Video playback on Plus/Classic

[Mac128]

Like Flash and Real Audio and VideoWorks, the player program was free. The movie encoder program was for sale. So the MacMovies on a BMUG disk won't make a movie, but will play back a compressed file.

Unfortunately out of the 70+ BMUG disks I have, none of them have MacMovies. I understand this particular source was compromised at some point so much of the collection was not available online.

It sounds like we should be looking for MacMovies application though, rather than the player. Obviously it uses a proprietary format for playback, possibly something similar to GIF animation which doesn't draw anything which gets repeated in the subsequent frames thereby reducing the file size?

Anyway, if you come across your copy simply taking a peak would be lots of fun.

I am not in the "pristine original" camp. My Mac got hacked every which way, and I keep it as a memento of exciting times when a community of enthusiasts were pushing Apple's creation to do things Apple never considered. ... I can understand that some people want to retain the original Mac as shipped and unaltered, but those folks are also going to have to live within its limits. While it's technically possible to make a flash drive and attach it to the floppy ports a'la HD20, it's a couple of man-years of full-time work, and the worldwide audience for such an effort is maybe 2 or 3 people.

Well it sounds like there is no reason to try to restore your Mac. However, there is no reason to irrevocably hack one in pristine condition. The original 128Ks are museum pieces now. But either way, living within the limits of an unaltered one is more or less the point, but the fact remains there were hard drive storage solutions in 1984 unavailable to us today. In fact I have a perfectly functional serial MacBottom for use with a 128K, but cannot find a copy of the driver software anywhere. But your point about the limited audience for an HD20 flash drive is why some of us have been looking to implement a SCSI solution which already has some groundwork laid (e.g. John Bass MacSCSI) –– two or three people is about right, LOL, me, JDW and possibly one other out of curiosity.

Taking this one step further, what is even the point of writing a 68000 movie player for a modern video output, when only about 6 people in the world care (luddite among them)? Unlike the Apple II world, there seems to be no interest in continued development for the vintage Mac, which strikes me as odd ... but from my limited exposure to an Apple II in high school in 1983 & 84, I never understood the appeal of it, whereas I have been in love with the Mac since I first laid eyes on it in the Summer of 1985.

 

[Osgeld]

The apple 2 was a computer made by a dork for other dorks to toy with and share, that sprit still lives in the // world

Mac on the other hand was something you gave your aunt so she could print out the church newsletter, and for most arguments the opposite of the // series, no programing languages biult in, no expansion slots, and for the most part entombed into its cute little sealed enclosure, and I think that feeling still lives today

 

[luddite]

The apple 2 was a computer made by a dork for other dorks to toy with and share, that sprit still lives in the // world

Eloquently put ;-)

Mac on the other hand was something you gave your aunt so she could print out the church newsletter

You're awfully generous with your relatives!

 

[Osgeld]

You're awfully generous with your relatives!

Oh not me, we had a freakin //e until 94

 

[H3NRY]

In fact I have a perfectly functional serial MacBottom for use with a 128K, but cannot find a copy of the driver software anywhere.

I'll look see what I've got. I think I have a MacBottom disk, but it's probably the formatter for a SCSI version. I'll also scrounge about for graphics stuff. If I post it to .me zipped, will that work?

ROM expansion: the first thing the 64K ROM does is check at address F80000 for $AA55. If that signature is found, execution jumps to that address, and the expansion ROM boots the Mac. If not, execution continues to set up the SCC, test RAM, clear the screen, BONG!, etc. Since expansion ROMs gain control at the start of the boot routine, you can do anything. Usually you would set up the SCC, test RAM, etc. before you get into your own mischief.

The Apple][ was designed by Woz to be open, expandable, easy to tinker, and share with his friends. The Mac was designed by Jobs to be closed, elegant, simple, and HE controlled the user's experience. The Mac II family was designed by Jean-Louis Gassee to exude power and "Make your nipples hard." Interesting the way the machines reflect their creators' personalities.

 

[Mac128]

If I post it to .me zipped, will that work?

God bless you sir!

The Mac II family was designed by Jean-Louis Gassee to exude power and "Make your nipples hard."

HA! I always suspected as much. NEVER trust a man who wears leather pants to work.

For me it's about the GUI. If GSOS had come to fruition instead of the Lisa, I'd probably be just as excited about it as well, though I would also have an IDE flash drive card to slip into a slot! Had the expandable Lisa been a hit, I'd be in the same position. And just for the record, all three Apple GUIs blew anything Bill Gates tried to do out of the water, though the reason I don't have any interest in PCs is because of Job's hardware vision which applies even to the Apple II, far sexier than any PC clone.

To be fair, Jobs put the burden of expansion on the developer, just as with the software. It was plug-n-play for the consumer, but hard as hell for the developer. Obviously the 128K had most of the expansion options available to it that we have come to expect today, though developers had to be extremely clever and devote enormous time and resources to developing them. A 64K ROM Mac had available hard drives, internal hard drives, SCSI, networking, telephony, memory expansion, video output, CPU upgrades, scanners, digitizers, etc. Just nothing was as easy as it was on the Apple II, or indeed the Mac II. In fact, had SCSI been available on the 128K, most all of its expansion limitations would have gone away as SCSI has been successfully utilized for almost everything. Would Jobs have refused SCSI? Did he have anything to do with it on the Plus before he left? I have to imagine he did given the lead time necessary to develop a new product.

 

[H3NRY]

Turns out it wasn't MacBottom's disk I had; it was LoDown, the guys who copied MacBottom. Also turns out Wally Wallstreet's drive can't read half these old diskettes. :'( I'll have to break out something with an honest to gosh 800K drive, and even then these are OLD disks. I also posted some MacMovies along with the Projector app. They're here:

http://homepage.mac.com/henryspragens/

at the top of the page, go to Public Shared Files/68K Mac/ and there are a bunch of old disk and HD formatters and utilities. Hope some of them are useful or at least interesting.

 

[Osgeld]

back on topic can the classic / plus playback animated gif files?

 

[H3NRY]

back on topic can the classic / plus playback animated gif files?

The only gif editor I remember didn't do animation. There wasn't much support for gifs on the black & white Macs that I remember.

 

[Osgeld]

editor wasn't the question

 

[Mac128]

Turns out it ...was LoDown, the guys who copied MacBottom. ... I'll have to break out something with an honest to gosh 800K drive, and even then these are OLD disks. I also posted some MacMovies along with the Projector app.

Thanks H3NRY ... I have of course run into the first problem with Snow Leopard which is these are individual files which must be put into a disk image to be used with an emulator ... however, SL won't write to an HFS disk! Thankfully these apps can be imported directly into Mini vMac with tools Paul Pratt makes available. SheepShaver shouldn't be a problem as the files can be placed into an HFS+ disk image and then transferred to an HFS disk image which can then be opened in Mini vMac to run a more apropos early system.

Too bad about the MacBottom. ;-( As for your old 800K disks, I assume they've long since been backed up? ;-)

 

[H3NRY]

My transfer was relatively simple: Wallstreet (OS9.2.2) reads floppy -> ethernet -> Cube (OS 10.4.11) -> iDisk (.mac). Snow Leopard and iDisk don't work for me, and of course HFS support has been eliminated along with AppleTalk etc. So I depend on the Cube for a lot of stuff while Apple shakes the bugs out of the new cat. You should be able to reach the .mac webpage with a Mac running OS9 and iCab or Internet Explorer, unlike iWeb pages which require a more modern browser. If you have an older Mac with a floppy drive and a web browser, you should be set.

Sorry, I don't know anything about emulators, since I haven't thrown away much of my old hardware. I did donate my Apple///s to the Computer Museum, and I ought to get a list of what's in the closet together and offer it to good homes before hauling it off to Goodwill. No rare gems in there, unfortunately.

I'll set up the "128K" and hook it to the network. With luck, a real 800K drive, and the Cube, some of these other diskettes will yield their contents. These files *should* all be backed up to CD-Rs, but there are about 400-500 of those backups, sorted not by subject, but by age (old on the bottom of the pile). It's actually easier to find the old stuff in the big box o' diskettes.

 

[Bunsen]

Welcome aboard H3NRY! If you choose to stick around, I'm sure there will be a few of us eager to pick your brains.

 

[H3NRY]

More MacMovies stuff posted; the compiler and previewer are up.

 

[Mac128]

More MacMovies stuff posted; the compiler and previewer are up.

May you be blessed H3NRY. Great find.

 

[luddite]

Awesome! Can't wait to try this out!

 

[H3NRY]

It's been a long time since any new movies were made on a compact Mac. I'll be interested in what you come up with. This ought to run on anything up to an Se30, though there will be limits on hard disk compatibility since it was written for MFS and floppy drives. It ought to treat HFS folders as individual floppies.

I still have a REALLY remarkable movie to convert to QuickTime. Michael Greene (Zen and the Art of the Macintosh) made a MacMovie which filled his entire 10MB hard disk. While the rest of us were computer nuts playing at art, he was an artist playing with computers and it shows. It was good enough that I bought a $1500 disk drive just to have a copy of his movie.

 

[luddite]

It's been a long time since any new movies were made on a compact Mac. I'll be interested in what you come up with.

Me too... the stakes have been raised a little, as I was really only expecting to get half a dozen fps to play with.

 

[agg23]

What is the download link for the disk images?

Thanks

 

[Mac128]

What is the download link for the disk images?

Read the whole thread.