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Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament

arstechnica.com

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Re: Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament

#11

Post by ehnto »

bombcar wrote: post #6
JKCalhoun wrote: post #3

Something that has been kind of funny for me, perhaps others are feeling this way: I see increasingly this "retro computing community" fawning over machines that I think of as ... just machines that I used once. Some of the machines were even kind of scorned at the time as I recall — now they're sought after, lovingly restored.... I don't know if my reaction is as one who is being made aware of just how old they are…

The key is that you used them. The retro community is for people who lusted after those machines, but we’re stuck with something much more affordable and much less powerful. And now they’re well into middle age and they have money.

The same thing happens with cars. There's a somewhat predictable spike in used car prices for what become cult classics. Cars that are otherwise pretty mundane, and have since been well surpassed.

It's the people now with full time employment, who couldn't afford them when they were 16. Now they can, and the cars in good condition are more scarce.

Re: Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament

#12

Post by flomo »

bombcar wrote: post #6
JKCalhoun wrote: post #3

Something that has been kind of funny for me, perhaps others are feeling this way: I see increasingly this "retro computing community" fawning over machines that I think of as ... just machines that I used once. Some of the machines were even kind of scorned at the time as I recall — now they're sought after, lovingly restored.... I don't know if my reaction is as one who is being made aware of just how old they are…

The key is that you used them. The retro community is for people who lusted after those machines, but we’re stuck with something much more affordable and much less powerful. And now they’re well into middle age and they have money.

You're right about the money part, but it always seemed more like a 30-year-old pursuit than middle-aged.

But once I went through Vogons and had the impression that many of them lacked any taste. A lot of PCs (and Macs) were total shite back then. If you want to dink around, you can now get the best old stuff.

Re: Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament

#15

Post by icehawk »

bombcar wrote: post #6
JKCalhoun wrote: post #3

Something that has been kind of funny for me, perhaps others are feeling this way: I see increasingly this "retro computing community" fawning over machines that I think of as ... just machines that I used once. Some of the machines were even kind of scorned at the time as I recall — now they're sought after, lovingly restored.... I don't know if my reaction is as one who is being made aware of just how old they are…

The key is that you used them. The retro community is for people who lusted after those machines, but we’re stuck with something much more affordable and much less powerful. And now they’re well into middle age and they have money.

I don't think that's entirely it. A lot of the things I've been collecting in the hobby are just things that I had used a the time. I've got more weird variants of Mac SEs and Mac LCs which were things I had at home, or used at school, than the Quadras and Power Macs I dreamed of.

Re: Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament

#16

Post by steamrolled »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #3

Something that has been kind of funny for me, perhaps others are feeling this way: I see increasingly this "retro computing community" fawning over machines that I think of as ... just machines that I used once. Some of the machines were even kind of scorned at the time as I recall — now they're sought after, lovingly restored.... I don't know if my reaction is as one who is being made aware of just how old they are…

There's a ton of hobbies like that. There are people who collect out-of-print comic books, sports memorabilia, old militaria, etc. What's the point of any of it? It's the joy of having a hobby and being a part of a community, not the utility of the gear itself.

Re: Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament

#17

Post by __del__ »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #9
dylan604 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you make a full backup of that old SCSI device to modern devices? What did you do with all of the extra space as I can only imagine how small the old SCSI device was compared with modern media sizes

Yeah, the drive was 20 or 40 MB, I think. Easily moved it all to an SD card. If anyone cares about old shareware game source code, I used the opportunity of recovering some old code to create a number of disk images (that you can mount from a modern Mac emulator like Basilisk II for example). Here is one (I think you can find the other three or so from this one): https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/SoftDorothy-Unfini…

these look great. haven't heard the name soft dorothy in ages.

Re: Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament

#19

Post by zargon »

wpm wrote: post #13

Polymaker's Panchroma Matte White is also a very close match to Classic Mac plastics. And since I didn't actually see a link to the filament in the Ars Technica article, here it is https://polarfilament.com/products/retro-platinum-pla-1kg-1-...

Panchroma Muted White is the one that is somewhat similar to the Apple platinum color. Someone sent Polymaker an RGB color code instead of a sample, so it's pretty off in reality. That would be fine, because all machines are yellowed to some degree anyway, so colors vary widely. More importantly, it's just terrible filament. Layer adhesion is virtually non-existent, compared to Polymaker's Poly Lite filaments. I have wasted so much time trying to print that awful filament. Hopefully this manufacturer is better.
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