Mac Classic Quality Of Life improvements?

[Steve_G]

so, i intend to send the analog board and the logic board off to my uncle to get recapped, console 5 offers a tantalum recap kit, is that even worth going after?

Other than recapping, is there anything i can do to make the system better in general, i know a Classic I is one of the most limited macs, and this one is a 4mb ram one that will be getting a SD2SCSI in it after the recap is done. I want to preserve it in general.

 

[AndiS]

4MB and SCSI2SD are great - I have the same and you cannot do much more with a Classic. The only suggestion I have is, connect it to the internet, because why not ;-)

I use a serial connection to a Linux box that runs slirp and it is dead slow with 9600 bps. Still you can connect to IRC servers with ircle 1.5.6 and have a nice chat. (v2 does run but is also slow like molasses)

Is it useful - no! Is it fun - heck yes!

 

[Steve_G]

I was thinking about how to get it online, i know for the commodore systems they have a serial to WiFi adapter. Would be fun to connect to a BBS or something.

 

[AndiS]

SLIRP gives you an IP connection, you "can" surf the net. Somewhere on Github there is software to connect classic macs to WIFI using an ESP8266 microcontroller and this is a thing I want to do in the future. Using a serial cable was much quicker though, so this is what I chose for now.

There are solutions you can readily buy for connecting to a BBS using WIFI (it's the same ESP chip, just different software)

 

[Johnnya101]

For connecting it to the internet, you have a couple options. You can either use an SCSI Ethernet adapter (expensive) or a local talk to Ethernet adapter (somewhat pricey). There may be other options, but these two would be the easiest.

 

[Steve_G]

Nice, it is something that i do want to do in the future, Telnet/BBS/IRC would be fun to get running on it, would actually be a good use for it just for goofing with.

I did hear that some people have swapped fans out, is that even worth it?

 

[AndiS]

As long as your fan is working and not too loud for your taste, you don't have to swap it.

 

[Mu0n]

depending on if you can use it for other machines, go full RaSCSI (good luck finding a rpi right now if you don't have one) and get internet access (through an emulated dayna port image) and incredibly useful storage, as well as hosted cd images. It's a bit overkill for a Classic (can it even deal with SCSI cd images? I doubt it) but if you can also connect it to other machines, that might be the overkill solution for you.

I plugged a BlueSCSI in mine and don't have to worry about space or dying physical hard drives.

 

[Steve_G]

I found a bernoulli drive with games on the 90mb disk...it was a stupid purchase but it felt right heh... i only have this system for SCSI, my other macs are a ibook g3/800, a 12" G4 1.33, a 2006 Macbook Pro (ati revision 2) and a 2015 retina MBP.


Edit: P.S. thank you Mu0n for the lead for the blueSCSI, i just ordered one, one less thing to worry about.

 

[beachycove]

Speaking personally, I would say that the main quality of life improvement for a machine like a Classic would be to avoid straying into anything internet related on it, since the results there will inevitably be poor. Bad ≠ good.

The thing about a Classic is that it was really a 1980s machine, only manufactured in the early 90s so as to be cheap. So you want late 80s software gems, programs that came on one, two or at most three floppies like MORE, Hypercard 2, Macwrite II, Shufflepuck, Creepy Castle, or maybe (the admittedly later but wonderful) ClarisWorks 2. Remember that it’s software that we actually use, via the hardware. In keeping with this, I’d install System 6 and make the most of it.

For quality, get a good mechanical keyboard, maybe other period peripherals as desired, use appropriate software, and enjoy your Classic for what it is rather than coming to dislike it for what it isn’t. Compute like it‘s the late 1980s!

Less really will be more on a Classic.

 

[Daniël]

SCSI Ethernet adapter (expensive)

Doesn't have to be, RaSCSI or ScuzNet are cheaper, modern alternatives that can do this as well.

 

[Johnnya101]

Doesn't have to be, RaSCSI or ScuzNet are cheaper, modern alternatives that can do this as well.

Good to know, I have missed all of these recent projects and didn`t really know they were around.