Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trying to find meaning in owning an old Mac

blog.decryption.net.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 79 posts

Re: Trying to find meaning in owning an old Mac

#21

Post by LarryMade2 »

Suggestions for old Mac Apps to look out for:

- WriteNow! a very nice word processor that was originally developed for Next computers, before word took over it was the favorite.

- ClarisWorks/AppleWorks - One of the better pre office integrated apps - the database was REALLY easy to use, and interfaced well with the vector graphics module, spreadsheet, and word processor...

- FoxBase+/Mac - Before Microsoft bought Fox Software they got "Mac religion" and it shows in the incredible FoxBase+/Mac its amazin how much capability fits in a floppy.

- SuperPaint - great bitmap paint program though not as accurate as later graphics apps. (fractional/grid positioning was an issue)

- Ready,Set,Go! A great alternative DTP program to PageMaker/Quark. Never used others but I hear I think it was FrameMaker that had some sort of template/database feature to manage/generate catalogs. There were some interesting things back in the day.

- Stepping out - virtual larger desktop

- PowerPrint - Hook into epson compatible parallel printers with serial->parallel adapter.

- Comic Strip Factory - way before there was ComicLife there was Comic Strip Factory - a nice clipart based comic strip compositor.

- HyperCard - Never got into it but it had quite a community.

- Of course programming languages like Pascal, Logo, and BASIC in various flavors.

Of course you have the early greats like the Adobe programs and Microsoft Word/Excel/Office.

Re: Trying to find meaning in owning an old Mac

#22

Post by flomo »

userbinator wrote: post #14
PaulHoule wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old cars are even like that in performance. My son and I just bought a 1979 Ford Thunderbird which has a 5ℓ V8 engine but doesn't accelerate as well as a modern compact with a 1.5ℓ Inline 4. It is simple though, it doesn't have a lot of complex parts to repair.

That sounds like it needs a tune-up. Lots of performance parts available too for cars from that era.

I'd guess it was always a malaise-era smogdog, the same engine from a decade later was much better.

Re: Trying to find meaning in owning an old Mac

#23

Post by nivethan »

geerlingguy wrote: post #18
jojobas wrote: post #15

An old car can still drive on current roads. There's may be no aircon, only AM radio and no airbags, but there's still horsepower and size to do what cars do. Then, cars rust and naturally become rare and expensive to restore to a running state, and almost all of the appeal is that you can show off in them, displaying how much money you can afford to spend on a hobby. Old computers are pretty cheap and are limited to…

Surprisingly, a lot of the Internet is still accessible to these old dinosaurs, through the efforts of retro enthusiasts. A search engine like FrogFind reformats results for the earliest browsers like Netscape Navigator, and kind of "text modes" the pages. There's even virtual plugfests like GlobalTalk that links together retro enthusiasts' printers over the Internet.

Wow! Frogfind looks great, I've been thinking of writing my own proxy but it makes me happy to see someone has beat me to it.

Re: Trying to find meaning in owning an old Mac

#24

Post by jojobas »

geerlingguy wrote: post #18
jojobas wrote: post #15

An old car can still drive on current roads. There's may be no aircon, only AM radio and no airbags, but there's still horsepower and size to do what cars do. Then, cars rust and naturally become rare and expensive to restore to a running state, and almost all of the appeal is that you can show off in them, displaying how much money you can afford to spend on a hobby. Old computers are pretty cheap and are limited to…

Surprisingly, a lot of the Internet is still accessible to these old dinosaurs, through the efforts of retro enthusiasts. A search engine like FrogFind reformats results for the earliest browsers like Netscape Navigator, and kind of "text modes" the pages. There's even virtual plugfests like GlobalTalk that links together retro enthusiasts' printers over the Internet.

So basically "as long as another machine does the work", which would be like towing an old car on a trailer.

Re: Trying to find meaning in owning an old Mac

#25

Post by asciimov »

PaulHoule wrote: post #3
zdw wrote: post #2

The best thing about old computers is they're so damn simple, and there are a ton of projects out there to enhance them - for $50 you can get a BlueSCSI which gives you hard drive/optical/network emulation on many machines. Also, new tools are way more capable and cheap - all you need to fix an old computer with a sub-50mhz bus clock is a multimeter/scope, soldering iron, and other bits, which can easily be purchased…

Old cars are even like that in performance. My son and I just bought a 1979 Ford Thunderbird which has a 5ℓ V8 engine but doesn't accelerate as well as a modern compact with a 1.5ℓ Inline 4. It is simple though, it doesn't have a lot of complex parts to repair.

My family had a '79 Thunderbird that was our main driver from 91-97. I haven't seen any of them on the road in over a decade. I have several memories of that car.

- The water pump going out, as we drove up a mountain, and rolling back down into the drive way of a converted apple barn. Where we found a nice cleaning lady who took my dad the 20 miles into town to get a new water pump, which he replaced in that driveway and got us back on the road.

- The rear diff throwing a bearing well after midnight in the middle of nowhere west Texas. The car limped a few miles down the road to a surprisingly still open gas station. My uncle, a mechanic, happened to have the necessary parts to fix it on him. So when he picked my dad up an hour later, they went ahead and spent the rest of the overnight hours replacing it in the parking lot of that middle of nowhere gas station.

- Spending several days at various salvage yards looking for rear tail lights. They are just the right height to be taken out by shopping carts. Unfortunately the 79 is the only year that didn't have a connecting strip that goes between the left and right hand sides. In the 90's they were very hard to find, I can't imagine they are any easier today. Seriously, buy an extra set even if you don't need them.

If you ever want a to move to a modern V8, Ford's panther platform from '02-'11 are just as big, roomy, and easy to work on as that Thunderbird. Plus you'll get modern conveniences like anti-lock breaks, air-bags, and good part availability.

Re: Trying to find meaning in owning an old Mac

#26

Post by decryption »

LarryMade2 wrote: post #21

Suggestions for old Mac Apps to look out for: - WriteNow! a very nice word processor that was originally developed for Next computers, before word took over it was the favorite. - ClarisWorks/AppleWorks - One of the better pre office integrated apps - the database was REALLY easy to use, and interfaced well with the vector graphics module, spreadsheet, and word processor... - FoxBase+/Mac - Before Microsoft bought Fo…

Thanks for that info! I'm keen to get stuck into HyperCard stacks running on their native environment (not in an emulator) - so many people love HyperCard and miss it, so I look forward to seeing what the fuss is.

Re: Trying to find meaning in owning an old Mac

#27

Post by whartung »

Take an SE/30, add some mass storage (something above 20MB), plug in a postscript printer, add ClarisWorks, maybe Filemaker, and you have something that, even today, would do 80%+ of what human beings use computers for.

Outside of the internet.

Get a network adapter (which pretty sure exists for the SE/30), and, like, Eudora(?), and you MIGHT even get email. Struggle there is everyone (rightly) does email over TLS, so there’s that.

BUT, add a raspberry pi as an email gateway, telnet to it for some Lynx love, and, boy, that’s a lot of computer utility.

Glaring gaps are anything graphic intensive, notably photos, and graphical internet.

Betting there’s some nice games that run on the SE.

Re: Trying to find meaning in owning an old Mac

#28

Post by decryption »

threeio wrote: post #4

The se/30 is a beautiful machine, but it’s got some of the worst battery and cap issues, so clean it up quick :)

Oh hell yeah, that's top of my list once I crack open the case (waiting for a long T15 driver to arrive!) and poke around inside. I've got a lot of friends who have done it before, so I'll give them the board and and some money and some chocolate/beer (depending on the friend!) and ask for help with recapping the logic board.

Re: Trying to find meaning in owning an old Mac

#29

Post by floren »

userbinator wrote: post #14
PaulHoule wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old cars are even like that in performance. My son and I just bought a 1979 Ford Thunderbird which has a 5ℓ V8 engine but doesn't accelerate as well as a modern compact with a 1.5ℓ Inline 4. It is simple though, it doesn't have a lot of complex parts to repair.

That sounds like it needs a tune-up. Lots of performance parts available too for cars from that era.

These old cars can be a lot of fun but even the fast ones weren't that fast when taken against a modern family car... take a 68 Mustang, an iconic car as featured in Bullitt, with a 0-60 of 5.4 seconds and compare it to a 2012 Toyota Camry doing the same in 5.8 seconds.

https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a151426...

https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15122183/toyota-camry-...

I used to drive a 62 Studebaker. People saw an old car and asked me if it was fast. Hell no, I'd answer -- but by God it can suck fuel!

Re: Trying to find meaning in owning an old Mac

#30

Post by dgfitz »

WalterBright wrote: post #11
PaulHoule wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old cars are even like that in performance. My son and I just bought a 1979 Ford Thunderbird which has a 5ℓ V8 engine but doesn't accelerate as well as a modern compact with a 1.5ℓ Inline 4. It is simple though, it doesn't have a lot of complex parts to repair.

I enjoy my 72 Dodge, because I know what every part in it does.

Wholeheartedly agree. I’ll leave this here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44422763

“ I do a lot of work on my own vehicles. I think a lot of the responses are from people who do not. Paying for vehicle repair labor is basically a tax. They're making it harder and harder to fix your own car. I spent the afternoon yesterday trying to find headlight assemblies that didn't need to be coded to work correctly. Headlights. All the outrage about right-to-repair around here, and nobody realizes the frog is almost boiled around repairing cars.”

Post reply on HN