New user, old Mac fan.

[IIsi]

Hello all. New user here. I have been a huge fan of Macs since before they were sold, I've been using them in one form or another since 1983 (Yes they existed before they shipped in 1984 ) I started out with a Lisa, and moved to a Mac Plus for many years. I started hacking on that, and that led me to my job today as a Development Programmer at a local software place. I spent more time inside MacsBug, and the innards of every Mac from the Plus and II series all the way up through the Power Mac G4 where I essentially lost interest in the new ones. I used to know STUPID crap like the address of the video chips of some of the old II series, so I could do hacks in games and stuff. I am here to talk with people who like this stuff, I didn;t realize that the Old mac lovers of the world were united on a forum! This is great! I'm here to ask questions and trade but feel free to ask me questions as well, I'm far from a genius but I know a lot of weeeeird random stuff about these machines as I spent years mucking around with them and programming for them. Hopefully I could even attend a swap meet or trade show or something.

 

[coius]

Welcome to the forum. Btw, just wondering how you got a mac before they were produced? Do you mean a Lisa? (which isn't a mac, but rather an Apple that was later converted to a mac and turned into the "Mac XL")

Nice to see a lost soul find his calling. But glad to have you onboard

 

[Quadraman]

Welcome to the forum. Btw, just wondering how you got a mac before they were produced? Do you mean a Lisa? (which isn't a mac, but rather an Apple that was later converted to a mac and turned into the "Mac XL")
Nice to see a lost soul find his calling. But glad to have you onboard

He may have been a software developer. Developer machines came out before retail. That's how Bill Gates managed to cheat Jobs out of the GUI. >

 

[LCGuy]

Well he mentions that he has a Lisa, maybe he ran MacWorks on it.

Either way, welcome to the forum! Glad to see you here

 

[equant]

Welcome to the forum IIsi. Hope you stick around so we can pick your brain.

 

[paws]

What do we want? BRAINS

When do we want them? BRAINS!

 

[IIsi]

LOL, braaaaaaains. hehe. No, I had the Lisa in 1983 my dad brought it home. I wasn't programming at that point yet I was only 4 years old Sorry to make it seem like I've been hacking away since then, I'm only 29....but I did start using Macs by 1986 or so, and by 1989 I was programming a little in Pascal on the Plus. I've owned MANY Macs over the years, most have come and gone when I got tired of them, but the chronological list of our family Macs is as follows:

Lisa (1983)

Mac Plus (1986)

Performa 6300CD (1995)

IIsi (1998)

Power Mac G4 (2000)

Mac Mini 1.25 Ghz PPC (2006?)

At one time or another I owned the following Macs, either complete, or, to save space, for a few years I just bought motherboards and hooked them up naked and used em that way:

Mac II (Motherboard only)

Mac IIfx (Motherboard only)

Quadra 700

Quadra 605

Quadra 650 (Motherboard only)

Power Mac 6100/66

Various Performas, forget models

6400/250

6500/300

In college I owned the G4 and a IIsi, which I had brought to college with me to use as my main machine. In 2005, the IIsi got a brand new motherboard, never opened, from late 1991. That I will probably never sell, it's my baby. I kept the old motherboard because someday I want to try the clock chip mod. I heard that this machine was actually designed to run at 25 Mhz like the IIci, and that rumors abound of it being able to do 30 Mhz as well. Some later model motherboards apparently had a cooler running '030 on them.

 

[mactarkus]

Not only is this a great forum for old Mac fans, but we do a podcast for old Mac fans too!

 

[QuadSix50]

Not only is this a great forum for old Mac fans, but we do a podcast for old Mac fans too!

Could this be none other than James from the RetroMacCast?

Love the show!

 

[IIsi]

Never really got into the whole podcast thing. What's that about? Is it just a show you watch on the internet basically? or does it involve iPods? I had an iPod but I sold it...iPods are one of the few Apple products I hate....they are evil! >

 

[paws]

It's just a fancy word for people putting media files on the web for other people to download.

 

[Morrick]

A podcast is basically a non-live, live radio show.

Cheers

Rick

 

[QuadSix50]

The reason it was called "podcast" was because at the time, the popular player around was the iPod and those who pioneered RSS-type audio feeds like these decided to call them "podcasts" (at least that's what I've heard online). The name kind of stuck, but that doesn't mean you're limited to iPods. Leo Laports calls them "netcasts" so as not to bring about this type of confusion caused by the term "podcast", but the "podcast" term has already entrenched itself as the name for these kinds of audio feeds.

Practically any player today can accept RSS audio feeds, and some of them check throughout the day for new audio feeds depending on how you configure them. iTunes obviously supports them, and IMO seems to have the best way of accessing them thanks to the iTunes Music Store. With other players (like AmaroK or RhythmBox, found in GNU/Linux), all you need to do is add the RSS feed for the audio and the player will keep track of it. Not as seamless as iTunes, but it still gets the job done.

 

[IIsi]

So uhhh. I wanna try that clock chip mod now. After doing some careful research, It looks like the IIsi is literally a downclocked IIci with some extra parity chips, cache, and a Nubus controller built in. So I am thinking of just dropping a ZIF 4 pin into the old quartz crystal space, and plopping a 50 Mhz crystal in there (current one is 40 Mhz so I'm assuming the circuitry clock halves it.) Anything I should be aware of?

 

[skeletor]

Welcome to the forum. Btw, just wondering how you got a mac before they were produced? Do you mean a Lisa? (which isn't a mac, but rather an Apple that was later converted to a mac and turned into the "Mac XL")
Nice to see a lost soul find his calling. But glad to have you onboard

He may have been a software developer. Developer machines came out before retail. That's how Bill Gates managed to cheat Jobs out of the GUI. >

urban legend...Jobs actually 'BORROWED' the idea of GUI etc from XEROX..Jobs is a great salesman..not an enginner like WOZ.

I don't remember NeXT being a raging success..and the software which NeXT Step sprung from, only gain an foot hold, when Amelio got apple to buy NeXT..instead of BeOS....wonder how things might have turned out, iF BeOS was chosen..or solaris retrofitted into a mac OS ??

 

[porter]

....wonder how things might have turned out, iF BeOS was chosen..or solaris retrofitted into a mac OS ??

Or if Rhapsody had actually performed.

 

[Bunsen]

Developer machines / That's how Bill Gates managed to cheat Jobs out of the GUI. >

urban legend...Jobs actually 'BORROWED' the idea of GUI etc from XEROX../.

Quadraman is right, and although only tangentially related, you are wrong. I'm afraid it is you who is spreading urban legends here, sir.

Apple had a technology transfer agreement with Xerox management. There was no "borrowing", stealing, ripping, whatever. Either stock or cash changed hands; it was all above board.

MS however did break their developer's deal with Apple and clone the Mac interface (very very badly) as Windows 1.0.

Apple sued them (of course) and IIRC MS's lawyers settled, with a solemn promise "not to copy any Mac UI elements in Windows *coughONEcough*". For some reason, Apple's lawyers let that one through to the catcher.

When they continued to blatantly rip off the Mac UI, and Apple took them to court again, the courts told Apple "Tough luck, you agreed, you morons"

Besides, they all got their inspiration from Doug Engelbart's NLS, back in the days when CS researchers shared their research rather than being hamstrung by imbecilic IP laws.

I don't remember NeXT being a raging success

I don't think NeXT was ever intended to be a mainstream market, general purpose computer. Their competition were high end Unix workstations from HP, Sun, SGI etc.

NeXT was a raging success in a small but very significant market - shops that built a lot of in-house code, and needed to modify it often and rapidly. Universities, research institutes, laboratories, government departments adopted NeXT because the IDE allowed them to do in days what would have otherwise taken weeks, and in weeks what would have taken months.

Shops like CERN, that gave us the World Wide Web. The first ever browser was written in NeXTStep. Shops like iD - Doom was written on NeXT. Shops like the NSA, that gave us ... err, well you get my point.

when Amelio got apple to buy NeXT

"Here's $400 million. Please import your entire management staff and take over our company"

Revenge is sweet.

wonder how things might have turned out, iF BeOS was chosen..or solaris retrofitted into a mac OS ??

We'd all be paying hundreds of dollars for limited run, custom accelerators to keep our aging 8100s productive, like the Amiga community.

 

[Temetka]

Oh snap!

Those poor Amiga guys can't ever seem to catch a break. A friend of mine is still using his Amiga 4000. As a matter of fact it's the only computer he owns. He even wrote his books on it.

Check it:

http://maldene.110mb.com/

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Maldene/Mark-Anthony-Tierno/e/9781424165155

The books are based off his own version of D&D that many of us have played over the last 20 years or so. I met him on a BBS back in the day. Masters in Physics, Author, good friend. Lives in Monrovia, CA.