The Classic is not a new machine to me, as it was the first Mac I ever used, way back in ye year 1991. I thought of it even then as slow running MS Word 4, which my employer had installed on it, but still as a vast improvement on my own PC/XT running DOS and WordPerfect (though the latter was a fine program which ran fast and served me well enough at uni for three years).
A colleague had a Classic II in the office next to mine, and, believe it or not, that Classic II seemed blisteringly fast to us back then. Yes, a speedy CII, and so it was: Word 4 and System 6 do very nicely on even a 16MHz 68030.
The Classic in question was not mine but a workplace unit, and I did not have it in my office for more than 12 months, but my subsequent computer purchases have all been Macintosh.
Owing to a stroke of luck, I now find myself the owner/ custodian of three working Classics (two of which I shall probably pass on to others). I wonder if there is advice from others who know what this is all about (and most do not, never having been there themselves) concerning what system software is best to try on the model (I gather from another thread that the Classic, being archaic in its architecture, can run systems back to 3, 2 and even 1), and what might be some appropriate applications to install on it? Though I have many (too many) beige Macs, they date otherwise from c.1993 on, so I have very little experience of Compacts, and none whatever of anything before the Classic. In this world of early Macs I am but a newbie.
In short, how would I go about showing off this little machine rather than hobbling it with what would be, in effect, System 7 era bloatware? I want a hard drive, so the system software has to be capable of working from a hard drive, but beyond that I don't have fixed preferences.
A colleague had a Classic II in the office next to mine, and, believe it or not, that Classic II seemed blisteringly fast to us back then. Yes, a speedy CII, and so it was: Word 4 and System 6 do very nicely on even a 16MHz 68030.
The Classic in question was not mine but a workplace unit, and I did not have it in my office for more than 12 months, but my subsequent computer purchases have all been Macintosh.
Owing to a stroke of luck, I now find myself the owner/ custodian of three working Classics (two of which I shall probably pass on to others). I wonder if there is advice from others who know what this is all about (and most do not, never having been there themselves) concerning what system software is best to try on the model (I gather from another thread that the Classic, being archaic in its architecture, can run systems back to 3, 2 and even 1), and what might be some appropriate applications to install on it? Though I have many (too many) beige Macs, they date otherwise from c.1993 on, so I have very little experience of Compacts, and none whatever of anything before the Classic. In this world of early Macs I am but a newbie.
In short, how would I go about showing off this little machine rather than hobbling it with what would be, in effect, System 7 era bloatware? I want a hard drive, so the system software has to be capable of working from a hard drive, but beyond that I don't have fixed preferences.
