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Messages - beachycove
1 Hardware / Color Classic Dilemma
October 15, 2011, 18:39 		Couple of thoughts:

1. Installation of 7.6.1 on a stock Color Classic is a BAD idea. Think slow, and then think slower, and then think almost stopped, and you'll get the general idea. Even 7.1 is painfully slow on the thing. You can speed it up by installing an LC520, 550 or 575 logic board in the machine. Note that each solution requires a different software hack, some easier than others but all very do-able even for a rank beginner.

2. I don't know about the idea that OSX cannot read a zip drive formatted by the classic Mac OS.  What version of X are we talking about?

3. A CD drive is probably a good idea, though note that some burned CDs are unreadable in older machines without some software savvy. Another potential solution would be to source an intermediate machine to bridge between the two machines you already own: for instance, a beige 604e-based Mac or a beige G3 running 9.1, either with a USB PCI card installed, would let you copy via USB disk and floppy between the machines.
2 New Member Welcome / Well, looks like I'm here to stay.
October 06, 2011, 02:13 		No ethernet and a stock Mac Classic is a very slow machine. So this would not be straightforward.

It is, however, possible. There used to be 68000-based webservers "out there," but they have disappeared in recent years. One of the old ones actually ran from a floppy disk, and the site included images!

It would be good to see one back, but I suspect that it would need to run through a bridge machine running one of two or three software gateways that were available for these purposes. It is not trivial, but it is possible and it would make an interesting project for the winter months.

You should probably check out 68kmla.org , which is arguably going to be the best resource for how to go about this. Search the archives there for information. Also try http://homepage.mac.com/mhlewis/classic/index.html and, of course, the old stalwart http://www.jagshouse.com/ .

Others here may chime in....
3 Software / PHP enabled web host software?
October 06, 2011, 01:59 		No, this is not going to work.

Static html would work best. For scripting, if you wanted to go there, you would typically use Applescript or a third party product, or perhaps the built-in scripts in a FileMaker 4 database served over the web. Hypercard has also been used to script classic Mac webservers, but this may require a little more programming finesse than you want to get into because of the way Hypercard needs to be extended to do such things.

If you wanted to run a reasonably modern webserver on a 68k Mac, your best bet is probably a 68040-based machine and NetBSD, though it will still likely be slow. Beyond that, the powerpc machines beckon and would have much more oomph for running NetBSD or even a bare-bones installation of Debian. There are even dual processor models from 1996-97.

Take a peek here: http://servers.ld8.org/servers.html . Some of the links are dead but enough are alive to show what's possible. A personal favourite is the last one found under the 68030 list, which is running the classic MacOS and that on a little low-end machine from the early 90s. It looks amazingly good.

A webserver running on the classic MacOS is, then, going to be limited; however, it is also inherently secure.
4 Operating System / Are you using a RAM disk?
May 23, 2011, 05:05 		In my experience past and in occasional dabblings present, RAM disks work really, really well in certain early PowerBooks that can take a lot of RAM. E.g., my PowerBook Duo 270c, which has RAM maximized (32MB, if I remember correctly), boots into 7.1 or 7.5 from a RAM disk and can run even a memory-hungry application like Nisus Writer 5, without spinning up the hard drive except for the initial boot. It will then run stably for days, so that the hard drive never really needs to spin up. This has major benefits for battery consumption and speed, as well as silence. The contents of a RAM drive are also protected if you do the thing right (read up on it in the old manuals, as it's a revelation), so that part was also well thought out back in the day.

Use of a proper utility to set up the RAM disk offers major benefits over the built-in System feature: e.g., most will archive the RAM disk to the hard disk as necessary, or do memory compression (like RAM Doubler).

You can most easily do this on the later 68k Duos (270, 280, but not the PPC-based 2300), and also on the PowerBook 150, which is often dumped upon but which stands out for these purposes because it can take a whopping 40MB of RAM (which is nearly as big as a period laptop hard drive), and which does not need to run a System higher than the small, elegant and rather wonderful 7.1. The effect of running one of these machines this way is amazing, as operations become lightning fast, even on a little 68030 running at half speed (which was a power saving feature of the 68030).

So yes, and contrary to what has beens said, RAM disks were used extensively by early PowerBook users. The effect of a RAM disk on the machines is stunning, especially if you avoid the built-in RAM disk and go with one of the more capable utilities to take full advantage of it.

A CF card is dead slow by comparison. I've done that too, and I am afraid that we just aren't talking about the same thing.
5 Operating System / What do YOU do with System 7?
March 12, 2011, 16:35 		I use it in its various versions regularly, and have used it since 1991. Uses today include:

Scanning station: For this I use a Quadra 650, with some interesting nubus and acceleration cards (e.g., a DSP accelerator card and Daystar Turbo 040 @40MHz with 128k cache), a ColorOneScanner 1200/30 and some (early90s) high-end graphics software tools like Photoshop and Acrobat. This one runs 7.6.1 with all updates as recommended on this site for straightforward networking with machines running anything up to (in my case) X.4. Runs unstoppably like a tank, and still does exactly what I need it to do. Why upgrade?

Word processing: Nisus Writer 5, which runs fine on any version of System 7, is still unsurpassed for knocking out serious text on old hardware — and small screens. I use this on various machines, including a Color Classic with 33MHz 68030 via an LC550 logic board (=Color Classic II) under plain-Jane 7.5 (which works well on 68k hardware - best avoided on PPC). I also run it on a Quadra 840av running both a greyscale Radius Two Page display for context and a crystal-clear AppleVision 14" monitor for actual text entry.

The Claris Office suite: I run this on a Quadra 605 under 7.6.1, supplemented by Claris products like Home Page and Claris CAD. I tend to use this for niche jobs.

Networking: I also run, regularly but only as necessary, a copy of Apple Internet Router (for THE most robust bridging of localtalk and ethertalk via "zones") on an LC475 running a base installation of 7.1 (with System Update 3, and without Open Transport).

My 604 and higher PPC hardware runs 8.6 or 9, mainly because of HFS+, much better multitasking, and much more PPC code. I tend to use SCSI cards with 9GB or so drives, and these are wasted on a System 7 machine. A good deal of it, though, could run 7.6.1 if I so decided. Maybe I'll give it a go on a small drive one of these dark, late winter evenings, and compare the result with the 68k hardware....
6 Hardware / Fastest SCSI CD-ROM or CD-RW Drive?
March 12, 2011, 16:00 		Sentences making noises about a 'fast 7200' are very rare, so this caught my attention. Really?

But to try to answer your questions:

24x 50-pin SCSI CD drives shipped in the last of the PCI Macs (the 604ev 9600 and 8600), and so can be found (though not that easily). They are great drives. There are similar spec'd 50-pin SCSI CDRW drives still in circulation. I have never seen a 68-pin optical drive, but they must exist.

As for software, Toast, somewhere around version 3 as I recall, would be the thing to look for. Works fine even under MacOS 7.1, though it would make sense to source a burner from the mid-90s or shortly after so that you could be reasonably sure that the software would work with it.

You'd find a huge difference with just a 12x CD ROM drive installed, by the way —and they are commonplace. I popped one in a Quadra recently and couldn't believe the difference it made.
7 Software / Partitioner
February 28, 2011, 03:47 		Ah.

Yes.
8 Software / Partitioner
February 27, 2011, 20:01 		Now that you put it this way, it seems to me that it might be possible, though it's never going to be portable.

I wouldn't know how to do it myself. However, I seem to recall that somebody over on 68kmla recently posted re. getting wireless working via the scsi port of an old machine and various adapters (SCSI-USB, USB-wireless?) pugged into it. You could check there and see what the setup was; it is possible that you might get it to work through the DuoDock, which has SCSI after all.

Definitely no PCMCIA, though.
9 Software / Partitioner
February 26, 2011, 04:52 		Er..., as far as I know (unless you have WOZ-like electronics abilities and lots of money to spend on entirely new technologies), WiFi is not going to work in a 2300c, no matter what system software is installed. The limitation is the hardware: you are dealing with Nubus slots and Nubus architecture, not PCI, and with no PCMCIA either. The most you could do is connect to a hub and then to a wireless router from your Dock, but that is really just a wired connection.

A 2300c has localtalk networking built in, and a very slow software modem from the mid-90s. A DuoDock II can take, at best, a 10/100 Nubus ethernet card (and they are rare). The built-in ethernet will be 10BT.

Apple's Disk Utility does, however, allow you to partition the drive (before installing the system). System 9 would not run acceptably on a 2300c; don't go there. 8.5.1 runs tolerably well with lots of RAM and lots of extensions turned off (I have done this and it is surprisingly usuable), so I wouldn't go higher than 8.6 at the very most. For maximum speed, however, an earlier system would be much better, and as you aren't going to get WIFI running no matter what you do, you don't need anything more.
10 Operating System / How to change icon text colors
February 17, 2010, 23:29 		This may be a stupid question. Still, here goes: If it really were clear, how would you be able to read the text (which you need to read)?

I suppose there is always ResEdit, which you could play with. But I suspect that the sanest thing to do would be to experiment with some of the many MacOS GUI Shareware or Freeware enhancements that floated around in the period from around 1995-98 (Aaron etc), and see what effects you can produce if you are unhappy with the defaults. They were ubiquitous and could be found on virtually every CD that shipped on a Macintosh magazine cover of the period.
11 Operating System / File Rename
February 17, 2010, 23:23 		I am sure that he did not mean that you should move the mouse away after clicking ('cos that would not work for anyone), but that you should move away from the name before clicking, i.e., click on the small icon found at the left in list view. Essentially, you are not meant to click on the name at all unless you want to change the name.

A simpler way of putting this is to say that the MacOS UI is graphical. You always click on icons to open/ work with files.
12 Hardware / Getting 9500/200 silent
December 02, 2009, 21:48 		I find the 800-840av-8100-8500-9500 form factor machines to be blissfully quiet as a rule, so there must be a fan or a drive needing replaced or minimally oiled.

There are actually two fans in a 9500: the PS fan and an additional fan in the area of the CPU daughter/ PCI cards.
13 Software / MaxFax (answering machine sw)
November 06, 2009, 21:50 		Apple Telecom software will certainly do it, at least on certain systems. I doubt that it would work, however, on any machine that required 800k disks, as it was first introduced in the Quadra 660av/ 840av era.

There are a series of versions, and as I recall, somewhere up to around the middle of the series will work on 68k hardware and after that the later and more complete versions run on ppc only. You need to have the right system software, too, but certainly 7.6.1 would be a good choice for the middle versions. It may work only with the Geoport modems; that I am not sure about.

I certainly did have it working at one stage on a Centris 660av running 7.6.1 and with a "GeoPod" modem some years ago, and it was a very nice product. You could even administer it remotely by touch-tone phone.

Apple Telecom is, happily, a free download (manuals are findable too with a little trouble) from Apple.
14 Hardware / Backup battery for 2400c
September 25, 2009, 02:15 		The stock backup battery in the 2400c consists of three (Varta) V110H cells soldered together. These are not manufactured any longer, but higher-capacity V150H button cells can be used as replacements for the V110H, are readily available, are sold with solder tabs, and are cheap.

The real trouble lies in the dismantling of the machine needed in order to access the cells and replace them. You'll need a good part of an afternoon.

I have also tried putting an 8GB CF card into a 2400c and could not get the PowerBook to recognize the card internally. I gather that others have had better luck, but I did not.  This problem was worse than it sounds, as disassembly and reassembly were both required for each of the installation and removal. The trouble was such that I did not try again. I use the CF drive instead in a PCMCIA adapter. It is is not especially fast, truth be told, but is certainly adequate. Power savings, however, are not dramatic while running from the PCMCIA drive. I have a 2hr battery; running from the CF card gives me 2hrs and 15-20 mins.
15 New Member Welcome / Working Cross-Platform with WordPerfect
June 24, 2009, 02:32 		I believe that WP3.5 can open and save to WordPerfect 6 format, which is essentially the same as is used in the product even today.

You can download additional filters from the Yahoo WordPerfect Mac group, which is somewhere you should visit for this sort of thing.
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