Vintage Apple Software

Posted on August 15, 2004 by Blake Patterson

I’ve recently been on a kick to gather vintage software for my Macintosh Plus and Apple IIgs. I seem to get inspired to do so every few months—finding old apps/games that I remember from 20 years ago and loading them up again, for old time’s sake. I thought I would share two sites that are rather useful in the gathering of such “abandonware”:

  • Macintosh Garden – An excellent site with hundreds of very hard to find programs for both the very early original Macintosh and Macintosh Plus as well as for the later Macintosh II era machines. Reviews, screenshots, forums commentary—it’s all there.
  • Apple IIgs Gaming Memory Fairway – A very well-done site with downloads, commentary, and high-quality scans of box cover art for various Apple IIgs applications. The site has recently been restructured, it seems, and is currently offering no game software that I can find (it used to have hundreds of games). Productivity, development, and utility software is offered in its present form. Worth a look for IIgs users looking to put their machines to good use.

These sites have made the wonderful experience of reliving “the old days” a possibility for anyone with the proper hardware. Even running these apps on modern machines via emulation is a workable route to that good old nostalgic fix. I’ve got to say, though—emulation is no replacement for the real thing. Enjoy!

Posted in Macintosh | 2 Comments

Wall Invaders!

Posted on August 4, 2004 by Blake Patterson

I found the greatest geek toy the other day. Every so often I scan ThinkGeek to see what’s new and clever—this time I found something too good to pass up. Colorful, retro, adhesive Space Invaders characters that can be placed on walls, ceilings, windows, etc. The cellar computer room was just waiting for these.

Have a look at the end result in all its glory.

Posted in Just Rambling | Leave a comment

Mac LC Found

Posted on June 26, 2004 by Blake Patterson

I was back home, visiting family, last weekend when I found a few rolls of film that were rather old and had not been developed. One 35mm roll and one disc film roll. I took the 35mm to a local DC photo development house and with some effort (rather poor image quality on the film) I was able to get a few of the 12-13 year old exposures off the roll. The disc film will soon be mailed off to one of the only places left that can develop it. I was able to date the 35mm film by a picture of my computer at the time, a Mac LC. Have a look at it right here and here.

2378337799_76c5976aea_o

The Mac LC was a rather weak machine, sporting a 32-bit 68020 @ 16MHz that was hampered by being placed on a 16-bit bus. I had this machine when the notable System 7 was released. I started out with System 6.0.8 and moved to 7, I recall. I replaced the 40MB SCSI HD that came in the unit with a 100MB Conner which made things much more spacious. I enjoyed it at the time but eventually sold it to my girlfriend to get an Amiga 1200, I recall.

Thought I’d share that little story and pic. It will be interesting to see what’s on the disc film. I am hoping it holds a pic or two of either my old Atari 520ST or Apple IIgs.

Posted in Macintosh | 1 Comment

Apple’s Pascal “Syntax” Poster

Posted on June 15, 2004 by Blake Patterson

I ran across an interesting page [archive] recently. It gives the history behind the, well, not-so-famous Apple Pascal poster, put together by Jef Raskin, father of the Macintosh, to serve as a reference (and a bit of an advertisement) for Apple Pascal developers. There is interesting drama to be found in the rather odd coloration of the poster and Steve Jobs’ hand in helping color it away from practical usability. In the end, Raskin didn’t even get credited with it (Jobs had his name removed).

I’d never seen or heard of this poster prior to stumbling across this story. We’ll see if a copy ends up on my computer cellar wall one day….

Posted in Apple II | 1 Comment

The Soul of a New Machine

Posted on May 11, 2004 by Blake Patterson

A while ago I ran across a book entitled Collectible Microcomputers on eBay. Apparently it is an aid to the computer collector, giving some technical details on quite a large variety of computers (over 700 made between ’71 and ’93). Rather than eBay it used, I put it on order with Amazon…but it’s been a few months now with no sign of shipping—might be time to go back to eBay for this one.

Discovering this book made me wonder if many other books dealing with vintage computing are presently in print. So the next time I was in the bookstore, it occurred to me to see what was in the shelf in this regard. I ended up with a copy of Tracy Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine in my hand. A scan of the back and a few early pages revealed it to be a chronicle of the building of a minicomputer within the Data General Corporation. Though intriguing, it seemed a little before even my time in computing, so I set it down. It was only two weeks later that, in an unrelated conversation, a co-worker of mine, our DBA down at the office who used these Data General machines years ago, suggested it as an interesting glimpse of computing history. I couldn’t pass after that.

I am mostly through the book and would definitely recommend it to anyone with an interest in the early(ish) days of computing. Though I did not own a computer until ’82, I find the tale thoroughly engrossing and a fascinating account. The book tells the tale of the Eagle project at Data General, which was a crash-effort to revamp their Eclipse minicomputer line, taking it from 16 to 32-bits, in an attempt to out-do DEC and their recently launched VAX “supermini.” Being a computer programmer myself, it is with great envy that I read of these bold, early days where every development could so drastically shape the course of the fledgling industry. One wonders if those involved were aware of just how big a role they were playing in shaping the course of the modern world.

Posted in Other Platform | 3 Comments

1981 Personal Computer Catalog

Posted on May 1, 2004 by Blake Patterson

An interesting article appeard on Slashdot the other day. A user grabbed some of his own vintage goodness and placed it online for all to enjoy….

    “I just fired up my scanner and uploaded the 35-page 1981 (+/- 1 year) personal computer catalog from American Small Business Computers. 16K RAM for $22; 10 megabyte hard drive, 5 meg fixed and 5 removeable, with 14-inch platters; 25-character per second printer. Things have changed a bit since then!”

An interesting piece of computing history. I have many old computer magazines and some fairly rare product brochures from the early 80’s (my Fall/Winter 1980 Apple In Depth catalog, full of Apple II, II+, and III goodness, being the gemstone of the lot). Perhaps I will get around to dusting off my scanner and throwing up similar pieces of yesteryear.

Posted in Multi-Platform | Leave a comment

Ultima IV Redux

Posted on April 26, 2004 by Blake Patterson

I spent a good chunk of my time as a teen playing Ultima IV, a role playing game written by Richard Garriot (aka “Lord British”) at Origin Systems. There were many chapters in the Ultima series, but Ultima IV is widely considered to be the most perfect of the lot. Late nights on my Apple IIe, guiding my guild of characters about, all to the sweet melody of polyphonic music, thanks to my Mockingboard C soundcard. Sadly, I never finished the game.

Well, it seems as thought I might have a chance to do just that, now that the XU4 project is well underway. XU4 is a remake of Ultima IV for modern operating systems. The game currently runs on Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows. XU4 contains the graphics of both the PC EGA version of the game, which was the most colorful at original release, and also the 256-color VGA graphics update patch for the best possible rendition of the game world (either graphics set can be used). MIDI-style music from the PC version of the game is also included, and sounds even better than it did back on my Apple IIe.

It would be satisfying, I think, to play through and solve the game once and for all. Have a look at a screenshot taken of XU4 running on my iBook

Another interesting project is Ultima IV: Virtue of Humility, a complete re-write of Ultima IV in Dark Basic, resulting in a similar but different game.

Posted in Multi-Platform | 11 Comments

Farewell Willow

Posted on April 25, 2004 by Blake Patterson

I have an original 128K Macintosh. It was purchased, used, about two years ago. It is the 1901st Macintosh produced at the Fremont, CA plant during the 38th week of 1984. (I purchased a 128K Macintosh in 1985, new, but returned it a few days later when I saw an Amiga 1000 on sale at a local dealer!) While my Mac Plus is all setup and I do use it occasionally, the Mac 128K lives its life in a Mac tote bag, safely stored away. The tote bag is made by Willow Design. It was created back in the mid 80’s. When not in use, my iBook 700 lives in a perfect-fit carrying case, also designed by Willow Design. They make good products. They are going out of business.

I am on Willow Design’s mailing list because of my somewhat recent purchase of the iBook carrying case. I received an e-mail from them today, most of which is quoted, below:

    Hi Blake

    I wanted to drop you note to let you know that we are closing Willow Design. We came to the unfortunate realization that with making our cases in North America, with our higher labor costs, we could not compete against offshore production.

    We were faced with the options of 1) decreasing our features or standard of quality, 2) shipping our production offshore as well, or 3) just stopping to make our cases and shut down. Neither the first nor the second option was palatable, so instead, we decided to shut.

    We announced our decision back in February, but with that announcement have received over 2500 orders from previous customers from around the world. So it’s taken until now that we are producing our final runs and have available our final selection of cases.

    . . .

    Thanks again.

    Nigel Peck

    Willow Design

It is with much sadness that anyone who is familiar with the quality of product exhibited by Willow Design cases watches the company fade into oblivian. What’s more, working for the AFL-CIO, as I do, I certainly am aware of the troubling issue of outsourcing—moving American IT jobs offshore. I praise Willow Design for not going down that road, and will remember them with fondness.

Head over and see if you have a need for one of their last production run items at www.willowdesign.com.

Posted in Just Rambling | 3 Comments

“Blue & White” G3 Poster

Posted on April 23, 2004 by Blake Patterson

My first first Mac was an original Macintosh (128K), which my parents purchased for me back in 1985. My second Mac was a Mac LC which I got in late ’91. After about a year, it was Amigas and PC’s for me exclusively until I was lured back to the Macintosh camp by Apple’s purchase of NeXT (read: NeXT’s takeover of Apple) and their decision to use the NEXTSTEP operating system as the basis for the future Mac OS. I made this decision during late summer of ’98 and from there it was a matter of waiting for Apple’s new, rumored Power Macintosh which would feature styling aking to the recently introduced iMac. After a five month wait, the “Blue & White” Power Macintosh G3 was released at MacWorld Expo San Francisco in January of ’99.

The unit’s ‘Yosemite’ motherboard was housed in the ‘El Capitan’ tower enclosure, a most stylish and striking mini-tower case that was the same color as Apple’s “blueberry” iMac, released at the same event. The ‘El Capitan’ was the first of the swing-open style towers, a design that carried into all following G4’s and offers arguably the most accesibility of any tower case ever designed. I ordered one the day it was introduced. I got the top of the line unit, featuring a G3 processor running at 400MHz with 1MB of 200MHz L2 cache. It was a notable upgrade from my Windows 95-running, AMD K6 233-based PC. Anticipation of the unit caused me to setup a “PC to Mac” website, which I later molded into Blake’s Blue & White Page (which I never took very far). The machine ran OS 8/9 wonderfully, if proving a bit lightweight when it came to running the first versions of Mac OS X when it finally arrived (though I hear the B&W’s run Panther quite nicely). It served me well for two and a half years, when we parted ways as I moved up to the top-end machine announced at MacWorld Expo New York in the summer of 2001, a “Quicksilver” dual G4 800. The trusty B&W G3 fetched $1,100 on eBay (monitor not included)—try to find that kind of value retention on a two and a half year old PC….

At any rate, the point of this post is that I stumbled across an eBay auction for a mint condition, still-in-tube Apple poster promoting this great machine and I had to grab it given the special place in my heart for this machine. I think the framing turned out great. It now hangs in my own “byte cellar,” the basement computer room. Have a look for yourself!

Posted in Macintosh | Leave a comment

Commodore 128 History

Posted on April 23, 2004 by Blake Patterson

I was doing some digging on the web when I ran across a most interesting page, Commodore.ca’s “The Commodore 128: The Most Versatile 8-Bit Computer Ever Made“. It is a most engaging (and suspensful) account of how Commodore’s crown 8-bit machine came to be. While I have read several accounts of this machine’s history, none have contained the minutia and intriguing factoids that this article possesses, making you feel as though you were on-hand, watching the development unfold, in person. A quote from the article:

Unbelievably, in this time of crisis, both MOS chip designers went on Christmas vacation and “…a sprinkler head busted and rained all over computer equipment stored in the hallway. Engineering gathered as a whole and watched on as a $100,000 worth of equipment became waterlogged….

Posted in Commodore 64/128 | 1 Comment