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The Retro Mac Thread

I'm starting to get a jonesing for something pre-OSX now :P There's a beige 266MHz G3 powermac (7500 desktop form factor) on the local auction site I'm tempted by, but I think I'm more likely to wait it out for something like a PPC mac mini that can run a modded OS9 version that clever people have hacked together. It'll just be easier to deal with in the long term I guess (and DVI is nice over that crappy Apple display port thing or VGA through the ATI Rage :p ). For some reason I do like the old beige macs more than the 'style icon' stuff they turned into later.

I have so much nostalgia for these old classic macs. My first workhorse computers were a Mac Plus and then an SE - did a lot of BBSing and early internet stuff on that SE. Plus we used lots of Macs back in school, at uni etc (Apple was huge in the education sector here). And I was part of the local Mac Users Group for quite a while.

I do have an OSX macbook pro I was given (intel unfortunately, only supports up to El Capitan), but to be honest I boot it up and go "I don't really know what to do with this that I can't do more conveniently with my windows laptop". If you aren't all-in on Apple with all the iPhones and iPads etc, it doesn't really seem worthwhile. Has a lovely screen though.
 
The PCI power macs are fun! I don't know if I've described my 7500 which is in one photo with the SE on the previous page.

I have 2 power mac 7500s, both with sonnet G3 cards. One is 333, one is 500mhz.

The 500 mhz upgraded 7500 is my main os8/9 mac. I run OS 9.1 on it primarily, with boot partitions for OS7 and 8, as well as BeOS5, which amazingly runs fine on the 500 mhz G3 proc. It has an ATI Radeon, ATTO PCI SCSI card with SCSI2SDv6, and also a SCSI2SDv5 on the slow internal bus (booting os8 and beos5, as beos will not support any PCI SCSI card).

From that same era-ish I have a 1st gen strawberry iMac (333) which I managed to cram OS9 and 10.4 on against it's best efforts to stop me:

http://spinvinyl.us/?p=83

Last but not least for PPC I have a 500mhz firewire pismo laptop with numerous hot-swap storage drives, and a G4 eMac running MorphOS (lol). The pismo has os9.2, os x 10.4, and lubuntu ppc 14.04.
 

Got my iigs going with MIDI today. I used my keyboard to play some instruments in synth lab, then I figured why not make synth lab play my keyboard. Channel 1 is the Piano track which I mute on the iigs, so the iiGS internal speaker plays the accompaniments, while the Yamaha keyboard plays the Piano track on it's own speakers/output.
 
Necro Bump!

Installed an accelerator in my Mac SE today, going from the stock 68k at 8mhz to a 68030 at 16mhz. Also, the accelerator had a socket for an optional 68882 math coprocessor. The 68882 makes a massive difference for calculations and screen re-draws, as it runs at 25mhz itself.

I also recently got a WiModem232, which is a tiny PCB that connects to your wifi, configurable over a serial connection. Nearly any PC with a serial port can use the thing, and it acts as a Hayes compatible modem with extra options. You can "ATDT host.tld:port" right to a BBS.
 

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Wow, I missed this thread. I'm about as greybeard as they come, our first Mac was the original 128k. Then a 512ke, and then an SE/30 (with the dual disk drives instead of a hard drive), if I'm remembering the sequence correctly. I know I had a Plus at one point too.

Great pics, definitely brings me back.
 
Last year I picked up a Performa 575 (Macintosh LC575) complete in the box... I put it into storage and still haven't even checked it out =O It was an impulse buy at an estate sale
 
brizzo said:
Last year I picked up a Performa 575 (Macintosh LC575) complete in the box... I put it into storage and still haven't even checked it out =O It was an impulse buy at an estate sale
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Good find! Estate sales can be awesome.
 
My favorite mac era is the late 68k days, and my Performa 631CD is one of my favorite computers. I grew up with DOS machines at home only (a 286 until 1996) and always lusted after Apple IIs and Macs at friends' houses and at school. When I got a job and a car I would drive around to flea markets and thrift stores and buy and fix up all the computers I was deprived of. This was the late 90s/early 2000s so the pickings were good.

Unfortunately not enough space to have it set up right now, but once I move to a different place it is getting a permanent place with the matching Apple RGB monitor, SCSI Zip drive, etc.

Too many computers

P1070297.JPG


Also love Apple II and keep a IIe permanently set up, on a shelf above is an Imagewriter II to make Print Shop cards and banners and stuff :D
P1070298.JPG
 
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Nice! That reminds me, I just got ribbons for my Imagewriter II, which I never tested but came minty with my IIGS. I guess I know what I'm doing in a bit 😀
 
I do actually have an SE as well... I plan to do some development using https://github.com/autc04/Retro68 , and maybe have a look if I can get one of the Terrible Fire designs adjusted for Mac/PDS slots.
I like the carrying bag, totally forgot that this existed...
 
Fluffy said:
I do actually have an SE as well... I plan to do some development using https://github.com/autc04/Retro68 , and maybe have a look if I can get one of the Terrible Fire designs adjusted for Mac/PDS slots.
I like the carrying bag, totally forgot that this existed...
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Thanks, it was a lucky eBay find. The dude was super nice and left me a hand written note in it.

I just ordered a rear accessible Mac SE mount for the scsi2sd V5. I have an external scsi2sd but having USB and the SD accessible on the internal one will be really slick.
 
I plan to 3D print a replacement for the HD cover with an SD-card slot. I measured it once already but lost the files...
 
dos said:
My favorite mac era is the late 68k days, and my Performa 631CD is one of my favorite computers. I grew up with DOS machines at home only (a 286 until 1996) and always lusted after Apple IIs and Macs at friends' houses and at school. When I got a job and a car I would drive around to flea markets and thrift stores and buy and fix up all the computers I was deprived of. This was the late 90s/early 2000s so the pickings were good.

Unfortunately not enough space to have it set up right now, but once I move to a different place it is getting a permanent place with the matching Apple RGB monitor, SCSI Zip drive, etc.

Too many computers

P1070297.JPG


Also love Apple II and keep a IIe permanently set up, on a shelf above is an Imagewriter II to make Print Shop cards and banners and stuff :D
P1070298.JPG
Click to expand...
I finally landed myself an IIe :)

it was my classroom computer in school, so I was quite fond of it. Obviously we only had a few for the whole classroom, but I always loved the Apple IIe for that reason if nothing else. I have an IIgs but having the IIe for proper 8 bit is going to be really nice. I'm awaiting a ReActive Micro PSU, they make a PCB kit which fits into the original Apple II power supply enclosures, completely replacing the PSU PCB. The machine works fine, but before I load it out with expansion cards I want to make sure the power situation is square.

The Apple II, as well as having recently built a Briel replica Apple 1 plus kit, is proving to be invaluable for brushing up on my electronics skills. So many projects for the Apple II are completely documented, open sourced, etc., and with a couple of well written books on the subjects you can be well on your way to making your own expansion cards for an 8 bit computer. I'll hopefully be cranking out a very small batch of ProDOS EPROM cards from this design in the near future https://github.com/tjboldt/ProDOS-ROM-Drive

For anyone interested in learning programming, engineering, electronics, etc., I actually strongly recommend an Apple II. The schematics for virtually everything are out there, and if you want to learn about stuff like memory locations, addressing, compiling, disassembly of code / reverse engineering, soldering, whatever, there is an opportunity for all of it. This is a snippet of a doc that came with a cracked copy of "Muppet Slate," a word processing program my school used in the late 80's/early90's.

Code: 
OK, I just figured it out. This routine
is checking for magic bytes in the card
firmware to detect whether we booted
from a 5.25-inch floppy drive. The
magic bytes to check are

  $Cx01 = #$20
  $Cx03 = #$00
  $Cx05 = #$03
  $CxFF = #$00

We self-modified the instruction at
$6417 based on the boot slot, so it's
comparing against $C600,Y if we booted
from slot 6, $C500,Y if we booted from
slot 5, &c. Lots of protection checks
only work if you boot from slot 6, so I
appreciate the effort, kind of.

63F5-   D0 1D       BNE   $6414

; check $Cx03
63F7-   A0 03       LDY   #$03
63F9-   A9 00       LDA   #$00
63FB-   20 17 64    JSR   $6417
63FE-   D0 14       BNE   $6414

; check $Cx05
6400-   A0 05       LDY   #$05
6402-   A9 03       LDA   #$03
6404-   20 17 64    JSR   $6417
6407-   D0 0B       BNE   $6414

; check $CxFF
6409-   A0 FF       LDY   #$FF
640B-   A9 00       LDA   #$00
640D-   20 17 64    JSR   $6417
6410-   D0 02       BNE   $6414

; carry the clear bit if the boot slot
; was identified as a 5.25-inch floppy
; drive
6412-   18          CLC
6413-   60          RTS
6414-   8A          TXA

; set the carry bit otherwise
6415-   38          SEC
6416-   60          RTS

Continuing from $622D...

622D-   90 22       BCC   $6251
.
. [some code omitted, but basically,
.  booting from anything but a floppy
.  drive is always treated as an error]
.
6251-   4C 6E 62    JMP   $626E

And away we go.
 
Maxed the IIe out!

L to R:
New PSU (installed inside original metal case)
Ramworks IIII 4MB RAM
Super Serial for modem (wimodem232)
Apple II MIDI (Passport clone)
GZ80/S (runs CP/M)
Mockingboard multivoice sound card
SNES Max Sockets
Disk controller w/FloppyEMU
Reactive MicroDrive Turbo CF drive (cold boots all but instantly)
Lifted EPROM in front of the disk card and installed a no-slot battery backed RTC PBC under it.

Everything works great. The new PSU is an absolute must, even with a recap I would almost certainly exceed the current ratings of the original.

Also I learned the new Rev C floppyEMU can do *two* Apple II 5.25 drives at once on one FloppyEMU. Huge for Ultima, CP/M, and all sorts of other stuff where having 2 disk drives really helps.
 

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Made some "Cheap and simple ADB to USB" keyboard adapters. Full thread where I got the instructions and gerbers:
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/cheap-and-simple-adb-to-usb-converter.39402/

Flashing a new bootloader to the 'pro micro' so it will accept the QMK firmware wasn't bad, I used an Uno R3 for that.

The default QMK keymap with their ADB adapter profile seems fine, but it's awesome to know I can customize it :)
 

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Great find locally, Mac plus with a bunch of goodies. The 20MB Hard drive was shot but everything else worked perfectly. Mainly because it makes a really nice stand for this guy, I used the enclosure of the HD20 SC to house a newer disk, but still a SCSI spinny disk, formatted to 1GB. Now I just need to go through it for the normal stuff, and upgrade the RAM.
 

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@skate323k137 Sick find! The Mac Plus is such a cool machine. It’s the first computer I really used as a kid so it has a special place in my heart. I played Dark Castle till I could beat it with my eyes closed. Love the carrying bag too.
 
Extremely rad. They had a single Mac Plus and printer in a corner of my middle school's library with no HDD, this was in the mid 90's. It seemed weird to me because the actual computer labs had either LCs or those all in one IBM PS/2s. I think the point was in the library they wanted to control access so the librarian had to give you the system disk to use it. Of course, we figured out how to use the LCs to make our own boot disks with games like crystal quest and that game where you dropped a dude from a helicopter onto a cart. Crystal quest had those awesome sexual sound effects, big hit in the quiet library.
 
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