SUCCESS! Mac M0001 on the internet!

[Anonymous Freak]

Alright. The definition may be stretching it, but I just successfully got my M0001 to browse to the 68kmla!

Then I discovered that the 128's keyboard, with it's missing arrow keys, Control key, and Escape key, is useless as a serial terminal.

But, here it is! A picture of my Macintosh 128, serial terminaled into my Linux box via MacTerminal 1.1, running elinks, browsed to the 68kmla:



It was immediately after taking this picture that I realized I had no way to navigate in ELinks. (ELinks is a port of the "Lynx" text-mode web browser.)

I was able to do a bit of command-line work on it, though.

Ironically, I think the Apple IIc that sits next to my 128 would be a much more useful serial terminal. Solely because it has arrow keys and a Control key.

And, just to top off the ironic-meter: the Linux box? It's a quad-socket, dual-core-per-socket, Itanium system, with 16 GB of RAM. This monstrosity has the same L1 cache as the Macintosh has system RAM, more L2 cache than both floppy drives' capacity combined, and more L3 cache per CPU than all storage on the Mac put together, including the HD20! Just the on-CPU caches combined is more than 100 MB of RAM.

[MidnightCommando]

Wow. Just wow.

Congrats, man!

If I may be so bold as to ask, how did you do this, electrically speaking, and was any special configuration required on the linux end to make it accept a serial console?

I'd be interested to reproduce this setup when i get my Mac Classic II working properly.

[Mars478]

Holy crap, it's the godsend! It's happened! WE DIVIDED BY ZERO!

[johnklos]

And, just to top off the ironic-meter: the Linux box? It's a quad-socket, dual-core-per-socket, Itanium system, with 16 GB of RAM. This monstrosity has the same L1 cache as the Macintosh has system RAM, more L2 cache than both floppy drives' capacity combined, and more L3 cache per CPU than all storage on the Mac put together, including the HD20! Just the on-CPU caches combined is more than 100 MB of RAM.

Holy cow! People are still buying Itanics? That's unbelievable!

Just curious - why run a different port of Lynx when you could run Lynx directly or links? If you're running Lynx (not sure about ELynx), then you can use the "-vikeys" option so you can move around without arrow keys.

In any case, an original Mac makes for a fine retro glass terminal experience. One of these days I'm going to do the same with a Sinclair QL and a VT100 terminal program I wrote back in the 1980s...

[ClassicHasClass]

Nice work, man!

[Anonymous Freak]

To answer the questions:

Electrically, I connected an actual Apple-branded 9-pin to 25-pin (aka "modem") cable to a 25-pin female-to-female adapter to a 25-pin to 9-pin PC cable. No null modem adapter. (I originally made the mistake of trying to use a PC-style RS-232 serial cable instead of the Apple-branded one, but that didn't work, and the instant I added a null modem, the Mac would go into a freakout power cycle loop. Then I looked up and discovered that Apple's RS-422 serial is a different pinout than PC RS-232, and remembered I had the Apple-branded cable that was probably wired the right way.)

Serially, I had to modify the /etc/inittab file to allow serial connections. It seems to be happiest at 9600 baud. I couldn't get it to work at 19200 baud, even though the Mac supports it. (Just got gibberish.)

The Itanium was a 'donation' to my vintage computer collection, I didn't pay a dime for it. (And according to IDC, Itanium sold more, dollar-wise, than Sparc last year, and is very close to Power; and even sold more than Opteron!)

I ran ELinks because it's what Debian includes by default. Not entirely sure what the difference is between that and Lynx. I'll have to try the -vikeys, that should do the trick. (I tried using VI's keys, but it didn't work, so it must need the command line option.)

[bhylak]

Amazing! That could be potentially useful for researching stuff, like an encyclopedia!

So there is still hope for that ole' duo dock!

[Mac128]

Congratulations! Thanks for making this a reality. Now, two things:

1) You need to add an external Keypad to the 128K, or use a much more common (and cheaper) Mac Plus keyboard. However, evidently, you can also use the "<" & ">" keys. MacTerminal also has a drop down virtual keypad on which may have navigation keys.

2) Next, you need to get this working under Snow Leopard as has been discussed around here. Theoretically, it has been proposed that it would work via Terminal. All you need to get it into a modern Mac is a USB to Serial port adapter.

Thanks again! Glad there's actually a use for it too!

[MidnightCommando]

(ELinks is a port of the "Lynx" text-mode web browser.)

No, it really really isn't.

Not entirely sure what the difference is between that and Lynx.

Lynx is a text-only web browser, designed to run on pretty much anything (much like NetBSD now runs on toasters) ...

Links was a seperately developed browser designed to be more friendly to visually-oriented users - it retains most of the elements of a classical webbrowser like Mosaic (maybe think of it as a command-line Netscape!)

ELinks is a fork of Links, that has more open development and a bunch of patches to include features Links doesn't natively have, like Lua scripting.

That's all, folks! *vanishes*

[MidnightCommando]

To answer the questions:

Electrically, I connected an actual Apple-branded 9-pin to 25-pin (aka "modem") cable to a 25-pin female-to-female adapter to a 25-pin to 9-pin PC cable. No null modem adapter. (I originally made the mistake of trying to use a PC-style RS-232 serial cable instead of the Apple-branded one, but that didn't work, and the instant I added a null modem, the Mac would go into a freakout power cycle loop. Then I looked up and discovered that Apple's RS-422 serial is a different pinout than PC RS-232, and remembered I had the Apple-branded cable that was probably wired the right way.)

I'm going to have to ask you to get put a multimeter to that thing at some point so we can get some pinout data! (I am totally making evil plans right now.)

[Anonymous Freak]

Never mind a multimeter, here's the pinout.

[MidnightCommando]

Sir, you are AWESOME.

Now I just need to figure out what to do about the fact that I'd forgotten about it being DE-9 and not MiniDIN-8 ... *sigh*

Thanks for the link!

[Anonymous Freak]

Woo-Hoo! This post submitted on my 128! (Thanks for the tip on the number pad!)

edit: Edited on my MacBook Pro to add a picture:

(click for full size -- Yes, that's the Itanium server it's sitting on top of. No, I don't leave it running for long with that lack of overhead clearance causing no convective cooling.)

[Anonymous Freak]

Congratulations! Thanks for making this a reality. Now, two things:

1) You need to add an external Keypad to the 128K, or use a much more common (and cheaper) Mac Plus keyboard. However, evidently, you can also use the "<" & ">" keys. MacTerminal also has a drop down virtual keypad on which may have navigation keys.

Thanks for this tip! I hadn't bothered putting the numeric keypad on because of the space constraints (in my pic, you can see how it's sitting on the //c next to it,) but now it'll sit there.

2) Next, you need to get this working under Snow Leopard as has been discussed around here. Theoretically, it has been proposed that it would work via Terminal. All you need to get it into a modern Mac is a USB to Serial port adapter.

Thanks again! Glad there's actually a use for it too!

heh. So I can now say I have the oldest Macintosh to be connected to the Internet. (Then again, according to your database, I have the oldest known production Macintosh, period...)

As for Snow Leopard: not any time soon. My only Intel Macs are notebooks; the Itanium sits under the 128 all the time. No need to do any wonky changes when I feel like Terminaling-up the 128, I just have to turn it on. Plus, I like the symmetry of hooking the 8 MHz 68000 with 512 KB RAM up to an 8x1.66 GHz Itanium with 16 GB RAM. Kind of like towing an Airstream with a Peterbilt.

[Mac128]

So I can now say I have the oldest Macintosh to be connected to the Internet.

That's all I ever hoped for. This proves even the earliest Macs can still be used in practical applications today with the proper software, which is exactly the point of the original 128K – no need to upgrade the hardware, just update the software. Pretty impressive actually.

As for Snow Leopard: not any time soon. My only Intel Macs are notebooks; the Itanium sits under the 128 all the time. No need to do any wonky changes when I feel like Terminaling-up the 128, I just have to turn it on.

Well, when I hook my MacBook up to my 128K, it's a matter of simply plugging in the USB adapter. Of course I use a preconfigured Sheepshaver emulation so I can use Clarisworks, but evidently it works just fine with Terminal.

The trick is doing what you did under Snow Leopard.

[phreakout]

Anonymous Freak,

This is now literally Insanely Great! You deserve a microbrew on us!

I hope you're entering this into the RetroChallenge 2010. Better tell James and John on RetroMacCast, too!

73s de Phreakout.

[Anonymous Freak]

Ironically, I'm a month late for the Winter Challenge. (And, really, deep down, this isn't that much of a technical accomplishment. As was pointed out on Vintage Computer Forum, any old system that has a serial connection, plus a keyboard and display, is capable of the feat.

For the real RetroChallenge, I'll probably try it with an SE/30 running NetBSD instead of an Itanium server running Linux. Getting the SE/30 online will be the big challenge there.

And, if I was a programmer, I'd try to hack together a minimal PPP-TCP/IP-telnet all-in-one app to have true "internet connection" on the 128, but I'm not sure if that would even be possible on a 400K disk with 128K of RAM.

[Dog Cow]

(Then again, according to your database, I have the oldest known production Macintosh, period...)

I know that you're saying "according to the database", but that's not true if one does not consider just the database, which is rather limited. I recall that some of the original Macintosh team have even earlier Macs with their name on the back.

[phreakout]

Hmmm. Using an SE/30 with NetBSD installed to take place of the PeeCee. That is very interesting. Keep us posted if it works.

73s de Phreakout.

[Anonymous Freak]

(Then again, according to your database, I have the oldest known production Macintosh, period...)

I know that you're saying "according to the database", but that's not true if one does not consider just the database, which is rather limited. I recall that some of the original Macintosh team have even earlier Macs with their name on the back.

Correct. That's the reason why I put the disclaimer out there. I'm sure there were earlier produced Macintoshes. (For example, my serial number says it was production number 107 that week, so at earliest, mine was the 107th produced. Assuming Week 52 - 1983 was the first week of production.) Also, as I purchased mine from the original 1984-purchaser, who was not a 'collector', it very possible that there are other similar circumstances of people who aren't collectors, so have never bothered to join any vintage computing forums, who own older ones.

My point is that mine is the oldest known production Macintosh. And I'll proudly trumpet that until someone produces an older one.

(For example, Mac128's database also lists some other 1983 Macintoshes, but they all have 'engineering sample' style serial numbers, not 'production' serial numbers. So I also make sure to say 'production' in my claim as well. I have seen older (engineering sample) Mac 128's in person, even.)

[Dog Cow]

My point is that mine is the oldest known production Macintosh. And I'll proudly trumpet that until someone produces an older one.

My point was that we know about presumably older Macintoshes who belong to the team (Hertzfeld, IIRC, still has his today), but are not listed in that database.

[Mac128]

Actually, if I recall those Macs were taken directly off the production assembly line and not given to the team until the Mac shipped, which was not until late January. Until confirmed one way or the other, I would not presume that these were taken off the assembly line earlier than they were needed, i.e. unlikely it was over a month earlier. Since they were fully boxed, keep in mind, the software golden masters were not prepared until late January, so while there were several weeks of Macs sitting around, they had yet to be packaged. This doesn't preclude them from being packaged without a complete set of software, but somehow I don't think Jobs would have done that.

Also, I believe the Macs went into production at least by the second week of December. In any event it is unlikely they went into production between Christmas and New Years, because if there were any problems, too many support businesses would not have been available to assist. So logically speaking, the Mac had to go into production at least the week before Christmas, and probably two weeks before for safety due to the holiday, if not earlier.

So Anonymous Freak has properly qualified his assertion of the first production model known.

[Dog Cow]

Known to whom? He's got the earliest Mac listed in that database, that's all we know.

[Mac128]

Known to anyone confirmed by any source. I don't personally know of any earlier Macs. I'll have to go through the eBay database I am building, but yes. The earliest in the M0001 database. Anybody know of any other earlier sources referenced? I wish Oliver would post his database over at http://myoldmac.net/ as he has racked up an extensive one from people using his serial number decoder.

[Anonymous Freak]

Do we know if he's been saving them, or just having them ephemeral as they run through?


Alright, here's my fully qualified claim:

I am the owner of the oldest known to the vintage computer collecting community, operational, production Macintosh.

So: We know there are pre-production ones still in existence (I have seen one,) we know that there were at bare minimum 106 produced before mine (likely more, since, as Mac128 says, it would have been insane to start production the week between Christmas and New Years,) and we can reasonably believe that there are earlier ones still in existence in the hands of people who aren't a part of the "vintage computer collecting community", therefore they have never put their serial number online anywhere. I also added the "operational" descriptor, to be another hurdle to overcome. (Also, as I have said, mine had its motherboard swapped with one of the motherboards that was produced to be either a 128 or a 512 motherboard, one specifically as a 512. That means mine is no longer 'stock', and there are people who assuredly have motherboards older than mine. Everything else in my setup is from late Dec '83 or early Jan '84, though. Mouse, keyboard, keypad, external floppy, and even serial cable.)