Apple

What? No love at all?

http://www.apple.com/30-years/

My favourites: Theodore Gray and Tinker Hatfield.

But I have thirty-year-old computers here. What do I need a retrospective for?

guardian452 wrote: What? No love at all?

http://www.apple.com/30-years/

My favourites: Theodore Gray and Tinker Hatfield.

Sorry. I was busy. Migraine. Better now.

My faves: those Myst guys. Love that game (and the 1997 sequel).

I'm kind of a latecomer to the Mac. I didn't really start using one until 1989. And I didn't actually really start actually enjoying 'em until 1991. It's a platform with its ups and downs, but I still maintained at least one Macintosh in use since then. Except maybe between 2000 and 2002.

You're a latecomer? I was only born in 1988! And my first would have been a performa 6400 that I bought at a yardsale for $50 in 2002 or so.


Believe it or not, I've never played Myst. It's now high on my to-do list

The IBM PC Jr. is turning 30 too

guardian452 wrote: You're a latecomer? I was only born in 1988! And my first would have been a performa 6400 that I bought at a yardsale for $50 in 2002 or so.


Believe it or not, I've never played Myst. It's now high on my to-do list

Oh great, now I feel OLD

You really need to get Myst; 1, 2 (riven), 3 (exile) are great, and 4 (revelations) is extremely beautiful but in the end the puzzles get rather stupid (the dream stuff).. I never finished that one because of them. Myst and Riven could be a bit hard to get running because of their reliance of really old quicktime, but at least of Myst there's a "millennium edition"--I think it was called that--which lets you run it on modern hardware. At least on windows xp it was possible to install bits of the ancient QT to get Riven to run, I probably have a note of the procedure somewhere.
Can't help you with running it on macs

duck wrote: Oh great, now I feel OLD

That's 'cuz you are old ! Never trust anyone over 30 !

You really need to get Myst;

Wasn't Myst created on Barney-boxes ? I have a video "Creation of Myst" or something, somewhere, and it's all SGI hardware

Can't help you with running it on macs

I wish they released it on the hardware they made it on

hamei wrote:

duck wrote: Oh great, now I feel OLD

That's 'cuz you are old ! Never trust anyone over 30 !

Oh, so that was it..

hamei wrote:

You really need to get Myst;

Wasn't Myst created on Barney-boxes ? I have a video "Creation of Myst" or something, somewhere, and it's all SGI hardware

Can't help you with running it on macs

I wish they released it on the hardware they made it on

No, I'm pretty sure it was modeled and programmed on macs, hence the quicktime dependency. ISTR they built their own software to model the entire first island in one go which was a big deal at the time, presumably given the memory constraints. Perhaps that video is on my Myst ME CD, I'd better go look it up

Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94pzx_9LkVI

The first Mac I ever touched was a Mac Plus with a 30MB SCSI external hard disk. Our house still had a Commodore 64 and 128 at home, so the Mac at my friend's house was a revelation. We did a lot of HyperCard and games on it.

The first Mac I ever owned was a IIsi in my first year of medical school which I got from a school surplus lot. It also came with some IIgses and an SE/30 which acted as a boot server. From there I rapidly upgraded to (briefly) a 7200 and then a 7300, both cast-offs from my consulting job. I still have that original 7300; it eventually was repurposed to run NetBSD and is now a Mac OS 9 workstation again, in a new case. I also still have the IIsi and SE/30, but they both need recap jobs.

guardian452 wrote: You're a latecomer? I was only born in 1988! And my first would have been a performa 6400 that I bought at a yardsale for $50 in 2002 or so.


Believe it or not, I've never played Myst. It's now high on my to-do list

Yep. I'm old.

Myst: made entirely on the Mac (and made with Hypercard in-house at Cyan). Riven: made with both Macs with all the graphics being done on the SGI (Softimage, MentalRay, and some custom shader stuff for MR [I think lume.com might still be active for examples]). Some of the puzzles are more basic (and less in the vein of logical obstacles and more "Hey look! A puzzle!") than Riven, but it was pretty eye-opening for me at the time. Riven remains my favorite of the sequels. I have to admit I never got around to playing Uru or 4 or 5, though. Myst and Riven are also available for iOS.

duck wrote: No, I'm pretty sure it was modeled and programmed on macs, hence the quicktime dependency. ISTR they built their own software to model the entire first island in one go which was a big deal at the time, presumably given the memory constraints.

Strata Studio for Macintosh, actually. Myst's needs were comparatively more modest than Riven's (which had something like 3-hour load times for some of the islands). Still, pretty impressive.

Yet another edit: On Myst, they also used Macromodel for Mac, which eventually became Extreme3D.

scottE wrote: [ Riven: made with both Macs with all the graphics being done on the SGI (Softimage, MentalRay, and some custom shader stuff for MR

Ah, Riven, the black sheep of the family, married out of her race

Thanks for the correction.

I might be slightly obsessed with those games. They also may have sort of helped me get through a rough patch of my life back in the day.

Escapism! Enabling me to deal with reality since mumble day or other.

Good old games has the myst games. What's nice about those guys is they make the games run on modern hardware, remove bonehead copy protection, and often include bonus artwork..
http://www.gog.com/game/myst_masterpiece_edition

guardian452 wrote: Good old games has the myst games. What's nice about those guys is they make the games run on modern hardware, remove bonehead copy protection, and often include bonus artwork..
http://www.gog.com/game/myst_masterpiece_edition

In this case though, they didn't need to do anything. Myst: ME was already made to work on modern hardware and without copy protection. I have a demo CD with it from somewhere here (paper sleeve type thing)

scottE: I stand corrected

duck wrote: scottE: I stand corrected

I am filled with the power of exasperating pedantry.

ClassicHasClass wrote: The first Mac I ever touched was a Mac Plus with a 30MB SCSI external hard disk. Our house still had a Commodore 64 and 128 at home, so the Mac at my friend's house was a revelation. We did a lot of HyperCard and games on it.

The first Mac I ever owned was a IIsi in my first year of medical school which I got from a school surplus lot. It also came with some IIgses and an SE/30 which acted as a boot server. From there I rapidly upgraded to (briefly) a 7200 and then a 7300, both cast-offs from my consulting job. I still have that original 7300; it eventually was repurposed to run NetBSD and is now a Mac OS 9 workstation again, in a new case. I also still have the IIsi and SE/30, but they both need recap jobs.

I should probably confess I was an original owner of a Mac IIvx: Trilobite (sans CD-ROM). Not an auspicious start, but I was only writing at the time, it felt like an immense leap from the Smith-Corona manual typewriter. I customized all the icons I could with SuperPaint and ResEdit, and I can't even remember what happened to it after that. (Before that, I had to use Macs on campus.)

Other machines, possibly in order:

• Mac IIsi ( Eurypterid , later given away)
• PowerMac 8500 ( Ammonite +WACOM 12" tablet; with savings earned from the job I quit school for)
• SE/30 (+extra gfx board, used as a server)
• Somehow an LC, then a Quadra700. (Most of these machines went to people I knew, including the 8500, which I sort of miss, even though that thing was a nightmare to upgrade RAM for)
• Numerous other machines followed, mostly as BeOS machines (the desktops, anyway), and a managed a some PPC clones (one of which I still have and should probably send off somewhere else).
• I also managed to inherit a G3 desktop (like the 7500-style cases) somewhere along the line.
• Mac Classic (still have)
• Mac Color Classic—I wish I had this, but it was tossed, even though it worked (I wasn't consulted about the sudden need to un-store it)

Laptops: I had one of the Duos (the later, PPC-based one, forget the details UPDATE: it was the Duo 2300, with the dock), and then a PowerBook 1400 ( Dunkleosteus ) into which I crammed 64MB RAM and a G3 processor upgrade. Still have it, but it's spent no small amount of time in its box in -30° C storage, and the power pod for it frayed from some seriously heavy use. I've probably used that machine more than any other. I've ordered a replacement power cord, so I guess I'll see if it still works once it arrives.

I'd probably still be using the G4 PowerBook ( harryhausen ) had I not dropped it onto asphalt in England in 2009. But mamoru-oshii hasn't been too bad.

I wasn't much of an ipod/iphone person. Consumer electronics aren't really much of a fascination for me, except for the Newton 2100 and eMate300 (which made a nice Vt100 term for the IRIX machines). I've owned one iPod—the video one ( wakazashi ; long since stolen, unlamented), and two iPhones (a 3GS katana , IPhone5S katana2 ; both still in use).

Apple's had an interesting career for the Mac. Here's to 30 more.

The only PPC Duo was the 2300. Those are nice little machines, very collectable.

I am also a huge devotee of the PowerBook 1400. It was the first laptop I got, a hand-me-down c/117 from my brother-in-law who said if I could fix it, I could have it. It turned out to need a new inverter board, and it worked perfectly. I ended up putting the max 60MB (for the 117) in it and adding a G3/333, video out and a modem and Ethernet card. It got flaky, so I transferred everything to a donor 166, got a 466MHz G3, upgraded the hard disk, and added an Orinoco Wi-Fi card. It works fine. Even the battery holds about half an hour's charge. And the 1400's keyboard is the best any laptop ever had, Mac or otherwise.

I really want the solar panel cover.

ClassicHasClass wrote: The only PPC Duo was the 2300. Those are nice little machines, very collectable.

I am also a huge devotee of the PowerBook 1400.

I have a Duo 270c and a Duo 2300, along with a DuoDock II. When they were new, the Duos drew a lot of attention. There was nothing else on the market nearly as sleek and portable at the time. At our old shop, they found second lives as serial terminal replacements in our data center. Their compact size made them ideal for placement directly in racks.

I also have a PB 1400 - the first laptop I ever purchased. Over the years, I maxed out the RAM, upgraded the hard drive, and added a video card and a Dayna dual coax-RJ ethernet PCMCIA card. Still runs great, dual booting into either MacOS 8.6 or 9.1.

I walked into my freshman year of college carrying an electric typewriter with correctable ribbon and no interest in computers, while my roommate walked in with a brand-new 128k Mac. Later that week, I was publishing our dorm newsletter from our room. By my senior year, I had saved up enough money to buy my first computer, a brand new SE/30 for $3,600. (Some years later, I gave the SE/30 to a friend who wanted a computer for his kid to play with. A few years later, that SE/30 came back to me, upgraded with an Micron Xceed color video card and gray scale adapter and an Apple RGB display. Thanks to a kind Nekochanner, the SE/30 now has 128 MB and has run everything from System 6 to 7.5, and a little A/UX, in between.

This was neat: a short story, with photos, discussing the discovery and resurrection of two early 5.25" floppy Mac prototypes, aka "Twiggy" Macs. http://www.cultofmac.com/239280/twiggy- ... macintosh/

josehill wrote: This was neat: a short story, with photos, discussing the discovery and resurrection of two early 5.25" floppy Mac prototypes, aka "Twiggy" Macs. http://www.cultofmac.com/239280/twiggy- ... macintosh/

That is seriously cool. I'd read that the prototype used 5.25 disks, but have never seen photos.

josehill wrote:

ClassicHasClass wrote: The only PPC Duo was the 2300. Those are nice little machines, very collectable.

I am also a huge devotee of the PowerBook 1400.

I have a Duo 270c and a Duo 2300, along with a DuoDock II. When they were new, the Duos drew a lot of attention. There was nothing else on the market nearly as sleek and portable at the time. At our old shop, they found second lives as serial terminal replacements in our data center. Their compact size made them ideal for placement directly in racks.

I also have a PB 1400 - the first laptop I ever purchased. Over the years, I maxed out the RAM, upgraded the hard drive, and added a video card and a Dayna dual coax-RJ ethernet PCMCIA card. Still runs great, dual booting into either MacOS 8.6 or 9.1.

I walked into my freshman year of college carrying an electric typewriter with correctable ribbon and no interest in computers, while my roommate walked in with a brand-new 128k Mac. Later that week, I was publishing our dorm newsletter from our room. By my senior year, I had saved up enough money to buy my first computer, a brand new SE/30 for $3,600. (Some years later, I gave the SE/30 to a friend who wanted a computer for his kid to play with. A few years later, that SE/30 came back to me, upgraded with an Micron Xceed color video card and gray scale adapter and an Apple RGB display. Thanks to a kind Nekochanner, the SE/30 now has 128 MB and has run everything from System 6 to 7.5, and a little A/UX, in between.

Nice! I still have to respect anyone who who laid out newsletters with a typewriter, but there's just something about even dot-matrix printed pages that looks better.

I spent the weekend doing a bit of fiddling with the 1400c; the adaptor arrived, and while the battery is certainly no good anymore, the rest of it seems pretty okay. Screen is nice and bright, too. I put in a 60GB HD that previously lived in someone else's iBook, and it now has an absurd amount of disk space for a 1997-era laptop. I divided the drive into 8 partitions, so I can do what José's done: have an install for 7.6.1, and, if I can find a replacement OS8 cd, set one up for booting into 8.1. I did find a backup CD I made in the late-90s, but copying everything over appears to not make for a very happy OS8 experience. I can only get to the desktop if I hold down the shift key. No doubt something is corrupted. The G3 upgrade inside appears to be 250MHz, according to benchmarking software I found on an old MacAddict CD.

Still! It works. I'm really amazed Classic's 1400 has a working battery. Mine is pretty well toast on ice, with odds of finding a working one about as thin (the extant one is a replacement as it is—I was pretty hard on my stuff, turns out). I now dimly remember that solar array for the 1400. I recall thinking that was pretty neat, but never purchased one myself.

I haven't had the most productive of weekends. I completely pulled apart the contents of the walk-in closet I've got the SGI stuff in; still a disaster, but it looks a bit better now (and I'm considerably more sore). I also set up the aforementioned G3 desktop.

scottE wrote: Nice! I still have to respect anyone who who laid out newsletters with a typewriter, but there's just something about even dot-matrix printed pages that looks better.

Heh. Yeah, I did the manual layout of typewritten copy back in high school, and I figured it'd be the same in college, but I immediately adopted my roommate's Mac and his copies of MacWrite and MacPaint. The idea of WYSIWYG displays and printing was a revelation.