New photo album of my Mac Plus

[danielb]

Hi all,

Here is an album of pictures of my Mac Plus.

https://picasaweb.google.com/108602450026684563488/MacPlus

You might find the screen shots interesting. . .

I will be creating similar albums of my other Macs too (and some other stuff) when I get the time.

 

[LOOM]

Original Hebrew keyboard for the Plus? Nice

 

[danielb]

It's funny, but until I saw your reply, it never occurred to me how rare my keyboard probably is.

I was more concerned with preserving the Hebrew System 4.1; I suspect there might not be very many more copies of it.

I added a close-up picture of the keyboard to the album.

 

[sirwiggum]

Looks interesting.

With the system being Hebrew, would it have made sense to have the apple menu on the right, with the menus right aligned?

Serious question, I'm interested in localisation differences.

 

[beachycove]

It was possibly used by a theologian/ biblical scholar (who exist in most UK universities). Among the early users of Macs were Bible specialists, with whole Departments being kitted out with the machines, at an enormous premium over the DOS hardware used by colleagues in other disciplines. Back in the day, they were an identifiable group of Macheads, like graphic designers and the like.

 

[sirwiggum]

Was this because of the rendering of fonts / scans of physical texts were clearer?

Interesting to read of pioneering applications for the platform.

 

[beachycove]

Yes, the fonts. It was not real Hebrew in the way Unicode allows for, but it looked like it.

There was also at least one (maybe only one?) DOS program that allowed for use of varied international fonts, called Multi-Lingual Scholar. It was expensive, and required a dongle. But it was also reasonably flexible for linguistic work, allowing right to left input in dead languages like Syriac as well as in left to right polyphonic Greek and so on. I don't know much more than that about it, although I used it a little back somewhere between 1986-87 in a University setting (Edinburgh -- we didn't have Macs).

 

[danielb]

Hi all,

This Mac has actually spent its entire life in Israel, and belonged to an Israeli university. This was where I found it on its way to the skip, and took it home (after getting permission, of course).

Before I got this Mac working, I'd also never seen a Hebrew system earlier than 7.

For multi-font academic work, the Mac was way better than the PC until quite recently. This was why Macs were popular at the Universities, and why I wrote my doctorate on a Mac rather than on Windows.

My Mac Plus has fonts for Greek, which includes all of the accents and other diacritics, Coptic and Old Church Slavonic.

 

[beachycove]

Well, that certainly explains it. For some reason, I thought the thread had been started by sirwiggum, and, given his signature, that the machine had come from Queen's University or its satellites. Mea culpa; lo tov on my part.

What you say about Hebrew support for first language users is interesting (Mellel notwithstanding). This would also be why most Bible scholars these days seem to use Windows. In the 80s, the Mac was their preference for the most part, but by the mid-90s, they had more or less all switched.

Any thoughts on linguistic support available in Linux/ Ubuntu etc.?

 

[uniserver]

very nice! thanks for sharing!

 

[danielb]

What you say about Hebrew support for first language users is interesting (Mellel notwithstanding). This would also be why most Bible scholars these days seem to use Windows. In the 80s, the Mac was their preference for the most part, but by the mid-90s, they had more or less all switched.

Hi,

I actually took that bit out of my previous message, not because it was wrong, but because I didn't want to get into an argument about it

What I said was that Hebrew support on the Mac has always been bad, compared to Windows, and very few Mac apps support right to left. This is one reason Macs have never been popular in Israel, other than in their niche at universities and in publishing. The other reason is that they were much more expensive than PCs.

This is much less true nowadays BTW, with Apple getting more and more into the consumer market. iDevices are extremely popular in Israel, and it is by no means uncommon to see someone using a Macbook on the train. I have a new Mac Mini. Hebrew support is still not as good as Windows though, even though a new official Hebrew UI was introduced in OSX 10.7.3.

As for Linux, I've never used Linux in Hebrew, so I can't comment.

 

[sirwiggum]

Well, that certainly explains it. For some reason, I thought the thread had been started by sirwiggum, and, given his signature, that the machine had come from Queen's University or its satellites. Mea culpa; lo tov on my part.
What you say about Hebrew support for first language users is interesting (Mellel notwithstanding). This would also be why most Bible scholars these days seem to use Windows. In the 80s, the Mac was their preference for the most part, but by the mid-90s, they had more or less all switched.

Any thoughts on linguistic support available in Linux/ Ubuntu etc.?

No no, I was just commenting on an interesting thread / find.

Few years ago had an interest in localisation through some internationalisation projects that went through verification at IBM.

In terms of academic macs, I had a beige G3 and an LC475 that came from St Andrews (when they upgraded to lampy iMacs back in the mid 2000s) but had to pass them on when I previously moved.

Queens were bound to have Macs in their labs but can't speak for sure. University of Ulster had PC labs to churn out Java coders and Dreamweaver keyboard warriors.

Certainly my high school had Macs (lab fulls of compacts with the occasional LC), but they were for learning how to do DTP in Clarisworks.

Locally the two language support proponents would be for Gaelic and UlsterScots. I think some Linux distros support the former, and when I attended the Windows 7 launch locally the Microsoft representative commented that Gaelic language support had been integrated from their Irish office (along with some other functionality, such as the clock and some backup tool). I think they use the standard font set though (unlike Irish road signage)

 

[protocol7]

Great pics Daniel. It's always interesting to see localised machines.

On the Gaelic front, I've only ever seen one localised version of Mac OS. It was 7.0.1. It installed as Irish but also had support for Welsh and I think Scottish as well. Had it on my Classic II for the novelty factor (and to see how much Irish I could remember from the school days).

 

[LOOM]

It's funny, but until I saw your reply, it never occurred to me how rare my keyboard probably is.

Yeah, I always look at the keyboard layout on these old computers. I'm using a nordic layout myself, and there aren't that many around

And I guess the Plus is 230v too then? International models isn't that common either

 

[sirwiggum]

The UK/Ireland is 240v, presumably it shares a PSU with the international models?

 

[LOOM]

Yes.

Actually all the international models have a small pin on the board you can insert to convert it into 110v. The US version does not have this feature.. As far as I can remember..

Edit: Added picture of pin W12. The picture is from a 512k, but I think the Plus is the same.

 

[sirwiggum]

I mind the day we got a shipment of PCs over from the US office.

The IT guy was testing them in his den.

We heard this huge bang. Rushed in, he said "oops" - he had kept the PSU at 110v and plugged it into 240v.

He then proceeded to do it again! 8-o

 

[danielb]

Hi all,

I just got the Hebrew System 4.1 working in Mini vMac:

I was seriously wondering whether this might be the only copy in existence. I think I can now consider it rescued

 

[LOOM]

Nice. Apple still have Hebrew system 7.0.1 & 7.5 out