#MARCHintosh is an annual community event where vintage Apple fans bring old Macs back online, share projects, and connect through services like GlobalTalk. My planning for this year’s MARCHintosh started on April 1 of last year. MARCHintosh has become a milestone marker for me and a reason to take on projects that might otherwise sit half-finished on the shelf. This year I was more ambitious, with more soldering, more PCBs, more machines, and a few projects that actually reached a working state. This post breaks down into three parts: the prep, the results, and the list of things I’m already carrying into next year.
Prep
Last year I only had a single stable Mac SE with a 68030 upgrade running as a dropbox for greets and calling cards and a Lime iMac G3 for exploring GlobalTalk zones. I was able to source a stable board for the SE/30 right at the end of last year's event for my ongoing SE/30 project. I had also picked up a ZZJ Booster 2.0 card for it at VCFMW.
While at VCFMW I picked up a few more things from Zig Zag Joe - a socketed booster for my original SE/30 board and an LCD kit for an SE/30. Around the same time the Kickstarter from MacEffects for clear SE/30 cases was shipping.
I also wanted to add new projects, or at least the ability to have more projects to do during MARCHintosh. I picked up a clean ImageWriter II from marketplace for $25 that only needed a new printer ribbon. I found a Newton eMate 300 which I had less luck with. I also picked up a beige G3 desktop from a co-worker that powers on but does not really boot. Maybe I'm developing a bit of a problem.
Now that I almost had enough parts to build a second SE/30, it was time to resolve the stability issues. The flaky logic board went to CayMac Vintage to transfer all the components to a new "reloaded" PCB board. This resolved all of the stability issues. The PCB had a black solder mask and since it was going into the clear case I decided to make some aesthetic choices with the other system components. I had the main chassis and fan shroud dipped in yellow nickel at a local metal finishing shop. The results were ok. I wish there was a little more shine, but the media blasting I performed to clean up the caked on dust and grease dulled the finish. Maybe one day I'll pick up another chassis, polish it, and have it dipped. The yellow nickel has an iridescent quality and reminds me of the internal components of older IBM clones from the 80's and stereo equipment. The only thing missing to make this SE/30 usable was a CRT tube and analog board. Since ZZJ had an LCD kit that replaced the entire analog board and CRT I added that to my shopping list making for an expensive VCFMW.
Results
The Green SE was live on GlobalTalk for the entire duration of MARCHintosh. The dropbox received 26 greetings (calling cards, greetz, notes, etc.) which is more than the 17 I received in 2025. The SE was stable for the entire month only crashing once or twice. It may have been someone trying to write to the dropbox with a large amount of data or doing something System 7.1 wasn't happy with.
I used the iMac for dropping off my own greetings. I am hesitant to leave it running for too long or depend on it. The original hard disk drive is slow and I want to look into replacing it with a CF card solution or something more reliable and speedier.
The beige SE/30 was also online for most of the month, receiving print jobs and sending them to the ImageWriter II. I was able to collect over 20 printouts from other GlobalTalk users. This was one of my top highlights from this year's MARCHintosh. My wife also got a kick out of it. We could hear the printer faintly start up in the basement, and we knew someone far away was sending a fun little note.
The eMate was mostly a project prior to March. I had discovered the ribbon cable was slightly damaged by the hinge. I rebuilt the hinges, replaced the ribbon cable with one from Joe's Computer Museum, and added a DRAM and Flash Upgrade from Androda (it looks like Joe now has it in stock). I also rebuilt the battery, which has had mixed results. It works, but it does not hold a charge for more than a few days. I was able to find some Newton software and resources on GlobalTalk. I was able to load up some software, take a screenshot, and poke around using NCX. The long-term plan is to see what I can do with a PicoPCMCIA for next year.
The second SE/30 was mostly in a testing state and unused during MARCHintosh. I had bought a RAM kit with black PCBs to match the reloaded logic board. To continue the theme, I purchased a power supply with a black PCB and swapped out the LED to match the other blue LEDs on the RAM cards. To take it one step further, I had permission to re-create the ZZJ logic board using black PCBs. That is where the project stands for now. I may build my own BlueSCSI with a black PCB and continue customizing the internals so the clear-case build has a consistent look inside and out.
I have some software call-outs that made MARCHintosh possible and extra amazing this year. Jrouter from last year's MARCHintosh has been running strong all year acting as the Apple Internet Router connecting to GlobalTalk. I used Reconnaissance to run hardware tests against the reloaded SE/30 logic board and test the RAM SIMMs that I soldered. The other software I used this year is harder to link to because it is only available on GlobalTalk. First is Simple Spooler which allows you to advertise a network printer that will send prints to an ImageWriter. It negates the need for the hardware add-on card to add LocalTalk connectivity on an ImageWriter II. It's available in the Cloudbusting zone (Puppet Head:Ken's Stuff:Simple Spooler). Another application that was very helpful this year was TalkCrawler Lite which scans GlobalTalk zones and resources. You can check off resources you've visited and record notes for yourself. There was also an AfterDark module that read the TalkCrawler database to visualize the GlobalTalk network as a screen saver. GlobalTalk Chat was pretty busy during MARCHintosh and a fun community art project was possible through the Canvas application. These last four applications were all created by one very dedicated person and are available on the BaroNet zone.
Thank you DrJosh, jack 68k, thecloud, and kalleboo !!
Special late shout-out goes to jcs and the 691% speed bump for WiFi on BlueSCSI devices which was in the 2026-03-01 firmware release.
Next Year
As you can tell, it was a very busy #MARCHintosh. I'm also trying to visit many more VCF events in 2026. I have a feeling my project list will grow as I've been getting some hands on time with very interesting machines like the PowerBook 2400c. I've added an iBook clamshell and an Atmark Pippin to my collection so far this year. My plan is to use the iBook as my GlobalTalk surfing machine. I also want to complete the clear SE/30 build.
For more information about MARCHintosh visit https://marchintosh.com/ and look for the #MARCHintosh hashtag on your preferred social media site.
#MARCHintosh Event Logo concept and design by Javier Rivera | YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/JavMaster | Twitter: @javmast3r