I have no idea what the title of this post means. I got an e-mail from someone in Brazil, and when I ran it through
Babelfish that’s what came back.
I’m trying to get some amount of control over the roller coaster that is my life, and part of that is trying to keep this blog current. I doubt anyone actually reads it, but for me it’s kinda therapeutic.
Several months ago, I rescued a Mac Plus from a dumpster. My goal was to get it connected to the internet, using the lowest revision of operating system software possible.
The hardest part of the whole thing was that I couldn’t get software for the Mac easily. Sure, I could download it, but I had nothing that would write to the 800K disks the Plus used.
Someone in the same building I work in brought in their G3 with a floppy drive, so I was able to get some basic software installed (using the three or so double sided, double density disks I could scrounge up).
I also replaced the power board (it was causing the already small screen to be even smaller) and upgrade the box to an amazing 4MB of RAM.
I was working with a client, and he had an old Asante SCSI to Ethernet interface that worked with the old Mac. Once I got that installed, I was able to upgrade to System 7, and suddenly my Mac had an IP address.
This system is not, in any sense, a speed demon. The SCSI to Ethernet interface runs at around 2 kbps, which is modem speed, but I was able to get on the ‘net, which was the whole point of the exercise.
No browsers for the Plus can handle images, so this is what google looks like.
I was able to get IRC working, and so I sent a short message to my friend Ben:
I’ve gotten rid of all my old computers except for this one (I donated them to the
Habitat for Humanity Store in Pittsboro), and while I was cleaning out the attic I came across a stash of old Mac software. So now I can play Tetris and
The Fool’s Errand as I used to.
I had one disk with the adventure game “Uninvited Guest” and when I put it in, my virus checker popped up saying that the disk was infected. I thought it was kind of ironic, a 15 year old virus actually getting caught by a 15 year old virus program. That and the fact that I don’t worry about viruses on my new Mac.