
| Biggest problem for me, if printed in PLA the + shaped slot
| eventually gets too loose and the key pops off. Can just print
| another but it's annoying for sure.
|
| Resin printers would likely have a much nicer out of the
| printer feel, with much smoother details at that size (for caps
| with 3D details on top). You could also print a whole set much
| quicker. Same speed for one cap as it would be for 100 at once.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I've been using a PLA space (1U) key for over 5 years without
| any issue.
|
| I think I printed the top at a smaller layer height.
| amelius wrote:
| Thanks. Do you have any suggestions for printing the glyphs
| on the faces/sides?
| delecti wrote:
| I saw a video on that a while back.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96T_fiLV38c
|
| IIRC you make transfers by (2d) printing on a laser printer
| and dissolving away the paper.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| ...pretty sure you can just get the color scanned and mixed at
| any paint shop if you really want to
| Milner08 wrote:
| Getting it in paint form wasn't the issue. But the issue with
| that is many of the originals have changed colour over the
| year, so getting a match is hard. Plus the plastic is brittle
| so if you want to replace things you need to print it and its
| easier if you dont need to then paint it.
| _def wrote:
| Why PLA though, it PETG has much better qualities
| alnwlsn wrote:
| I'm not sure if there's any material limitation to it, but
| every PETG roll I've used has come out with a very glossy
| finish, which is probably not what you want here.
| manyturtles wrote:
| Matte PETG is available. No affiliation, but:
| https://californiafilament.com/collections/new . Great when
| you want the properties of PETG but not the shiny plastic
| look, e.g. printing things for car interiors. Like GP I'd
| also love to see this filament in PETG.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=Grd_a4oi7qU is a really cool video
| where someone builds a computer that looks and feels like an
| early Apple design concept for a flat, portable Macintosh,
| something between a modern laptop and a tablet. They pull it off
| really well; if you didn't know better, you'd think you'd found a
| lost prototype. Anyway, one of the problems they had to solve was
| the plastic colour, and they did it by painting the case. With
| this new filament they wouldn't have needed the paint. :)
| WillAdams wrote:
| Neat! Feels a bit like the Soulcircuit Pilet:
|
| https://soulscircuit.com/pilet
| amelius wrote:
| If Woz were still in Apple there would be Apple-run makerspaces,
| with Apple branded 3d printers and all the types of filament you
| could dream of.
|
| Too bad Jobs turned the company into a boring locked-down anti-
| consumer appliance factory.
| millerm wrote:
| If Jobs didn't come back and run Apple the way he did, it is
| very likely that Apple wouldn't exist today. They were on a
| tailspin to destruction. That's my take.
| amelius wrote:
| Both things can be true.
|
| And by the way, Microsoft saved them with a $150M injection.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/steve-jobs-and-bill-gates-
| wh...
| ninjamuffin99 wrote:
| Unfortunately in our reality Woz is merely a humble
| multimillionaire instead of a billionaire, and we do not have
| Woz funded makerspaces.
| msgilligan wrote:
| Well, he did fund this: https://www.thetech.org/education/
| chakintosh wrote:
| that boring locked-down anti-consumer appliance factory is a
| $3T company. Not sure if Apple would have been as successful if
| they diversified too much.
| amelius wrote:
| Too bad that money can't seem to help them lose their boring
| zero-sum thinking.
| thenthenthen wrote:
| You are invited to my makerspace to print with whatever
| filament we have on non-branded printers!
| alnwlsn wrote:
| Reminds me of this April Fool's hackaday article from some
| years back:
|
| https://hackaday.com/2016/04/01/apple-introduces-their-answe...
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _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._
|
| > _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._
|
| So it seems like the color is for 3D-printing stuff to look
| "new"?
|
| Makes me wonder if there will be a "thirty years discolored"
| version as well, if you want to print a piece to replace
| something broken... or can you just leave it out in the sun for a
| couple weeks or something?
| bigfatfrock wrote:
| > Makes me wonder if there will be a "thirty years discolored"
| version as well, if you want to print a piece to replace
| something broken... or can you just leave it out in the sun for
| a couple weeks or something?
|
| Would probably just need to make this part of a build loop
| where you send it through a high intensity light/heat cycle
| such as when they beat up jeans for purchase by people who buy
| those.
|
| "Would you prefer the color tone of the 1977 Apple II or
| perhaps a 1980 Apple III?"
| wtallis wrote:
| Nitpick: the "Platinum" color in question was part of the
| "Snow White" design language introduced in 1984 (and
| originally using a _different_ color before switching to
| Platinum) so this is the wrong filament for emulating the
| color of 1977 or 1980 Apple products.
| riskassessment wrote:
| I don't think you can assume that this color-matched material
| will discolor with age in the same way that the original
| material did.
| jchw wrote:
| Yeah, especially since this plastic here is PLA and not
| ABS, and also the yellowing _apparently_ comes from the
| brominated flame retardant added to it.
| jameshart wrote:
| A lot of the yellowing of vintage 1980s era Macs comes
| from their spending their early life installed in
| smoking-allowed workplaces.
| jchw wrote:
| That's okay though; in that case it can just be cleaned
| off. Better, the residue probably protects it from UV
| damage, so the plastic underneath is probably not in
| terrible shape.
| jchw wrote:
| > or can you just leave it out in the sun for a couple weeks or
| something?
|
| I actually don't know if there's a good source for this, but
| I've _heard_ that the yellow discoloration caused by UV rays
| _actually_ happens because of the specific way that window
| glass is filtering the UV spectrum unevenly; that would at
| least partly explain why retrobrighting, where you literally
| put things out in the sun or expose them to UV-C light
| directly, seems to actually work, and some people claim that
| even just leaving yellowed plastic out in the sun with no cover
| also works to an extent.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| That's a nice color.. but different from the nicotine yellow
| lenerdenator wrote:
| I've said it before and I'll say it again:
|
| If Tim Cook introduced new Mac hardware with the retro look
| (anything before, eh, 2003) the tech world would lose its
| flipping mind.
| charliebwrites wrote:
| I was really hoping this would be the colorful plastic backs of
| the early 2000s iMacs we had in school
| leoc wrote:
| Here's what the foreword to _Keep It Simple_
| https://arnoldsche.com/en/vergriffen/keep-it-simple/
| https://archive.org/details/keepitsimpleearl0000essl/ says about
| the Platinum colour, also known as Snow White:
|
| > Esslinger had been working with Steve Jobs since 1982 and was
| of paramount importance for the look of Apple products as an
| external designer ---as of 1983 also as Corporate Manager of
| Design. The start of collaboration between Steve Jobs and Hartmut
| Esslinger went from 1982 to 1983 with "Snow White," a new color
| and design concept that was the base for all future Apple
| products. Besides specifying certain design aspects, the concept
| entailed introducing a new color. The dull "greige" of the
| industrial and corporate workplace was to be replaced by a broken
| white-called "Snow White" in the US. First used for the Apple
| llc, this white not only made the computer esthetically
| compatible with living rooms but also psychologically underpinned
| the user-friendly menu navigation. The new "Snow White" line
| worked up by Hartmut Esslinger was supposed to be launched with
| the Macintosh Computer--originally designed by Jerry Manock-but
| many reasons made this impossible. So the revised version could
| not be introduced until later: with the Macintosh SE.
| JeremyHerrman wrote:
| I know this book is a first hand account from Esslinger
| himself, but aside from your quoted passage, I've never seen
| Snow White refer to a specific color, only to the design
| language itself. Even the other mentions of Snow White in his
| book refer to the design language, not a color.
|
| The first product to feature the Snow White design language was
| the Apple IIc, which featured a color known as "Fog" which is
| distinct from the Platinum used in Apple's products from
| 1986-1999. For a good side-by-side comparison, check out this
| image of an original Apple IIc (1984) and the Apple IIc Plus
| (1988): https://i0.wp.com/lowendmac.com/wp-content/uploads/iic-
| and-i...
| Supermancho wrote:
| First thing I thought of:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N5Eqt5AEN8
|
| The first mac cube was the 4th computer I ever got my hands on,
| iirc. TRS80, Commodore, Apple II, Mac Plus
| dheera wrote:
| These kind of "off-white" colors of the 1980s are making a
| comeback these days; they were considered dated design during the
| early 2000s but in the 2020s they're "in" again, e.g.
| anthropic.com, hume.ai, ...
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