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

Farewell HyperCard

Posted on April 21, 2004 by Blake Patterson

It finally happened. HyperCard is gone.

More than 16 years since its original debut, HyperCard was pulled from Apple’s site towards the end of last month (March 2004). Created by Bill Atkinson of the original Macintosh team, HyperCard was a kind of easy-to-use, visual database system / programming environment that put custom application development into the hands of the average person. It was one of the very first applications to implement the concept of hypertext / hyperlinking / hypermedia. Originally offered freely to all Mac users, HyperCard was embraced by so many and became the vehicle of so much custom development that even the author was taken aback.

Many may recall the popular games by Macintosh development house, Cyan, who used HyperCard to create the landmark titles: The Manhole, Cosmic Osmo, and MYST.

Though many years had passed since Apple last updated HyperCard, version 2.4.1 (from 1998) has been available as a free download on Apple’s site until a few weeks ago. While the product was in great need of modernization, lacking many features that would be obvious additions today, there is no real, equivalent alternative for would-be HyperCard users/developers to turn to, which, I believe, speaks volumes as to the creative genius that went into the product. Many lament the passing of this old friend, and will not let its ride into the sunset go unnoticed.

During its life, HyperCard was ported to the Apple IIgs

Posted in Macintosh | 19 Comments

Amiga 1200 Tower

Posted on April 18, 2004 by Blake Patterson

I have always been an Amiga fan. I purchased the first Amiga sold in Virginia, back in October 1985. I heard news of it months earlier and had long been in waiting. Not long after, though, (I think partially due to the early dearth of Amiga software and partially due to Apple’s marketing savvy) I sold the machine for an Apple IIe (if you can believe it). A few years later (’89) I ended up with an Amiga 2000 and then later, still (’93), an Amiga 1200HD. After years without an Amiga, I found a new-in-box Amiga 2000 (’00) and added it to my collection. Amigas came and went into and out of my world of machines, and they were always memorable and enjoyable.

Back in 2000, I got the itch to put together a superfast Amiga 1200 tower for the purpose of watching demos and playing a few games. It was easy to find all the parts (though some had to be ordered from Europe) and after a little translating, the tower came together just fine. But I sold it, as well—this time, to fund the purchase of an iBook.

Not long ago, just shy of four years after the first tower was built, I got the itch again. So I started scrounging and found that it was far more difficult to fine the pieces needed to construct the Amiga 1200 tower. But I managed it. Parts arrived from all over the U.S., Europe, Israel, and Canada to get this unit made. And after much toil, the new tower is fully operational.

Have a look at some images of the process (and then read on, in link below, for more info).

Continue reading →

Posted in Amiga | 5 Comments

Mac Plus Webserver

Posted on April 12, 2004 by Blake Patterson

In the middle of a regular session of googling for some vintage hardware info, I ran across a rather unique and notable site: The Mac Plus Web Server. Clicking that link will take you to a rather small site that is served on a 17+ year old Mac Plus, entirely from floppy disk. And not only is there text, but also graphics and a QuickTime movie as well. Not the fastest site you will ever have encountered, but an impressive effort. While I do put my Mac Plus to use every so often (frequently, of late), it has not been used in such a novel way.

Posted in Macintosh | 1 Comment

Original Mac (128K)

Posted on April 11, 2004 by Blake Patterson

Almost two years ago now, I purchased an original Macintosh 128K (model M0001) from a vintage Macintosh listserv. The serial # tells me it was teh 1901st Mac produced during the 38th week of 1984. Interestingly, I had never plugged it in to verify its operation. I mentioned recently finding a keyboard for the original Mac 128K to go with this unit as it came to me with a Mac Plus keyboard, and the keyboard on my in-use Mac Plus died, so I’ve commandeered the Plus keyboard from the 128K to use with my Mac Plus. Having received this keyboard, I decided to hook it all up and see what happened.

After plugging it all together and crawling about under the desk for a bit in search of a free outlet, the switch was flipped and it fired up fine and seemed to boot perfectly into Finder 5.1. I also discovered that it’s got 512K in it, apparently having been upgraded at some point in its life. After a few minutes of playing around, back in its Willow Mac carrying bag it went, off to spend a few more years in deep hibernation, doubtless.

I did take a picture while it was up and updated The List accordingly. The photo makes for an interesting “then to now” piece noting in the shot the edge of one of the 20″ Cinema Displays hooked to my dual processor G4 running Mac OS X “Panther” v10.3.

Posted in Macintosh | 2 Comments

Commodore 65

Posted on April 7, 2004 by Blake Patterson

In searching the web for some Amiga-related information, I ran across references to a prototype computer, developed by Commodore, that never saw mass production. The computer in question is the Commodore 65, successor to the Commodore 64 and 128. Information about this unit can be found at this German page (English translation here).

The C65 was, in many ways, “Commodore’s Apple IIgs.” That is, it was an evolution of the C64/128, sporting improved graphics and sound, but did not represent a notable departure in terms of overall power. That said, it’s 4096 color palette, 3.5MHz 65CE02 processor, hardware blitter, and stereo sound would have made for an attractive upgrade to the older, 8-bit units if it had seen a full production run. As many as 2000 of the units were created, many sold through The Grapevine Group and Software Hut in the mid 90’s when Commodore was liquidated, making the C65 the not-entirely-unattainable “holy grail” of Commodore 8-bit computing.

Related Links:

Posted in Commodore 64/128 | Leave a comment

FOSE 2004 Expo

Posted on April 4, 2004 by Blake Patterson

Working in Washington DC, I had the opportunity to run over to this year’s FOSE Expo that took place at the DC Convention Center. FOSE is a technical expo targetting government organizations and was not a highly entertaining show for someone just wanting to see some cool tech displays when I first went, 5-6 years ago. In the years since, however, it has become quite similar to the excellent, yearly PC Expo, generally held in NYC (which I had the pleasure of attending in ’98 and in ’99). There were a good many interesting displays this year, Apple having the most lavish of the show.

I grabbed a few digital photos of the event, have a look.

Posted in Just Rambling | Leave a comment

The Mindset Computer

Posted on April 2, 2004 by Blake Patterson

I remember reading about this graphics workstation which was far beyond the capabilities of machines available at the time, in a Creative Computing magazine (Feb. ’85 issue, as it turns out). The machine was a pseudo IBM-compatible unit powered by the rarely seen 80186 (also used in the Tandy 2000). The Mindset had a 512-color palette. Recall that the best standard at the time was the PC’s EGA which offered only a 64-color palette. The Mindset had a 320×200 mode with 16 colors out of this 512-color palette, and also an interlaced 640×400 mode with 2 colors on-screen. Today this would be quite a modest capability, but back then it was pretty amazing.

Not long after the Mindset emerged, Atari rapdily put together the ST to beat Commodore’s Amiga to market (which it did). When I heard the graphics specs of the 520ST, the first ST out the gate, it struck a chord in my memory. 320×200 with 16 colors out of a palette of 512. Well, in an interesting twist it turns out that the Mindset was designed by two ex-Atari engineers. It’s not quite clear just how this or that bit of video hardware design went this way or that, but there would seem to have been some “sharing” there.

At any rate, I am rambling on like this because the machine made an impression on me long ago, but I never heard anything more about it. Web searches always came up fairly dry, though I was in e-mail contact with a fellow who owns two of them. At any rate, to attempt to remedy the situation, I took the Creative Computing magazine in question, which I had since acquired, and scanned in the photos and synopsized the writeup and submitted the lot to Old-Computers.com, a site that tracks all kinds of information about a great number of old machines. They were kind enough to wrap it all up into a full profile about the Mindset computer. So hopefully I have helped fill in a void that existed in the on-line world. Everyone can rest a little easier now.

I also ran across the full text of that Creative Computing article, which can be seen here.

UPDATE (10/20/04): It looks like someone donated a Mindset computer, in excellent condition, to Old-Computers.com, making it a very good source of info and photos of this rather unique machine of the mid-80’s.

Posted in Other Platform | 24 Comments