Cloud storage in System 7: A workaround

[jrwil]

Word 6 for Mac was panned as the worst version ever, but I think it gets a bad rap. I like to use it on my Power Mac 6500 with System 7.6.1. Given that the hard drive could rattle its cage at any moment, I wanted to automate the shuttling of my documents to the cloud.

Somebody's got to have a better solution than what I did, so chime in, but here's my workaround: In System 7, mount a separate "bridge" Mac that's always on and save documents there. Then connect the bridge Mac to a WebDAV server and tell it to periodically copy documents to the server.

The highest Mac OS that System 7 can mount is 10.4.11 Tiger. For a Tiger machine, I bought a 2005 iMac off eBay for $30. Popular cloud services such as Dropbox dropped Tiger support years ago, but it is plenty capable of mounting a WebDAV server with Go --> Connect To Server. I use GoDaddy's service. Tiger gives me a certificate error every time it mounts, but it never seems to drop the share, which is nice.

Mount the Tiger machine on System 7 with Chooser --> AppleShare --> Enter IP Address.

On the Tiger machine, to push the documents to the server, I first created a workflow in Automator:

Finder --> Get Specified Finder Items --> [Add your backup folder]

Finder --> Copy Finder Items --> To: [Add your mounted WebDAV server] (Check "Replace Existing Files")

File --> Save As Plug-In.

Name it something and save as a Plug-in for "iCal Alarm."

Then, I created events in iCal that repeat every day and call the plug-in as the event's Alarm. When creating the events, set the iCal alarm to Open File. The alarm you created should be in the list already. Since I wanted this process to run three times per day, I have three events at different times that each repeat every day.

Those of you who are more adept at scripts could spin off plenty of other capabilities.

I don't know if it matters, but I dumped all the updates on this System7Today page on the PowerMac, which includes AppleShare 3.8.3.

Why not just leave the files on the Mac Mini? I don't trust it, either! The other bonus is the Mac Mini makes for an easy way to shuttle files between High Sierra and System 7.

Cheers.

 

[ants]

Great job. I've been having a bit of coding fun lately getting my really old macs to connect to modern web services, and writing a native 68k Dropbox and/or OneDrive client is on my todo list.

Modern web API's are quite well suited to older macs because they are so lightweight. I've got my 16mhz SE/30 displaying my Facebook feed, so a 300mhz Power Mac would have absolutely no issue with modern TLS encryption.

But alas I have not much time, perhaps in the next 12 months!

 

[jrwil]

@ants A 68k cloud storage app would be very well received, but perhaps not as well received as 68k Facebook! Connecting old stuff to new stuff is my favorite part of the hobby.

 

[CC_333]

Yes, and since 68k Macs allegedly aren't affected by Spectre (because the 68k (up to the '030 at least; not sure about the '040, though I doubt it) doesn't have speculative execution), they have suddenly become the most secure computers in existence

From a hardware perspective, at least (their software is pretty safe though, simply by virtue of the fact that there's almost nothing to exploit, and those few things which are exploitable are not worth the trouble).

c

 

[beachycove]

Interesting approach. See this as well:

https://systemfolder.wordpress.com/2017/07/18/box-friendlier/

 

[jrwil]

Interesting approach. See this as well:

https://systemfolder.wordpress.com/2017/07/18/box-friendlier/

Thanks, I had not heard of Goliath. Looks like it's good for 8.1+, which means the bridge Mac could be much older.

 

[LOOM]

Talking about cloud storage in System 7:

Here is a solution that 68kmla forum member bbraun made: http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/68khttpdisk.html

You just put a disk file on a web server, and mount it on your macintosh. A "cloud" storage for the old macs.. It's working quite nice.

I cannot find the topic/discussion anymore, the search is not working very well and the old links are dead after the forum upgrade. The name of the thread was "HTTP block device driver" in "Hacks & Development".

 

[jrwil]

Here is a solution that 68kmla forum member bbraun made

This is awesome.

 

[techknight]

The only thing that stopped me from using HTTP Disk is there is no security, and the project was abandoned before anything of that regard was added unfortunately. Nothing would stop anyone from accessing the disk image if it was in the public domain. Not to mention write access on a web-server is NEVER a good idea for obvious reasons. 

I would assume if the disk images were hosted internally on your own server that isnt exposed to the outside you would be fine. Or, you could hide it behind a VPN if you wanted it on the outside.