Got a Macintosh! Now What?

[ArmorAlley]

So, the message we're giving the OP is to type two spaces after the end-of-sentence-point and then use the auto-correct to remove them?

 

[ClassicGuyPhilly]

Or the logical thing to do after getting a vintage Mac is to join a web forum and complain about why your typing preference is absolutely correct and anything to the contrary is dead wrong

 

[olePigeon]

What's equally fascinating is we still use the QWERTY keyboard layout which was deliberately engineered to limit the top end of human typing speed.

This isn't actually true. Professor James V. Wertsch was the one who started the false accusation, and he did it with completely wrong information. He created a chart claiming it showed that the most common letter combinations required the typist to strike using the same finger, slowing it down. The problem is that he based this theory on a then-modern typewriter, and not the actual typewriters of the 1870s and 1880s, on which they were struck with different fingers. Not to mention that E, T, O, and I are all on the same row.

In the short study, A Pre-History of QWERTY, they stated that, "early customers of Type-Writer were Morse receivers. The speed of Morse receiver should be equal to the Morse sender, of course. If Sholes really arranged the keyboard to slow down the operator, the operator became unable to catch up the Morse sender."

Not to mention that the orientation of the bartypes for the basket and the keys can be arranged independent of each other when manufacturing the typewriter. So if it were true from the mechanical standpoint, then there'd be zero reason to arrange the keyboard in a less optimal layout when the basket be could modified so the bartypes in more common combinations are further spaced.

 

[Snial]

Not to mention that the orientation of the bartypes for the basket and the keys can be arranged independent of each other when manufacturing the typewriter. So if it were true from the mechanical standpoint, then there'd be zero reason to arrange the keyboard in a less optimal layout when the basket be could modified so the bartypes in more common combinations are further spaced.

So, you're saying the design could always optimise the bartypes so that the keyboard layout was pretty optimal, but it still didn't tend to jam? I say 'tend', because it's always possible to smack down a bunch of keys at the same time to make it jam.

There are multiple conflicting theories about QWERTY, but in my experience, having learned to touch-type in the late 1980s (on a Sinclair QL - not the greatest keyboard in the world), I think the biggest contributor to typing speed is reducing travel. It's like, right now I have my Mac Plus set up on a work desk in the study and although I love the clacky keyboard, it's much slower to type on than this MacBook Air M2. And my PowerBook 1400C with somewhat greater travel is quicker to type on than the Plus; my LCII with an Apple Keyboard II is somewhere between PB1400 and Plus; whereas my Raspberry PI keyboard is between the PB1400c and the MBA M2. And the Sinclair QL keyboard is... strangely slightly better than the Mac Plus keyboard. And my MacBook Pro 2018 was like lightning (except the keys kept failing and I had to keep cleaning them out).

For me the key (sic) factor is the travel. So, the QL, AKII and PI keyboard all feel like cheap membrane keyboard (Apple Design II is worse in this respect), but because travel is shorter, they end up being faster to type on than keyboards that seem more like key-switch keyboards.

The QL is probably one of the best examples. The keyboard itself is a weird Scandinavian 80's inspired thing without gaps between the keys, dimples for each key, and vertical walls for the keys themselves. This means that when you type on it, releasing fingers are likely to catch the edge of another key en-route to the next keypress. But it's still faster to type on than a Mac Plus keyboard, because the travel is less, and this is despite having a 7.5MHz 68008 CPU with video taking up another 30% to 50% of memory bandwidth.



As a design though, man, the QL is just unbelievably QooL. The whole computer! Semi-portably, you can tuck it under your arm like a copy of the NYT, Le Monde or The Guardian; or add a handle & use it as a Cricket bat to score a century for England.

Oh wow, and (this is for Brit members of the 68KMLA), note that Shift-2='@', shift-3='#', shift-'''='"' like a US keyboard and a UK Mac keyboard, but unlike UK PC keyboards; way to go Rick Dickinson (RIP)!

This is not to diss the Mac Plus keyboard, every letter you type on it feels like you're creating Transparent Aluminum with epic purpose; every move and click of the mouse feels like you're controlling Ripley's exoskeleton taking on the Xenomorph in Aliens :-D !

 

[MacintoshSE1987]

How's everyone and their Mac doing?

 

[Phipli]

My 6100's hard disk is playing up

The driver or partition map got corrupted, I spent a couple of hours bring it back up (it's tricky because Drive Setup refused to deal with it in its broken condition)... Got it booting again... But it is starting to glitch in odd ways again already.

Real shame. It's a nice fast 9GB Seagate disk from the early 2000s. They're hard to get at a good price these days.

 

[MacintoshSE1987]

My 6100's hard disk is playing up

The driver or partition map got corrupted, I spent a couple of hours bring it back up (it's tricky because Drive Setup refused to deal with it in its broken condition)... Got it booting again... But it is starting to glitch in odd ways again already.

Real shame. It's a nice fast 9GB Seagate disk from the early 2000s. They're hard to get at a good price these days.

View attachment 66914

Dang, that's tough...

 

[Phipli]

Dang, that's tough...

Sadly it is just how things are these days.

 

[LaPorta]

Got the nephew’s Classic up and running again. After trying to fix the logic board, I took a chance on an eBay “for parts” board…which worked fine and just needed recapping.

 

[Snial]

Sadly it is just how things are these days.

ZuluSCSI time?

 

[Phipli]

ZuluSCSI time?

One fewer disk at the moment. I'm sharing one disk between three computers already, but I might be able to redistribute disks, I think a couple of machines have two disks in them.

I have some disks I got lately but I want to bench test them first because several of them instantly let the magic smoke out and one shorted and killed my ATX PSU I was testing them with... Wasn't massively pleased. Not sure what their history is.

 

[Snial]

One fewer disk at the moment. I'm sharing one disk between three computers already, but I might be able to redistribute disks, I think a couple of machines have two disks in them.

I have some disks I got lately but I want to bench test them first because several of them instantly let the magic smoke out and one shorted and killed my ATX PSU I was testing them with... Wasn't massively pleased.

:-(

Not sure what their history is.

Well, safe to say, they are history! Impressed that you're still trying to source real SCSI drives. I have 3 SCSI drives: my original Performa 400 drive which is in a SCSI box connected to my Plus; a 100MB SCSI drive whose history I'm unsure of (maybe comes from my SE), but which still works decades later: it's called "Centurion"; a 260MB HD which I originally intended to replace my P400 one, but was never reliable and it's in another SCSI box.

I plan to get a PICO-based ZuluSCSI for the SE when it's finally fixed, thanks to @croissantking 's donated flyback.

 

[Phipli]

:-(

Well, safe to say, they are history! Impressed that you're still trying to source real SCSI drives. I have 3 SCSI drives: my original Performa 400 drive which is in a SCSI box connected to my Plus; a 100MB SCSI drive whose history I'm unsure of (maybe comes from my SE), but which still works decades later: it's called "Centurion"; a 260MB HD which I originally intended to replace my P400 one, but was never reliable and it's in another SCSI box.

I plan to get a PICO-based ZuluSCSI for the SE when it's finally fixed, thanks to @croissantking 's donated flyback.

Have a working 20MB MiniScribe in an SE and a 5" 20MB disk in a 20SC enclosure here, but most of my disks are 9 or 18GB Seagates. Bought a load from someone decommissioning some servers from the early 2000s... They've done a lot of hours but most of them have been good. I think one never worked, one was always temperamental and this is the first to start to fail out of about 15?

I just find the SD card solutions a bit expensive. If you keep watching you occasionally find a 50 pin disk for much less money. I don't mind too much if one fails every now and then, it isn't like I'm storing work on them. I just back up projects regularly to modern computers.

 

[MacintoshSE1987]

Thankfully, even though the screen on my Macintosh SE is now unfortunately dead, everything else still works fine.

 

[MacintoshSE1987]

Anyways, what are your guys thoughts on using the quote-unquote portability of the original Macintoshes?

 

[MacintoshSE1987]

Have a working 20MB MiniScribe in an SE and a 5" 20MB disk in a 20SC enclosure here, but most of my disks are 9 or 18GB Seagates. Bought a load from someone decommissioning some servers from the early 2000s... They've done a lot of hours but most of them have been good. I think one never worked, one was always temperamental and this is the first to start to fail out of about 15?

I just find the SD card solutions a bit expensive. If you keep watching you occasionally find a 50 pin disk for much less money. I don't mind too much if one fails every now and then, it isn't like I'm storing work on them. I just back up projects regularly to modern computers.

Yeah, you're right. It doesn't make much sense as to why the SD-SCSI devices are so expensive. I probably could bodge a cable that can use an SD card slot to a SCSI cable.

 

[Phipli]

I probably could bodge a cable that can use an SD card slot to a SCSI cable.

Wow, if you could, please share your design

 

[MacintoshSE1987]

I'll try.

 

[MacintoshSE1987]

Anyways, if you haven’t, check out a website called my80stv.com

 

[LaPorta]

I take m compacts with me sometimes.