Baroni’s Collection

[elbaroni]

It has less charge than the air around me, according to my possibly-not-wholly-accurate multimeter. But I’ll take not exploding or leaking any time. 
 

Not a bad score — the screen is a bit out of focus and has a little burn-in, but I have about twenty 9-inch CRTs, so I should be right. 
 

On the keyboard, I didn’t mean the yellowing per se but the mechanism. Feels like it’s missing a spring. I have a -Latium Mac -lus keyboard with the same issue and I can never work out how to reassemble it. I’m a bit terrified of retrobrite, but I should give it a try. This SE might be a good candidate. 

 

[elbaroni]

Oh, and it boots and has a very-broken 80meg hard drive. 1 meg of ram. Nothing special. Managed to retrieve a fair bit of the data from the drive - have offered it to the family. Assuming they want data about managing a horse stud in the 1980s and 1990s...

 

[elbaroni]

Latest acquisition: a giant collection of PostScript fonts for my newly working LaserWriter. I’ll image the disks and post them to the usual places. For all the significance of desktop publishing to the early Mac there’s not as much early DTP specialist software out there as one might expect. 

 

[LaPorta]

Post them on vTools!

 

[elbaroni]

A new arrival today - a boxed copy of MacDraft, a bunch of networking cables, and an Apple Universal Monitor Stand. 

The last one was a bit of a coup - while it doesn’t have the plastic plate in the middle with the lip that holds the monitor in place, it’s still good as long as I don’t tilt it forwards. I spotted in in some poorly-photographed ad for an LC-III, asked if he’d sell me the stand alone and he agreed. Beauty. 

MacDraft asks for a master disk, which works but is tedious. DiskCopy won’t duplicate it - 71 error. Also the master disk was infected with WDEF. Longer shelf life than COVID-19... Have to work out how to image it.  

 

[elbaroni]

The MacDraft disk is tricksy. It asks for a master disk on launch whether done from a backup floppy or the hard drive. Copy II Hard Drive seems not to work. Copy II Mac will do a sector copy to a FloppyEmu disk image, but it doesn’t work - tells me there’s an error reading sector 58 on track 4. 

There’s an invisible file called “ID” which is presumably the thing I need to copy. 

It’s pretty pointless given MacDraft 1.2 is on the usual sites, but this is version 1.1 and so is incrementally less useful. 

Meh - anyway, comes with a manual which is nice. But it’s the challenge of the thing! Are there any other utilities that might be worth a try? I’m doing this on an SE/30 BTW. Perhaps an earlier system would have more luck? Or should that make no difference?

 

[elbaroni]

Oh, and I’ve just about finished imaging all those font files. 

 

[elbaroni]

Sigh. Plugged my LaserWriter IIg board into my one working LaserWriter II body, it printed two pages. Turned it off to change toner cartridges, turned it back on...all four lights stayed on. Bugger. Logic board problem, I gather. Back to the IIf. 

Which leads to my next question: is there a way to mix LocalTalk with the Apple-produced cables and PhoneNet? I have some of these dudes:



but that plugs into a Printer port, not a LocalTalk box, which accepts the little three-prong LocalTalk-specific plugs. 

Reason being that I'd like to plug LocalTalk into my Ethernet-PhoneNet adapter, but...yeah. 

Or I guess I could just use PhoneNet. But I have all this new LocalTalk hardware I want to use!

 

[cheesestraws]

is there a way to mix LocalTalk with the Apple-produced cables and PhoneNet

As far as I know they're electrically identical, the only difference is the wires and connectors.

This place has premade cables:

http://www.applerescueofdenver.com/products-page/networking-cables-and-adapters/rj11-to-localtalk-cable/

Or I'm sure you could find the pinout online and make some fairly easily.

 

[LaPorta]

Why not get a bunch of phone net adapters instead?

 

[cheesestraws]

Why not get a bunch of phone net adapters instead?

'cos the Apple Mini-DIN æsthetic is cooooool!

Ahem.  Goes back to looking sensible and adult.

 

[LaPorta]

It’s funny: until a few years ago, I never saw LocalTalk connectors. My family

and everyone I knew had phone net.

 

[elbaroni]

I’m with Cheesestraws, but I agree that Phone et is the logical choice. Rumour was that Apple itself used PhoneNet. 

 

[elbaroni]

The latest: a repaired IIfx motherboard. I've had this for years, but just got recapamac.com.au to repair it. The live stream of him working on my board is here in case you have three and a half hours. The live stream ended in disappointment: it wouldn't boot, but it turns out the ROM chip was bad, so I have a Rominator II in it.

Now I need more RAM (only has 4 megs now), a working floppy drive (or two), and another SCSI2SD, unless I want to pinch the one from my SE/30 or Quadra 700. Does anyone have any experience using a SCSI2SD with a IIfx? Specifically: does the internal termination work with the IIfx's fussy system? 

 

[MrFahrenheit]

The latest: a repaired IIfx motherboard. I've had this for years, but just got recapamac.com.au to repair it. The live stream of him working on my board is here in case you have three and a half hours. The live stream ended in disappointment: it wouldn't boot, but it turns out the ROM chip was bad, so I have a Rominator II in it.

Now I need more RAM (only has 4 megs now), a working floppy drive (or two), and another SCSI2SD, unless I want to pinch the one from my SE/30 or Quadra 700. Does anyone have any experience using a SCSI2SD with a IIfx? Specifically: does the internal termination work with the IIfx's fussy system? 

You should look into the RAM this user is making and selling:





In regards to the termination, I'm a bit lost on this.  I have 2x IIfx machines.  I've swapped out the internal hard disk on both, and also used an external Jaz and Zip drive, with regular termination, and they seem to work just fine.  I'm not sure at all how this is, because I remember reading about the IIfx back in 1990 and knowing they needed special termination.

 

[joethezombie]

It seems to me "newer" devices work just fine without the black beauty, but earlier ones do not.  For instance, my AppleCD 300 is not recognized unless the special black terminator is in place.

 

[elbaroni]

Thanks Joe and Mr Fahrenheit. Sounds like an internal SCAI2SD should be fine. I wonder if putting a modern device with modern termination beyond the CD300 would work? But it sounds from your experience Mr F that internally is less problematic. I’ll certainly look into that RAM, although amazingly MemoryTen has sold me four 1 meg SIMMS *new*. 

 

[MrFahrenheit]

The ram from my quote above is about $200 for 128MB. 
 

I’ve successfully put a SCSI u160 LVD with an SCA 80 to 50 pin adapter in my vintage Macs including the IIfx. I bought a new old stock unopened case of 20x 73GB IBM drives for $140 delivered. 
 

if you’re interested in deploying a good, big, fast spinning drive, I can make some recommendations for you. 

 

[elbaroni]

Thanks Mr F. 
 

I’ve just ordered a SCSI2SD v 6 for the machine — given the difficulties of external drives I’m keen to have multiple volumes internally. System 6, System 7, A/UX if I can (although that might be interesting with its more direct relationship with hardware, but see how we go). 
 

TBH my approach with machines that can run system 6 is to do so — I started with a 512k Mac when I was about five, so the B/W pre-7 world looks right to me. I look at the very slight colour in window frames in 7.01 and think it looks to modern. I must be mad. 

 

[cheesestraws]

A/UX if I can (although that might be interesting with its more direct relationship with hardware

A/UX will run perfectly happily off a “virtual” scsi2sd disc. That is how my installation is set up: multiple virtual devices for a recovery disc, two MacOS versions and A/UX. Never tried it on a IIfx, mind, but it ought to work.