I've got a Mac!

[7031]

Cool that you found a mac. If I were you I would put it at the highest, Mac os 7.5 as I believe that anything higher would probably kill it in RAM needs. Oh, and I never knew there was Linux for the Motorola processor. Aren't they like all for PPC?

[bedouin]

One correction, the maximum amount of ram for this machine is actually 10mb.  It's been so long since I've turned it on that I totally forgot.  The LEM article you linked is actually for the Mac Classic, which is different than the Classic II.  I'm guessing you actually have this machine, like mine.

I guess I was also off on the maximum OS it would run, technically.  LEM claims 7.6.1 is the highest that it will go . . . however, I do remember hacks that would let you install 8.x on unsupported 68k machines with the 68030.  

You can find out the size of the HD by just clicking on the hard drive and looks in the window . . . it will say something like "25.5mb available."

You might want to look into hfstools, or mactools -- there's some Debian package that has a number of tools for working with Mac filesystems and disks.  Using a SCSI zip drive with this isn't a bad idea for moving big chunks of data if networking isn't an option (hell, it's probably faster).  

Any modern router, switch, or hub will auto sense between 10 and 100mb.  That means you need to find a cheapo 10mb hub and attach it to your current router, switch, hub, or whatever to force it to recognize the Asante adapter as a 10mb device.  There's no workaround for this -- it's just like that -- no matter the model.

Netscape will be a dog on that machine.  iCab is almost (un)usable (the only 68k browser still in development).  Stick with browsers from its era.  Mosaic and the very first version of Netscape perhaps.  The best (meaning functional) browser I found for this machine was Wannabe, a text based browser that works with many modern sites.  MacLynx would be nice, except that it expands beyond the small screen of the classic and I can't figure out how to resize it; Ircle has the same issue, so I haven't found a usable IRC client either (that would be cool).

what? that's useless! this is one thing apple does peeve me off about. for no reason, they change all their specs so that their technology is not compatible over a gap of more than a few years.

Trust me, it's a good thing.  Appletalk sucks.  One of the reasons MS sucks is because they hang onto so much legacy garbage that should be trashed.  Apple is about innovation, not whether or not it's convenient to move forward.  If you're a network admin who still has Appletalk machines on your network -- well, I don't know . . . the heads up on this probably arrived 10 years ago.

which one's the serial port? is it the circular one to the right of the scsi one? that's something i am a little lost about.

The serial port is the port with a phone beside it, since it was usually used with modems.  Never bothered with it -- perhaps your adventures will motivate me.

Shufflepuck really rocks.  There was a Linux clone of it made called TuxPuck that rocks too.  I'm still trying to find an OS X binary somewhere (I hate playing it over X11 from another machine).  While it's true the compact Macs had B&W displays, the games were designed with it in mind -- so a lot of times you really ended up with cool and innovative stuff that looked good in shades of gray.  That's in contrast to the shitty CGA games that PC users had to endure, which were usually designed with EGA users in mind where 4 colors were substituted for 16.

[piratePenguin]

I can definetly recall "Appletalk" being among the options compiling the linux kernel... So modern gnu/linux distros can talk to old macs and mac os x can't!? That's.. mad.

[sjor]

Mac OS 8.6, which from what I understand is one of Apple's worst OS releases.

I was under the impression that 8.6 was one of the best releases and 9 was one of the worst.

About the appletalk, Apple phased this old mac talk thing out in os 10.4. i noticed it when i tried to connect the powerbook g3 and os x wouldnt connect. however 9 can connect to X.

[emuelle1]

I can't say I have any real experience with Macs outside of this free iMac (except for the Apple IIe's I used in the 7th grade), but I noticed 9.22 seems to be a little more stable and faster than 8.6. It's also possible to find a few programs for it. There is almost nothing that runs on 8.6 anymore.

What's really scary is how much MS software comes with it. The mail program is Outlook Express, it came with IE 4 for Mac, which I was able to upgrade to IE5 for Mac before MS withdrew support. I tried iCab, but IE unfortunately is a better browser on this system. I haven't gotten around to trying the Mozilla version that still runs on OS9.

I have thought about putting Linux on it. I just haven't gone digging for info about how.

[7031]

If you have a Mac you have got to try some adventure games on it. Monkey Island had me playing for hours.

[ReggieMicheals]

I can tell you right now with the mac that you have linux would not be as pleasant as a modern mac. Mac OS at those times was tightly integrated with the ROM, and even apple's AU/X had to go through Mac OS. If you don't believe me look at some pictures of AU/X on a GIS.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Glad to see you're back bedouin.

You can download System 7.5.5 for free from Apple's web site in their section of obsoleted software; I used floppies. It helps to have another Mac in the process to format the discs as HFS and also uncompress them while maintaining resource forks and other classic irritations.

That's great, MS have taken down many sites offering downloads to their old software like Windows 3.1 and luckilly I know somewhere but I don't want to shout about it or break the rules so I won't say in public.

[Calum]

excellent! thanks for clearing that up bedouin (and others), yes mine is just the same as yours by the way, a Classic II. It says 15.6MB in disk and 22.7MB available, so that answers that. no downloading tons of mp3s for me then!

my zip drive is now a USB only one sadly. it is a lot faster than my old parallel port one. it used to take literally 45 mins to copy 100MB, compared with, well, not much for the same amount with the USB one.

i will have to look into getting the hub and asante device on ebay then, are there a lot around do you think? (i know, it's just laziness, i could just search now).

On an unrelated note, i believe this is my 6667th post, on the day after 06/06/06. I had this idea the other day that i would get a screenshot of me having had 6666 posts on 06/06/06, but it didn't happen sadly, and now it's one day later, and i am one post too many, so tough titty to me, but there you go.

bedouin, i didn't realise this was your definite first reappearance on these forums so allow me to properly say welcome back as well.

welcome back, you were missed and a place has been kept for you.

[Calum]

hey i found this cool webpage. http://www.nd.edu/~jvanderk/sysone/

it's actually about macOS 1, but the author compares it to system 7.5, so for me it makes a lovely starting point for somebody who hasn't used it since about 13 years ago!

also, i keep thinking how cool this mac will be. one of my friends said it wouldn't be good for much, but actually it boots up in 5 seconds and shuts down in 3, so i can have it in my little recording studio (i have a small home recording studio, but no soundproofing, so if i have a computer in there, it must be off when i am recording) and it will allow me to type up setlists, lyrics, lists of what's on each track of each recording etc, and then 3 seconds to shut down and back to recording! i never would have imagined it possible to get a computer so suitable for the studio! also, if it can connect to the internet, then that's 5 seconds to boot up, and then i can check my email! i know some of you no doubt have super streamlined linux systems that can boot in 4 seconds, but mine is a standard fedora core 4 so you know what that means.

no i am happy with my find, and expect it to remain useful for years (decades?) to come!

[Calum]

ok, now. i had a quick look on ebay and nobody appears to be selling an asante scsi network adaptor at the moment, so i will have to bide my time. however, i wanted to ask, because i don't want to end up buying a bunch of wrong stuff, are these two items OK to use for the 10BaseT hub part of this plan to get the mac working?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=9737781139
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=9738250279


QUESTION TWO:

is this the Asante SCSI adaptor?
http://www.cancomuk.com/products/search.htm?show=Falling%20Price&code=32002&Asante%20FriendlyNet%20AAUI%20Transceiver%20BNC

if it is then i will buy it immediately, however i notice it has BNC sockets (i think), so presumably i then have to get a 10BaseT hub which takes a BNC plug... will i be able to get one of these that can be used with my D-Link ethernet router? will it be incredibly expensive?

networking has always seemed highly confusing to me, more questions than answers!

thanks for your patience with my potential dumbness! :-D

[bedouin]

The Netgear router would be nice since it's compact; I used to have one myself years ago.  You'll likely not want to plug anything else into it other than the Classic, so it's probably a good idea.

The link to the ethernet adapter will not work with the Classic.  It's for Macs that had an AAUI ethernet port.

You need to subscribe to one of the Low End Mac swap lists.  Someone there will definitely have one.

[Calum]

hmm, i would prefer to get one in the UK, let me see if there's a group in the UK on LEM.

in the meantime, i did some reading, and downloaded all the stuff for installing 7.5.5 ie: the 19 disk images for 7.5.3 and the three update disks to 7.5.5 however i immediately discovered these two confusingly conflicting pages and now i don't know if i want to use 6 instead of 7. i know 6 is what it would have come with originally, but 7 sounds like it has a lot of enhancements which 6 will simply not have. on the other hand i do not need support for a 4GB hard drive right now, and probably won't ever on this mac, so what to do? the arguments seem to be 6 is small and efficient, and 7.5 is stable and reliable.
Why system 6?
More System 6 Advocacy
Why system 7.5?

next, i have apt-getted macutils so hopefully, with the internet's help it won't be too hard to convert my disk images (confusingly they are smi.bin files, part.bin files or sea.hqx files. this little comment makes me a little more aware of how to use macutils to get at these but i'm still a bit at sea. basically i simply want to find out what manipulation needs to go on before the files are ready to be written to floppies using dd (also i have a USB floppy drive, fedora doesn't (for an unknown reason) recognise the one attached internally to the motherboard. this is fedora's fault, it does it despite reinstalls even though other systems have no problem seeing this drive). or, will i have to use some other method of making the floppies, like just unpacking all the files and dragging and dropping?

one small question for the floor (other people than bedouin can answer you know!), the mac currently has word 5 installed (the oldest vrsion anybody i know has ever had installed, i was unable to install word 4 on my old laptop PC running windows ME, back in the day), is there some free office software i can get which will save in a relatively popular format? i am not keen on the idea of having to save things to floppies, fire up the "real" computer and then reopen it in OO.o just to resave in a more modern format. A reformat and reinstallation of the system (which is what i want to do on the mac, since it seems to have had a lot of stuff brutally deleted before being thrown out) will obviously erase the existing word installation. or can i back word up? perhaps i can simply copy a file to a floppy and copy back afterwards, does this seem feasible? perhaps this is slanderous, libelou and traitorous on this site to even suggest such a thing...

here's what i have downloaded anyway.

Code: [Select]

[calum@localhost MacOS_System7.5]$ ls
Disk_Copy_6.3.3.smi.bin        System_7.5.3_06of19.part.bin
iCab_Pre2.97_English_68k.sit   System_7.5.3_07of19.part.bin
MacDraw.dsk.sea.hqx            System_7.5.3_08of19.part.bin
stuffit_expander_55.hqx        System_7.5.3_09of19.part.bin
Sys_7.5.5_Update-1of3.sea.hqx  System_7.5.3_10of19.part.bin
Sys_7.5.5_Update-2of3.sea.hqx  System_7.5.3_11of19.part.bin
Sys_7.5.5_Update-3of3.sea.hqx  System_7.5.3_12of19.part.bin
Sys_7.5.5_Update-Q_and_A.txt   System_7.5.3_13of19.part.bin
Sys_7.5.5_Update_Tips.txt      System_7.5.3_14of19.part.bin
Sys_7.5.5_Update.txt           System_7.5.3_15of19.part.bin
System_7.5.3_01of19.smi.bin    System_7.5.3_16of19.part.bin
System_7.5.3_02of19.part.bin   System_7.5.3_17of19.part.bin
System_7.5.3_03of19.part.bin   System_7.5.3_18of19.part.bin
System_7.5.3_04of19.part.bin   System_7.5.3_19of19.part.bin
System_7.5.3_05of19.part.bin




i think i will just buy that netgear thing then. we used to use them as standard at my old work, and they seemed fairly reliable, and yes you are right i can't imagine wanting to plug anything other than the mac into it.

edit: and am i right in thinking that because this hub only does one network speed, this means it is not autosensing and is therefore compatible with the rest of the proposed hardware?


thanks all for your input, and sorry if all these questions etc are a bit boring, a new project always gets me thinking in 20 different directions at once.

[piratePenguin]

You could just use any text editor..

[Calum]

for what?

(yes i know the obvious answer, but i don't think any of my questions were "what can i use to edit text with?")

PS: penguin, you have an incredibly good signature quote, my hat is off!

pps: my golly gosh, i found this fab howto for installing system 7.5 from scratch however it is like a recipe for goat and gnat cheese soup written in polish by a mathematician to me (ie: i can't understand quite a lot of it): http://web.whittier.edu/comp/macguide/Clean.cfm

hopefully i can use this as a learning experience.