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Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

howtogeek.com

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Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#91

Post by ulzeraj »

toadi wrote: post #61

because I didn't have a lot of money I was working on a 486 when pentiums were the normal. I used a pentium when most where on pentium 3. thank god for linux to make my computers workable. Mail: mutt, Editor: vim, actually most like newsgroups, irc, .. all had cli clients. Only netscape was run in a very lightweight window manager like blackbox. good thing about that in my teens is that I learned a shit load about co…

Same here. I was using a Pentium 3 Coppermine with a Voodoo 3 PCI GPU running Slackware while all my friends had fancy Athlon XPs and Geforces. The motherboard went bad (back then the capacitor plague was a thing) and after a few months without a computer I said fuck it and just soldered a new capacitor where the old one was bloated. I'm so bad at soldering and it was such an ugly job.

But then it booted! I was so proud of myself. I was a poor kid and computers were expensive and I just had brought my machine back to life.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#92

Post by mnl »

nordsieck wrote: post #74
emersonrsantos wrote: post #55

George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write the Game of Thrones novels, he saves his work on floppy disks. Of course, he has a second computer for email and web browsing.

> George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write the Game of Thrones novels A much better modern alternative is the Alphasmart Neo 2. * It was designed for elementary school children so it's decently rugged. * It runs a long time (months) on 2 AA batteries. * To get the text off the device, it impersonates a USB keyboard, making it compatible with basically every computer.

He likes WordStar 4.0. There are people who like WordPerfect for DOS, Word 5.1 for Mac or even XyWrite.

It's fairly easy (not always cheap) to get almost any old computer you could think of in very good condition to run the programs you like without further hassles. This can make a lot of sense because sometimes there are hassles associated to virtualisation/emulation/modern hardware.

Maybe you feel at home using WordStar 4.0 + VGA text mode in a CRT monitor. If that's the case, you can't beat the ease and responsiveness of a DOS computer. I have this conviction that there's nothing wrong with that.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#93

Post by acqq »

mkeeter wrote: post #32
linguae wrote: post #28

One of the things I miss about older laptops is the keyboards. I would love to buy a laptop that is built like a PowerBook G4 or a ThinkPad X61 but with modern displays and modern internals, and with extra bonus points if it has user-replaceable batteries and user-serviceable storage and RAM. I've found the Thinkpad X62 ( https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/ ) and X210 ( https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/03/04/t…

Have you seen the MNT Reform? https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2020-05-08-the-much-more-p... It's not as powerful as most modern laptops (uses an iMX8 SOM, rather than an x86 CPU), but it's got a full keyboard, trackball (!), replaceable batteries, etc.

For anybody like me who didn't know: the mentioned iMX8 is NXP's

"i.MX 8M Family - Arm® Cortex®-A53, Cortex-M4, Audio, Voice, Video"

https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers...

And:

"i.MX8M has four 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 cores, an additional Cortex-M4F core, faster PCIe, USB3.0, a better GPU, and much higher memory bandwidth."

https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2019-05-20-reintroducing-r...

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#94

Post by awiesenhofer »

lostgame wrote: post #29

Hey; me, too! I use my iMac G4 and PowerMac G5 (with 16GB RAM and 2x1TB SSDs) daily. Love ‘em. Thank God for TenFourFox!

that powermac sounds like a great machine - what are you using it and the imac for if i may ask?

i have an old Imac g4 too, but apart from games i haven't gotten around to use it for anything productive...

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#95

Post by caf »

jeffbee wrote: post #15
icedchai wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My uncle was using a 25+ year old PC running DOS and WordPerfect up until he passed away last year. I think he enjoyed the distraction free environment.

Is there a word for such long-lived computers that aren't hobbies? "Retrocomputing" is people goofing around. A person who drives a 1995 Honda is probably not a "retromobility enthusiast". Maybe at some point in our future it won't seem weird to use a 25-year-old computer.

I saw an early 90s Ford with "historic" plates the other day...

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#96

Post by pjmlp »

jandrese wrote: post #20

> In fact, for reasons I’m yet to discern, my iBook’s internal AirPort Wi-Fi card can’t connect to modern Wi-Fi networks—they simply confound it. WPA2 was standardized a year after his laptop was built. The ancient 802.11b card in it wants to do WEP. Getting driver support for a modern USB WiFi on that prehistoric version of OSX is no picnic either. It's a good thing he doesn't want to get it working.

Given that many coffee shops still offer only WEP access points, bought once never upgraded, not sure what is worst.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#99

Post by MrZammler »

zelos wrote: post #97

> Of course, it goes without saying that my ancient iBook can’t run Slack Out of interest, I wonder what the minimum spec to run an IRC client is?

Depends on the platform, but I used to run AmIRC on an Amiga with a modest 68030 @ 50 Mhz :-) I think it did run ok also on a stock A1200 with a 14(!)Mhz 68020 processor and a couple of MB's of RAM.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#100

Post by Jaruzel »

mnl wrote: post #92
nordsieck wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write the Game of Thrones novels A much better modern alternative is the Alphasmart Neo 2. * It was designed for elementary school children so it's decently rugged. * It runs a long time (months) on 2 AA batteries. * To get the text off the device, it impersonates a USB keyboard, making it compatible with basically every computer.

He likes WordStar 4.0. There are people who like WordPerfect for DOS, Word 5.1 for Mac or even XyWrite. It's fairly easy (not always cheap) to get almost any old computer you could think of in very good condition to run the programs you like without further hassles. This can make a lot of sense because sometimes there are hassles associated to virtualisation/emulation/modern hardware. Maybe you feel at home using Wor…

I put together a 'RRMartin' setup on an old laptop - booting into DOS and then auto launching WordStar 4.0. I can see how appealing it would be for focused writing (I'm still trying to find my perfect set up for writing).

I also toyed with releasing the setup as a USB boot image, but the copyright on WordStar is still very much active :(

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