The mandatory eWorld mention

Posted on by Riccardo Mori

Two years ago I started a little tradition here on System Folder: every March 31, I would post some mention of eWorld, the online service Apple introduced in June 1994 and discontinued on March 31, 1996.

On this 16th anniversary of its discontinuation, I offer this scan from MacFormat UK Magazine, Issue 37, May 1996. In the ‘Net News box’ there’s a short blurb announcing the end of eWorld’s services. I left the other two bits of news just to give you a taste of what was going on in 1996:

EWorld NetNews may1996

Previously, on eWorld:

The manual for the original Macintosh

Posted on by Riccardo Mori
Original Macintosh manual
Image taken from myoldmac.net

One important element in Macintosh’s history that is as worthy of mention as the Macintosh hardware and software, is the manual that came with the original Macintosh. According to its colophon, it was written in 1983 by Carol Kaehler of Apple Macintosh User Education, and it’s an absolutely brilliant read. If you write technical documentation, you should use this manual as a stylebook for the best way to explain ‘tech stuff’ in layman’s terms. It can also be useful in case you need to explain the basics of how to use a computer to people who never touched one. And finally, it’s definitely a source of inspiration for book designers: the only elements that look dated are (obviously) the photos used as covers for each chapter of the book. For the rest, the design is pretty much ageless, elegant, functional. The manual for the original Macintosh is undoubtedly a very well executed Apple product.

You have to understand that, at the time, the original Macintosh was uncharted territory for the user of such a personal computer. Today, actions like using a mouse to move the pointer, clicking, dragging & dropping are second nature. Then, the mouse was basically a whole new input device. What to do with it, and how to associate the actions you performed with it with what was happening on the Mac screen, was not that obvious. Yet the manual explains it with such clarity and brevity, it makes things so much easier to grasp. The writing style is just perfect and so enjoyable.

The general introduction on page 9 is classic Apple, immediately differentiating the Macintosh from the rest:

You’re about to learn a new way to use a computer. If this is your first experience with a computer, you’re starting at a great time. If you’ve used “traditional” computers, you’ll appreciate the Macintosh difference. No more guessing what the computer wants. No more memorizing long commands with names only a programmer could love. With Macintosh, you’re in charge.

This is how the Macintosh desktop is introduced (page 12):

This is the Macintosh desktop. Most computer screens look like the departing flight schedule at a busy airport, but the Macintosh screen looks like a light gray desktop. And you can arrange your desktop any way you want. You can slide documents around, organize your work in folders, throw things away, or get what you want to work on next — just by moving the mouse and pressing the mouse button. The bar at the top of the screen contains menus; you’ll see how to use them a little later. The icons on your desktop always let you know what’s available.

I very much like the general tone of the manual’s descriptions and instructions. It’s never condescending towards the user. You don’t have the feeling you’re listening to someone teaching you a lesson; rather, the impression is of a friend guiding you and giving you advice on things he has experienced before.

On page 13, the manual explains in just five lines how the movements made with the mouse are linked to the pointer on screen, and the fact that the pointer may change appearance during use and why:

Every move you make with the mouse moves the pointer in exactly the same way. Usually the pointer is shaped like an arrow, as it is now, but it changes shape depending on what you’re doing. For instance, it becomes an I-beam when it’s positioned over text you can edit and a wristwatch when your Macintosh is doing something that takes a little time.

When, later on, the manual explains the use of folders (page 35), I just love how this paragraph closes:

Macintosh folders work just like ordinary file folders to help you organize your documents. […] Macintosh lets you organize your documents however you want them (or keep them scattered about your desktop if clutter makes it easier for you to think).

I think it’s a perfect example of what I was saying above about the general tone of the manual.

At the beginning of Chapter 2 (Finding Out More About Macintosh), the first section — “What Can You Do With Your Macintosh” — describes with disarming conciseness something I tried to explain to many people when they kept asking me why I had chosen a Mac:

[…] Macintosh removes a lot of the mystery about using computers. Every action you take has an effect you can see — so you’re always in control of what happens. And you don’t have to keep tedious details in your head, because Macintosh keeps track of them for you. You’re free to think about what you want to do, rather than how to get the computer to do it.

The Macintosh stays out of the way of your work. Think of watching a good movie: You quickly become involved in the plot and don’t think too much about the screen or the mechanics of making the movie. It’s like that with Macintosh: Nothing intrudes on the work you’re doing or the fun you’re having.

These are just a few examples taken from the first chapters of the book, which I hope are enough to give you an idea of the style and the quality. I could quote more, but I’d end up quoting everything. I strongly suggest you hunt for a copy of this manual, and not to part with it if you already own one.

(Update 29 March: As Ben Smith reports in the comments, a PDF scan of the manual is available here. Thanks to all who have chimed in so far, and to all who have linked to my article. It’s really appreciated.)

Six Mac-friendly digital camera systems of 1993

Posted on by Riccardo Mori

MacCameras 1993 1

A couple of weeks ago, I went through my small collection of vintage Mac magazines and did a bit of cataloguing, to have an idea of exactly which magazines I have, and which era they cover. While I was reordering the stack of MacUser UK, the 11 June 1993 issue caught my attention. It featured a group test of six digital cameras and — being mid-1993 — I was curious to read about digital camera technology of the time. The article is rather interesting; digital photography was something new and with exciting possibilities, and the introduction really sets the tone:

In the publishing house of the future, designers will be able, from their desktop computer, to direct a photographic shoot on the other side of town or the other side of the world. When the picture is taken, it will be transferred almost instantaneously to their office, where it will be possible to fit the image into a page and output it to film ready for printing in about the same time as it takes to develop a roll of film.

For photographers and designers alike the digital link plus powerful image manipulation software like Adobe Photoshop will open up new possibilities for creativity. But the trend towards digital technology won’t necessarily be driven by photographers. Commercial photographers aren’t going to easily give up their thousands of years of collective experience in manipulating silver halide film and embrace computers overnight.

The push to go digital will come from the organisations that commission photographers — publishers, advertisers and marketeers — who are now technology savvy after a decade in which their businesses were radically transformed by desktop publishing. For them, being supplied with images as computer data promises to both drive down the cost of using traditional methods of photography, while at the same time greatly improving the efficiency with which they can produce pages.

(Source: Tim Carrigan, “Snap Happy” — MacUser UK Vol. 9 No. 12, 11 June 1993)

The feature covers six digital systems, and only two of them can be considered ‘consumer’ models: the Logitech Fotoman and the Canon Ion RC 560. The other four are high-end, professional systems, which basically could be used only in a studio setting, given their bulk (and their price). Reading about these professional systems, it is evident how, at this particular juncture, digital photography was more awkward and cumbersome than film photography. There are some interesting facts regarding one of the cameras tested, the Hasselblad DB 4000. The caption under a photo of the camera reads: Hasselblad DB 4000 – The DB 4000 has a much larger than normal camera film back, because its huge CCD runs so hot that it requires its own cooling system and a large heat sink. And at a certain point, there’s this other bit in the article:

To run the camera, you need a Mac II — preferably a Quadra — with over 30 MB of RAM. The camera connects to the Mac over a SCSI link, but as it uses differential SCSI-2, it requires its own SCSI board and a huge SCSI switching box. The back is also connected to a camera unit (any of the latest range of Hasselblad bodies can be used) for flash synchronisation, and to a controller box, which links to the rather cumbersome colour wheel that is attached to the lens.

The DB 4000 ships with its own standalone software. This gets the job done, but the process is too complicated and this could be a problem for computer-illiterate photographers. At the beginning of a session of work, you need to upload several megabytes of calibration data to the camera back. Ideally, this should be done after the back has been powered up for some time and its temperature has stabilised, since any change in temperature will require fresh calibration.

The other camera systems in the test are:

  • The Arca Swiss Imaging System, “The only monorail camera reviewed in the tests, it’s essentially a digital back for a standard bellow camera. While there are advantages to using a monorail camera for studio pack photography, the low resolution of the Arca system is appropriate for only small subject matter.” The camera had a resolution of 768×576 pixel in 24-bit colour, in fact. — Connection: “The Arca is connected to the Mac via a NuBus card which is essentially a high-resolution video capture card. This means that a Mac II is required. However, because the Arca has a file size of only 1.2 MB, a Centris with 8 MB of RAM would be adequate. The camera itself is a straightforward Arca Swiss, 5″ by 4″ rail camera which has full movement through every plane. The main difference is the back which houses the CCD and its own on-board microprocessor.”
  • The JVC TK-F7300, “While its minimalist video camera-like design places it worlds apart from a traditional still camera, the JVC TK-F7300 was the big surprise of the group, as its unique multi-shoot image method produces a higher resolution than any of the other cameras.” Indeed, the JVC was capable of producing a resolution of 4416×3456 pixel; not bad for the time, and not bad considering it cost ‘only’ £5,750, less than half the price of the Arca system. You can see its tech specs, along with a small photo of the camera, at this page. — Connection: “The camera connects to the Mac via a TrueVision NuVista+ card, an expensive piece of kit that will add another £4,000 onto the £8,000 for the camera and lens. From the camera, the video signal is sent to the NuVista card, which then drives a second multi-sync screen on which you get a live preview of the image you are shooting. The camera is linked to the computer via a serial connection and it also requires its own mains power.”
  • The Kodak DCS 200, “The most versatile of the cameras, the Kodak DCS 200 has its own 200 MB internal hard disk, allowing you to use it both for studio and location work.” — Camera body and connection: “The Kodak-manufactured component of the DCS 200 is the digital back which houses the CCD, special imaging and compression silicon, a 200 MB hard disk, and six AA batteries for power. The back unit is connected to a standard Nikon body — the fully automatic N8008 camera — which takes standard Nikon lenses. […] The camera connects to the Mac via a standard SCSI cable. The software provided with the camera is an excellent Photoshop plug-in which allows you to look at the entire content of a disk quickly in either colour or black and white, and then acquire the ones you want directly into Photoshop.”
  • The Canon Ion RC 560, “While it looks like something out of a sci-fi novel, especially with its 2″ video floppy disk, its low resolution puts it out of contention for professional applications.” Yes, you read that right, video floppy disk. You can see an image of this particular floppy in this interesting article that covers the older, but more advanced Canon RC 760 and the rare Nikon QV-1000C, which both used this kind of floppy to record still images. You can see a few images of the Ion RC 560/570 at this page or at the Canon camera museum.
  • The Logitech FotoMan, “Obviously designed for the photographic illiterate, the FotoMan is a simple point-and-click device. There are simply no other buttons to press — but as it shoots in only low-resolution black and white, its applications in commercial photography are negligible.” Here’s an image of the FotoMan in all its glory.
Hasselblad db4000
Hasselblad DB 4000 and its huge digital back
Arca Swiss
Arca Swiss Imaging System, yours for £13,685

Kodak dcs 200

The article also included a very interesting box outlining the costs involved, at the time, in the two methods of photo processing. The digital way was already cost-effective, at around half the cost of traditional film photography:

Digi vs trad 1

On the other hand, in 1993, the costs involved in setting up a digital system were definitely higher. Just look how expensive was the equipment and think that today — unless we’re talking very high-end systems — the total cost would be a fraction of that:

Setup digi 2

By revisiting this 19-year old feature, I hope I’ve been able to give you an idea of how digital photography and high-end digital system were at that time, the work and the costs involved to shoot digitally. As you can see, digital photography has come a long long way by now.

(All the quoted material and the images are taken from: Tim Carrigan, “Snap Happy” — MacUser UK Vol. 9 No. 12, 11 June 1993; the photo at the beginning is by Ian McKinnell)

Classic Tech

Posted on by Riccardo Mori

While performing some Web searches related to vintage technology, I encountered Classic Tech, an interesting blog by Michael Nadeau, author of the book Collectible Microcomputers. I very much like how the blog is organised, with brief entries outlining the profiles of various companies and their hardware products, some of them quite obscure and unknown to me. Each ‘company profile’ provides a short history and the tech specs of the machine presented. There are also some lovely photos, like this one of the Barreto MicroMaster (1982):

Barreto MicroMaster 1982

The site is not Apple-specific, but if you love vintage tech, it’s definitely worth bookmarking. Also, you should buy Michael’s book too.

Another vintage Mac story with a happy ending

Posted on by Riccardo Mori

I’m still doing some research for a couple of long articles I’ll hopefully publish next month, and I’m also in the process of consolidating and moving my small Mac magazines collection from the 1990s to a more accessible place, so that I can continue to offer some bits of Macintosh history through my ‘reprints’ of interesting excerpts.

In the meantime I break the silence with a link to a nice story involving a Macintosh 128K and an ImageWriter.

Macintosh128k davidtucker

The other day I was browsing David Tucker’s website and wished I could have paid more attention before because I had missed this article from last year. David writes:

Sitting in the book arts lab I almost fell over as fellow docents carried in a beautiful Apple Macintosh 128k and sat it down in front of me.

Knowing I used to work for Apple the computer was brought in and placed before me partially in jest, it had been assumed that the machine probably didn’t work as it had been packed away in a box for who knows how long up back in some rafters.

Follow the link and read the story of how David managed to get the Mac and the printer (especially the printer) back to their feet. I really like this bit at the end:

The museum has always focused on “antique” printing methods, at 27 years old this machine is not nearly as old as our Gutenberg presses or Heidelberg windmills but indeed made and equally important milestone in printing history. Bringing this whole system back to life now ensures that this piece of the story is not lost and we can continue to teach its place in history.

Good job, David. Another system saved from the landfill.

Beginning with a thank you

Posted on by Riccardo Mori

The past months have been difficult, on a personal level. Lots of work and a lot of things going on have prevented me from updating this space as often as I wanted. And this 2012 hasn’t exactly started the way I wished. Nevertheless, in the last month I received a few unexpected and marvellous emails from kind fellows who like this humble place I started in 2008. Since I don’t want to come across as a bad correspondent and ungrateful moron, I think that a public thank-you post is the least I can do. I have realised what brighter people than me (Lucio and Grant to name a couple) told me long ago — that this blog has a greater potential than what I’d imagined. The recent wave of positive feedback only corroborated that insight. I will do my best to provide more interesting content more often in the forthcoming months.

So, here’s a shout-out to my recent correspondents:

  • Grant Hutchinson — Thank you for the package you sent me in December. You’ve given me good RAM chips for my clamshell iBooks and for the PowerBook G3 Lombard, plus there was enough RAM to bring my Power Macintosh 9500/132 to a whopping 1.5GB RAM. The inclusion of reference materials such as WebObjects Developer’s Guide and a few issues of develop – The Apple Technical Journal was a very welcome addition to my small collection of vintage printed material. Other excellent items (not related to vintage technology) were just the icing on the cake.
  • Eric K. — Thank you so much for sending me some RAM chips for the PowerBook G3 Lombard. The low-profile chips were essential in expanding the PowerBook’s RAM. For those who don’t know, the Lombard has two RAM slots, but when you remove the keyboard you only see one. To access the second, you have to remove the daughter card where the visible slot resides; the second RAM slot (accepting low-profile chips) is located directly underneath the visible slot, on the opposite side of the daughter card.
  • Lyle B. — Thank you for writing me and offering me a very nice Macintosh Plus system. I told you we would talk again after the festive period and I promise we’ll talk soon. I had a few financial issues in the meantime and I thank you for your patience and for the kind words you wrote about System Folder
  • Adam Rosen — Thanks for your email! I had already bookmarked your excellent website, The Vintage Mac Museum and it’s been an honour and a pleasure to hear from you. Adam too offers data retrieval services, so don’t hesitate to contact me or him if you want a chance to retrieve stuff you’re keeping on old media.
  • TC Clark — Thank you for your email and your suggestions regarding the configuration of Netscape Messenger with Gmail. My old post, Classic Email Clients vs Gmail is in need of a follow-up, which I’ll publish as soon as I put the Power Macintosh 9500/132 back in service.
  • Finally, thanks to all the people who have recently discovered my blog and have commented here. I’ll try to get back to you as soon as I can. And of course, thank you everyone for stopping by. You also make this place better. May you all have a great 2012!

Prepping the Lombard: software for basic tasks

Posted on by Riccardo Mori

These last months I have been neglecting my vintage Mac hardware (with the notable exception of my Newton MessagePads, which I use daily), mostly because my job as a freelance translator kept me quite busy. That’s why I still haven’t finished prepping the PowerBook G3 Lombard the good Thomas Brand donated me in July. So, while I’m still waiting to find a working solution for wireless connectivity (I have two PCMCIA cards but neither works, apparently because of chipset incompatibility and/or lack of proper Mac drivers), I’ve started perfecting a minimal software setup for all the basic tasks a PowerBook G3 with a 400MHz processor, 256MB of RAM, stock 6GB hard drive, and Mac OS X 10.3.9 can still perform today. The following list isn’t exhaustive, but it’s enough to keep me going in cases of emergency or when I just want to do some light work off-site on a vintage machine. (Asking why I should want to work that way when I have a powerful and quite capable mid-2009 MacBook Pro is like asking a vintage car collector why he’s going on a weekend trip with his 1959 Giulietta Spider instead of taking his modern VW Golf. Because he can and he loves it).

  • Email — Mac OS X’s Mail app is sufficient. I have set it up to handle my email correspondence related to vintage Macs and emails I receive from readers of this blog.
  • Web browsing — In this case I think it’s better to rely on more than one browser. Safari 1.3.2 (the highest version supported by Panther) can still render websites in a decent way, but I’ve found that on Panther the best browsing experience is with Opera 10.10. Versions from 10 to 11.60 of Opera are available for download at this page. Older versions can be found in the Opera archive. Version 10.10 is the last supported by Mac OS X Panther. I’ve also added iCab 4.8 for good measure. (By the way, for vintage Macs the most updated browser around is TenFourFox, which supports G3, G4 and G5 PPC Macs. TenFourFox is the one that guarantees better compatibility with modern websites and it works great on my G4 Macs. You will need at least Mac OS X 10.4.11, though, so if you’re on Panther you’re out of luck).
  • Twitter — The best solution for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther I’ve found so far is Twit Menulet.
  • Text management – TextEdit for rich text formatting is enough, as is BBEdit 7.1.x for sophisticated text editing and code writing. BBEdit 7 is the last version supported by Panther. (I’m still looking for a reliable link to provide you with a legal download of this version, which is too old to appear on the Bare Bones Software website; System 7 Today has a download link for BBedit Lite 6, though, which may be enough for most people).
  • RSS feed reading — I think the only usable option for reading feeds on a Mac OS X Panther machine is to use an older version of NetNewsWire. I managed to download version 2.1.5 long ago, but that link doesn’t work anymore, so I’ve made it available on my public Dropbox folder. You won’t have Google Reader syncing, of course, but you’ll be surprised at how well NetNewsWire works overall.
  • Image editing — The best ‘Swiss army knife’ solution is obviously to download an older, suitable version of Graphic Converter. If your machine doesn’t support anything more recent than Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, Graphic Converter 6.5 X (CFM) is what you’re looking for (first link at the top of the list). For my needs, that is simply too much, so I’m sticking with an interesting little software called ToyViewer by Japanese developer T. Ogihara, who generously provides older versions of the application for earlier versions of Mac OS X as far back as 10.1 (Puma). As you will see, this software is quite lightweight and versatile enough to allow for basic image editing. Then, of course, you can use Mac OS X’s Preview, also for handling PDF files. Included on Panther’s installation discs is also iPhoto 2.
  • Font management — Font Book will probably be enough. I find the free FontExplorer X 1.2.3 by Linotype more pleasing and flexible, though. You can download it here.
  • Miscellaneous software — One evening I wanted to control my Lombard remotely from my MacBook Pro. Since my other vintage Macs with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger are easily controlled via Mac OS X’s Screen Sharing, I thought it would work with the Lombard as well. It turns out that, with just Mac OS X 10.3 Panther on the other machine, it doesn’t. Or maybe I missed something obvious. Anyway, Vine Server did the trick. The setup is rather easy, then you basically start Vine Server on the PowerBook G3 and it becomes visible and accessible from any Finder window on the modern Mac.
    For those who are accustomed to using solutions like Quicksilver to perform searches and launch applications, the good news is that there is a Mac OS X Panther compatible version you can download straight from the developer’s site.

As I said, this list is just a starting point, but with these little additions my PowerBook G3 Lombard is proving to be quite the functional machine. I can also watch DVDs if I want, but only after rebooting into Mac OS 9 — read more about this here. As for iTunes and QuickTime, I’ve already talked about them in this previous ‘Prepping the Lombard’ entry. If you have other Mac OS X 10.3-compatible software suggestions, you’re welcome to mention them in the comments.

A few more words about my vintage Mac wishlist

Posted on by Riccardo Mori

With interspersed observations about selling old hardware

Setting things straight

Since I started this weblog back in 2008, it featured a page called My vintage Mac wishlist, where I list some selected vintage Apple hardware I’m after. I think it’s all quite self-explanatory, but the kind of feedback I received over the years, generated by that page, has been rather absurd and disappointing. I’ve asked myself many times what’s wrong with people.

Therefore, allow me to reiterate what’s written on that page, with an added explanation for those who need things to be spelled out for them:

Have you got an old Mac sitting around doing nothing useful for you except taking up space? If the philosophy of this humble weblog doesn’t convince you about the usefulness of vintage Macs, or you simply just don’t know what to do with it, you can consider sending it to me.

I’m not looking for any vintage Mac, though. I have limited space as well.

This means: Hey, if you have one of the Macs or other Apple-related hardware that’s present on my list and you want to get rid of it, I’m here, let’s talk about it. But only if it is on my list. I’m amazed at the amount of emails I’ve received from people who wanted me to have whatever they were throwing away, vintage or not; I’ve even received proposals to acquire non-Mac stuff. Wasn’t I clear enough in that page? Isn’t this whole weblog clear enough about where I come from and what I’m interested in?

If you have one of these things and would like to sell or donate them, contact me and we’ll talk about it.

You talk about donating old stuff and people cringe. Yes, I know exactly how much you paid for your Macintosh Plus back in the day. No, nobody is forcing you to part from it at gunpoint. You either want to sell it for five hundred dollars or keep it rotting in your basement? That’s fine with me, I’m not interested. But for the sake of all that’s dear to you, don’t write me patronising messages telling me I don’t have a clue about the value of these vintage Macs. Don’t waste your time and mine by writing me emails basically telling me, Yeah I have that Mac, and no I won’t give it to you for free because if you think I want to donate it to you, you’re out of your fucking mind. Don’t give me that attitude because a) it’s unnecessary, and b) it only shows you haven’t been paying attention.

Read those words again: …sell or donate them…

The ‘Sentimental Value Tax’

I’m open to purchasing vintage hardware from you. And always willing to pay shipping costs. The only thing I haven’t specified — but, alas, hoped it was clear enough — is that your price be reasonable. Many people tend to add what I call the “Sentimental Value Tax” when they sell their old hardware. I understand the sentiment, but in this context it is out of place. Why? Because you’re willing to part with the hardware in the first place. I own a lot of things which have deep sentimental value to me and that is precisely why I don’t sell them or give them away. Instead, much of the attitude I felt from people who contacted me, was along the lines of “your offer should be high enough to make me want to give my old Mac to you”. Sorry, but that doesn’t work for me.

With computers, you have to live with the fact that they decrease in value at a frightening pace. Especially if they feature patently obsolete technologies. For a Macintosh SE/30 (a Mac that was produced between 1989 to 1991) to sell for more than $100, for instance, it has to be in exceptional shape inside and out, it has to have a good CRT screen with no burn-in, it has to have a generous amount of RAM, or a rare PDS or video card attached. If it hasn’t got any of these features, don’t call me a disrespectful cheapskate when I ask for less in our negotiation.

You have to detach yourself from the poisoning mindset of “I paid this Mac $4,700 in 1995! I can’t let it go for $70 now!” — if you want to make money with used items, you should deal with antiques: jewellery, watches, furniture, pottery, etc. Things that retain their value or even increase in value over time.

So you’re a collector…

Some people have this idea about collectors in general: that they’re all rich, eccentric and gullible fellows, willing to pay whatever price to get their hands on what they’re looking for. Some of them might be like that, of course, even in the vintage Mac market, but from my experience they’re not in the majority. If you decide to contact me because you own an item in my vintage Mac wishlist, don’t assume I’m that kind of collector. I hate when people have stuff in their attics, left there to collect dust and rust, stuff that evidently has no value to them, stuff they won’t give a crap about, but that suddenly becomes ‘rare, precious, expensive’ only because I’m interested in it. I could in part excuse this attitude if I were the one to contact you first, begging you to give it to me.

Also, eBay is misleading if you base your asking price just by looking at a few random Mac-related auctions there. Don’t assume that a PowerBook Duo 230 can be priced at $400 only because some fool on eBay let himself be ripped off and paid that price for an auctioned item.

The mysteries of correspondence

Last but not least, I have to mention a kind of correspondent I’ve often encountered since I’m into vintage Mac hardware (see also The strange cases of vintage Apple hardware sellers — Part 1 and Part 2). I’m talking about the disappearing correspondent. People who contact you out of the blue, proposing you a deal, or asking whether you’re interested in their items, and then do not follow up when you reply to them.

Guys, I’m as busy as you are. I may not reply to your email as soon as I receive it. But rest assured that I reply to all messages related to my vintage Mac wishlist. (Provided, of course, you’re willing to sell or donate some item that’s actually on such list). If you change your mind, if you found some other buyer, just tell me briefly and I’ll understand. I can’t translate your silence otherwise, and it invariably comes across as rude. If you’re not willing to deal with what you’ve started, don’t start it in the first place. It’s a time-saver for both of us.

International shipping

A final word on shipping. I’m not located in the United States. Some people are put off by the idea of shipping stuff internationally. Let me reassure you: I’ve never had a problem with packages sent to me via USPS. Even large and heavy packages (a Power Mac G4 Cube and a 22-inch Cinema Display, to give you an idea). It is, I think, the cheapest option; there are no hidden costs for the sender that I know of; items have always reached me in perfect shape and in a timely fashion. The only trouble I had in many years was caused by an incompetent postman at my end, so please don’t worry and don’t let international shipping compromise our deal.

How I tune up my vintage Macs

Posted on by Riccardo Mori

At first I was tempted to title this post How to tune up your vintage Mac, but that sounded too presumptuous on my part. I believe that people are free to choose the approach they want, so I’ll just talk about mine, and maybe you’ll find some useful advice here and there.

User experience over all

There are people who like to push their vintage Macs to their limits. I don’t mean you should ditch your trusty PowerBook G3 or G4 and stick to your newest Mac. I mean that some people get, say, a Macintosh Classic, look up Mactracker, see that the maximum OS supported by the Classic is System 7.5.5 and proceed to install it no matter what. Sure, you can install System 7.5.5 on a Classic — provided, of course, you increase its RAM to the maximum as well — but I bet that the general performance and user experience won’t be optimal.

My approach is slightly different. I give precedence to user experience: whatever the vintage, the Mac I acquire must be smooth to use. In vintage Macs with a Motorola 68K processor, the amount of RAM installed makes a huge difference when it comes to installing the ‘right’ OS version. A Macintosh SE with 2 MB RAM is much more capable than a SE with just 1 MB. And a SE with 4 MB RAM will be remarkably more capable than a SE with just 2 MB. This sounds quite obvious, but you have no idea of the amount of misconfigured compact Macs I have encountered as a Mac consultant.

There are always tradeoffs. Often a newer OS version means more features and capabilities, and also more third-party software to choose from, so one could be tempted to upgrade, but unless you want some specific capability (given by the newer OS or by a piece of software only the newer OS can run), my advice is to be conservative and refrain from installing the latest OS version your vintage Mac is theoretically able to run. For instance, if the convenience of having a Control Strip at the bottom of the screen is paramount, then by all means install System 7.5 and do all the necessary things, hardware-wise, to help smooth the user experience: install the maximum RAM your Mac can handle and also a bigger hard drive (it never hurts). Otherwise, it’s just not worthwhile.

My Macintosh SE has 2 MB RAM and an 80 MB hard drive. If it had 4 MB RAM, I could install System 7.5.x on it, but the performance wouldn’t be smooth or satisfactory. So I first installed System 7.1, and things were generally fine. When I was given a SE/30, I took the SE and did a little experiment: I downgraded it to System 6.0.8 just to see how it would fare. All the (few) programs I was using on the SE were backward-compatible, so I wasn’t worried. After installation, I rebooted the SE and everything was noticeably faster and snappier (as I suspected). Now I have too much stuff and so little time to look for RAM sticks and perform RAM upgrades on my compact Macs, but even if I maxed the RAM on the SE and brought it to 4 MB, I probably wouldn’t upgrade the OS anyway.

All my beige Macs have enough RAM to support a newer OS version, but I keep every one of them with the previous Mac OS version installed. So, my PowerBook Duo 280c could run Mac OS 8.1, but it would be too sluggish, so it runs Mac OS 7.6.1, boots faster and is generally more responsive. My PowerBook 5300 could run Mac OS 9.1, but I keep it with Mac OS 8.1 and it’s really, really usable (in fact, it’s the most used vintage Mac in my small collection). Once I tried upgrading it to 8.6 just for kicks, but I was generally dissatisfied with that ‘improvement’, so I returned to 8.1. (I don’t even want to think about how things would go if I installed Mac OS 9.1.). The recently-acquired PowerBook G3/400 “Lombard” has currently installed Mac OS X 10.3.9. I could upgrade it to Mac OS X 10.4 (not directly, though, but by using XPostFacto) and I could look for a G4 card to speed it up, but I won’t, for a number of reasons I’ll explain below.

My approach: puristic & minimalist

Here I enter the realm of personal preferences even more deeply. By puristic, I mean that basically none of my vintage Macs has undergone any processor or speed-related hardware upgrade. My Power Macintosh 9500/132 could be made into a faster machine via a G3 processor upgrade card, and my PowerBook G3 could become a G4 machine via a similar upgrade. There is a sweet hardware upgrade for my Power Mac G4 Cube that could transform it into a G4/1.8 GHz beast with a 128 MB graphics card (instead of the stock G4/450 MHz processor and 16 MB graphics card).

The fact is, I like the challenge of putting a vintage Mac to good use without ‘cheating’. The point, for me, is What can be done today with a vintage Mac’s original processing power? A number of things, and you don’t even have to overstuff your vintage Mac if you start by choosing the main task that Mac has to perform and then the right set of tools for the task. Here comes the minimalist part of my approach. It’s hard to talk about these things in an abstract manner, so I’ll proceed by examples. (Feel free to skip to the last section if you’re not interested.)

1. My Colour Classic serves two main purposes at the moment: as a creative writing environment free from distractions, and as an instrument for cataloguing my books and the books I borrow from the Library of the Polytechnic University of Valencia. The Colour Classic supports a maximum of 10 MB RAM and can run System 7.1 to Mac OS 7.6.1. The only software I have installed on it is the software I need to carry out the aforementioned tasks, so my Colour Classic has Microsoft Word 5.1a (the best Word version ever), WriteNow, BBEdit 3.5 (for when I want/need to write bits of text with HTML code), and FileMaker Pro 3 for my book database. To run these applications I don’t need the latest OS, so I have kept System 7.1 on the Colour Classic.

2. My PowerBook Duo 280c has a great strength: it’s the most compact and lightweight vintage portable Mac I own (it’s even a bit lighter than the PowerBook 100). Its battery still holds a little charge, too. So I carry it around with my Newton MessagePads when I’m on the go, and it stores various Newton backups and essential Newton software in case I have to reinstall applications on the MessagePad. Therefore, the only software I have installed on it is WriteNow (a light word processor is always handy), the Newton Connection Utilities (NCU) (when I need to connect NewtonOS 2.x devices such as my MP2100 or the eMate), and the Newton Connection Kit (NCK) (when I need to connect my Original MessagePad, which is a NewtonOS 1.x device).

3. My Power Macintosh 9500/132 is the most powerful vintage Mac tower I have. Since it has enough CPU power, a rather generous amount of RAM (272 MB), and two internal hard drives (2 GB and 8.5 GB), I’ve been using this Mac for every kind of experiment, to the point that some time ago it was a triple-boot machine, with Mac OS 9.1, Mac OS X 10.1.5 (installed via XPostFacto) and Rhapsody Developer Release 2 running on an external 4 GB hard drive. After both the internal drives failed almost simultaneously, I reconfigured the 9500 as a Mac OS 9.1-only machine, and I use it for browsing the Web and testing Classilla, for email, and for the occasional vintage game. On this machine I also run older versions of QuarkXPress and Photoshop, and I use it to access all kinds of old backups stored in old but reliable supports such as SyQuest cartridges and Magneto-Optical disks. Thanks to its built-in floppy drive and CD-ROM drive, plus the external SyQuest 5200 and MaxOptix MO drive, this machine is a true bridge between the vintage and the more modern Macs in my home network. Despite all this, the software installation on the Power Macintosh 9500 is kept to a minimum: a browser, a couple of email clients, some utilities to verify and repair disks (such as Hard Disk Toolkit), Photoshop 4, Adobe Reader 4, QuarkXPress 3.x, and GraphicConverter. The only reason I decided to install Mac OS 9.1 was to be able to use Classilla without problems, and the hardware configuration is powerful enough to run OS 9.1 rather smoothly.

4. Regarding my Power Mac G4 Cube, as I wrote on my main website:

With the vintage but still beautiful acrylic 22-inch Cinema Display attached to it, the Cube is perfect for displaying information I want to glance at while I work. I also use it to check a couple of low-traffic email accounts; to open additional browser windows in Safari when the browsers I have open on my main MacBook Pro get too crowded; to listen to music (I have a separate iTunes library on the Cube entirely dedicated to classical music); and of course to check my Twitter stream and the RSS feeds.

For this kind of use, it’s not necessary to perform hardware upgrades on the Cube. Plus, any hardware acceleration card (processor and/or graphics) would force me to install additional fans inside the Cube, and I would lose one of the features I love most about this Mac: its silent operation. I could also install Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard with some tricks, but I see no real reason to make this hardware configuration struggle just because I want the convenience of Quick Look, for instance.

To summarise

Tuning up your vintage Mac largely depends on what you plan to do with it, along with other essential factors:

  • The form factor: is it a compact Mac like the original Macintosh, Mac Plus, Mac SE, Mac Classic, Colour Classic, etc.? These Macs have all 9-inch, black & white screens (apart from the Colour Classic). They’re perfect for writing, file exchange, handling databases, acting as fax/print servers, and if you’re adventurous enough you can even try a web server project. Their expandability is rather limited. Is it a portable Mac? PowerBooks are handy because they don’t take up much space and you can easily put them away when not in use. PowerBooks with PCMCIA slots (like the PowerBook 190, the 5300, the 1400, the 3400, up to the PowerBook G4) are more expandable and you can add Wi-Fi and Ethernet cards, for example. Is it a tower or mini-tower? They’re usually powerful and expandable. The Power Macintosh 8600/9600, the beige Power Macintosh G3, the Blue & White Power Mac G3, and all Power Mac G4s are the easiest to open and add drives and additional expansions.
  • Technical specs: How much RAM has it got? How much can it take? How easy is to find it? Has it got enough hard drive space? If it’s a PowerBook, does its battery still hold a charge or you have to use it always plugged in? Remember, tech specs play an important role when it comes to choose which version of Mac OS to install. My advice is to be conservative, especially when there isn’t much RAM available. See if you can sacrifice a bit of software functionality for a better performance and user experience overall.
  • Software requirements: If you plan to absolutely have a particular application running on your vintage Mac, and that application has system requirements your Mac barely meets or can’t meet in its current state, see if you still can do the same task with an earlier version of that application.

When I acquire a vintage Mac I can put to good use, first I focus on the task. What do I want to do with it? Once I decide the task, I see whether the hardware is suitable for said task and I look for the necessary software to do it. Once I have the software, I see which Mac OS version I have to install on the Mac, if I need to upgrade or even downgrade the current configuration. Then my puristic and minimalist approach kicks in: keep things simple, install only what’s really necessary for the task. Consider a processor or graphics card upgrade only if it’s really needed. Keeping things balanced (e.g. refraining from installing a Mac OS version or other software that is too memory- or resource-hungry) will ensure a pleasant user experience overall with any vintage Mac.