A must have System 6 Extension

[slomacuser]

Post your favorite System 6 Extension. The one that's essential for you to use. I'll post 3 samples. It would be nice if you include:

Name: Wallpaper 1.0.2
Year: 1991
Description: Change your Desktop Pattern.



Name: SunDesk 1.1.
Year: 1990
Description: Displays full color Icons and cursors instead of B&W.



Name: SunDesk 1.1.
Year: 1990
Description: Displays full color Icons and cursors instead of B&W.



Name: OnCue 1.0
Year: 1988
Description: Adds lunching menu on menubar.

 

[Nixontheknight]

Not System 6, but there's an extension for System 7 called TidyMenu that hides the label and help menu items to make the menu bar look like System 6

 

[fritter]

I mean, it's gotta be SuperClock. Not having it drives me crazy after 30+ years of training to glance to my top-right to see the time.

 

[ryandesign]

Name: After Dark 2.0y+
Year: 1989-1993
Description: Modular screen saver. Starry night! Flying toasters!

Name: Disinfectant 3.7.1
Year: 1988-1997
Description: Keeps your Mac protected from pesky viruses.

Name: Forward Delete 1.1.4
Year: 1993-1995
Description: Makes the Forward Delete key on extended keyboards work in normal text editing fields.

Name: Get More Info 1.5
Year: 1992
Description: Provides a ResEdit-like info window in the Finder by pressing Command-Option-I.

Name: hierDA 0.9984
Year: 1989
Description: Adds hierarchical menus to the Apple menu for any desk accessory that has a menu, and for the Control Panel.

Name: StickyClick 1.2
Year: 1992
Description: Menus remain onscreen when you click the menu title, just like on modern systems. No more awkward click-hold-drag operations on trackpads or touchscreens. Crashes a Mac Plus but works on a Mac Classic.

Name: TrueType 1.0
Year: 1991
Description: Lets you use TrueType fonts. Use Font/DA Mover 4.1 to install TrueType fonts.

Name: YesNoCancel 1.2.1
Year: 1990-1995
Description: Lets you hit modal dialog buttons by typing the first letter while holding down the Command key. If the dialog has no text fields, holding Command is unnecessary. You can hit additional buttons, radio buttons, and check boxes by using Command-Tab to move between them and Command-Space to activate them. Lets the Escape key hit the Cancel button. Supports Command-X/C/V for cut/copy/paste.

 

[thecloud]

Name: MICN 1.3
Year: 1991
Description: Reclaims menu bar space by replacing any menu title (File, Edit, etc.) with a small icon. This is essential on smaller screens when working with applications that have too many menus to fit.

 

[olePigeon]

Name: The Grouch
Year: 1991
Description: Oscar the Grouch pops out of your trashcan and sings when you empty the trash.

Name: HAM 1.0
Year: 1991
Description: Fully customize your Apple menu bar: adds submenus, organize menu location, etc.. Can also create "HAMlets" that can open a combination of applications & documents.

 

[thecloud]

1991 was a good year for extensions and control panels, wasn't it.

Name: Scrolling
Year: 1991
Description: Provides "live scrolling" by dragging the scrollbar thumb; also lets you customize the scrolling speed and acceleration curve.

 

[ryandesign]

Name: HAM 1.0
Year: 1991
Description: Fully customize your Apple menu bar: adds submenus, organize menu location, etc.. Can also create "HAMlets" that can open a combination of applications & documents.

I hadn't heard of HAM and I can't find it on the abandonware sites. Is it available somewhere? I see it was commercial software.

Was it really compatible with System 6? Especially the feature "open a combination of applications & documents" sounds like it would require System 7 since there was no public API for opening a document into another application prior to System 7's Apple Events.

 

[olePigeon]

I hadn't heard of HAM and I can't find it on the abandonware sites. Is it available somewhere? I see it was commercial software.

Was it really compatible with System 6? Especially the feature "open a combination of applications & documents" sounds like it would require System 7 since there was no public API for opening a document into another application prior to System 7's Apple Events.

Oh, oops. You're right. It's System 7.

 

[adespoton]

1991 was a good year for extensions and control panels, wasn't it.

Name: Scrolling
Year: 1991
Description: Provides "live scrolling" by dragging the scrollbar thumb; also lets you customize the scrolling speed and acceleration curve.

1991 was the year I really got into extensions and control panels (formerly INITs and CDEVs under System 6 and earlier). That does, of course track with it being the year it became much easier to develop powerful ones, due to System 7.

Generally, I went by the rule of thumb that if it was called an INIT, it was System 6 compatible, if it was called an Extension, it was System 7+. There were, of course, a number of extensions that were fully compatible with System 6, which made it all the more confusing.

IIRC, Conflict Catcher came out in 1991 as well (but I'm not positive about this) -- precisely because of the flood of System 7 extensions and control panels. Conflict Catcher II came out the next year and included a bunch of enhancements, including information about where the things came from and what they were.

My own experience was that System 6 INITs and CDEVs were generally available via MUGs, a few BBSes, and from computer stores and floppy swaps. At the time, I used to stop in at the local Apple retailer whenever I visited a city, to copy all the stuff on their demo Mac to 800k floppies I brought along for the purpose.

By 1991, this was changing, and while I still used BBSes to get some of my software, most came from the Info-Mac and UMich FTP servers.

So... to spur people's recollection, here's some old archives that actually got captured. Unfortunately, since archive.org only archived HTTP and not FTP, the earliest captures were in 1996/97, but these still have some older versions of files:

Index of /systems/mac/

Index of /pub/mac

SUNET's Index of /pub/mac

https://web.archive.org/web/19971221023100/http://mirror.apple.com/Mirrors/

https://web.archive.org/web/19971224104301/http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive.html

<edit> I'll draw specific attention to https://web.archive.org/web/19970615193227/http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/mac/umich/system.extensions/
- it includes NetBunny, which, if you had a Lab of Macs, allowed the Energizer Bunny to go marching across the screens, one at a time, across a line of Macs.