Kaela baked me a great retro Apple logo cake for my golden birthday. All the colors are there! Awesome!
Tag Archives: apple
Foto Zeitgeist
This was quite the eBay deal for me. This unused Apple II Workstation Card makes it possible for an Apple IIe with 128 kilobytes of RAM to boot up over an Appleshare network. How much RAM is 128 kilobytes? Well, my current Apple iMac has 2 gigabytes, which by today’s standards is middle of the road in terms of performance. Two gigabytes is equal to 2,097,152 kilobytes. That means my current iMac machine has 8,192 times more RAM than my Apple IIe. Isn’t it amazing what you can do with technology from 1983?
Foto Zeitgeist
An Apple //c running Word Munchers. This game made phonetics fun. In fact, all of the MECC titles for Apple ][ series computers are still fun to play.
Mac Lust
I spotted this Performa 6200CD while thrifting. It even has the Apple branded monitor. Unfortunately it is $60. Sigh… I hate it when thrift stores over price certain commodities. I’ll have to wait for a sale.
Audio Zeitgeist
Audio links will open in iTunes.
- Clint Mansell – The Last Man – Sorrow can only describe this song. Too bad the film from whence it came was terrible.
- Daft Punk – Around the World / Hard Better Faster Stronger – This live remix recording is an instant party. Play. Dance.
- Adam Freeland – Mind Killer – “I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer.” – Frank Herbert’s Dune
- Depeche Mode – Enjoy the Silence – All I ever wanted was here in my arms, an awesome electric synth.
- Clint Mansell – Death is the Road to Awe – From sorrow to everlasting love, we come full circle. Too bad the film from whence it came was terrible.
Apple Collection
There are still about a half-dozen still in storage, but the Wall-o-Macs is shaping up quite nicely.
Hello RMC Listeners
If you clicked on the RetroMacCast link in episode 47 then I bid you welcome. Yes, that is my humble Apple IIgs featured. If you have any questions about it you can contact me via e-mail address kenfager(at)gmail.com. Regular RMC listeners may remember a previous photo that was featured on their show.
If you are a regular reader, I highly recommend RetroMacCast. James and John do a fantastic job every week. Even though they are amateurs their production values would have any layman fooled. Check them out.
Obfuscation Rules
It took days of failed attempts, but I’m now reliving my childhood. I figured out how to write Apple II disk images to those big 5.25 floppies. Sure there are emulators out there. Sure it is a whole lot easier to just download the disk image and play on a new iMac. It just isn’t the same. There is something truly satisfying about hearing those big drives click away. Here is what it took.
- Mac OS 10.5 on an Intel iMac to download the disk images and drop them in a shared folder to go to…
- Mac OS 10.4.9 on a PPC iMac that has support for…
- Mac OS 9.2.2 which can run Bernie II the Rescue, an Apple IIgs emulator that can manipulate the files, which can then be transfered via 3.5 floppy to…
- Mac OS 7.0.1 on a Macintosh Classic which can write to ProDOS disks, which are compatible with…
- Apple GSOS 6.0.1 which runs on an Apple IIgs.
What is the end product for all this hassle? Number Munchers, Odell Lake, Battleship, and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy are just the beginning. Oregon Trail… I’ve got my eyes on you next.
Apple IIgs Resurrected
A week or two ago I purchased two computers from someone through craigslist. One of the computers was the most powerful Apple II model ever built, the IIgs (ROM 3). This computer presented itself with some challenges to bring it back to life. Unlike the Apple II’s I grew up with, this model did not have a 5.25 floppy, but rather a 3.5. The drive also posed a problem in that it would not read standard 1.44mb 3.5 floppies, but 800k formatted disks.
In order to get software installed I had to first buy an external USB floppy drive. Anyone you know still use a floppy drive? Didn’t think so. Then I downloaded the software from various sites around the web, loaded it onto floppies, then transferred it all to my 1991 Macintosh Classic. Once all the necessary files were transferred I modified the floppies into 800k disks by taping the top left hole. This process tricks the drive into formatting a 800k disk when promted in Mac OS 7. Once those disks were written it was time to install GS/OS 6.0.1 on the IIgs. Because I only have one floppy drive on the IIgs I had to switch the install disk and target disk more than 50 times. It would load a small portion of the OS, then copy it to the disk, and then repeat the process over and over until done. If there was a second drive I would not have had to switch the disks.
Even though the OS is nearly 20 years old the GS/OS is really impressive. It mimics Mac OS 7’s feel and style as best it can with the hardware resources available. It is hard to believe that the whole device runs from a 800k disk. Steve Wozniak’s brilliance still shines through on this machine.
On a side note, I have come to appreciate how fast network infrastructure has improved in the past five years alone. Phones, television, internet, and a variety of other network connected devices now share the internet as their backbone. Their integration into our lives often goes by unnoticed until they cease to function properly. Before the days of wireless internet, or even the proliferation of ethernet networks, data was transported by “sneakernet.” Someone physically had to transport media to its destination, insert the disc, and eject it.
RetroMacCast
The folks over at RetroMacCast were kind enough to include a photo I sent in to them in their podcast. Be sure to check out Episode 18 where they read my letter as their first item of discussion. You can download RetroMacCast with iTunes (preferred) or directly from their website.