Finally got around to installing Mini vMac onto my iPad Pro. It defaults to 1x speed which feels like molasses on such a powerful device

Making real boot disks for the Apple //c feels like falling in a time warp 💾

Happy to report I was able to do some writing on my Mac Plus running System 6 without it crashing 😆

Attempted to do some casual writing on Mac OS 9, and it crashed after a page. Guess it’s back to System 6 I go 😆

It’s fun to revisit Widget Workshop as an adult. I think this game is what laid the foundation for me being a software developer

Happy to have a titanium PowerBook G4 again. This is easily my favorite laptop industrial design ever

Using MacPaint is very strange. It’s largely the same as modern raster editors, but all the small details are different. For instance, cmd+s does not save, but makes text “shadow” style

This weekend’s project: setting up a Raspberry Pi Zero W to act as a bridge to the modern internet for my retro computers. Ended up being more involved than I expected, the telnetd that Debian ships is incompatible with the WiModem232. Busybox’s telnetd was the solution

Ordered a new battery and solid state drive for my touch wheel iPod. Should be a fun little project to do in the new year

Sad times – my last gen PowerBook G4 cannot connect to our new WiFi router. No support for WPA 2 😕

For anyone looking to replace the HDD in a PowerBook 150 with a Compact Flash card: you need an “industrial grade” card. The 150 will not recognize drives with their removable bit set to 1. Industrial grade cards are typically marked as unremovable

The correct power supply and hard drive replacement for the PowerBook 150 arrived today. With any luck, I’ll have it up and running by the end of this week!

Continuing my informal quest to own all of the portables I had growing up. This PowerBook 150 is mostly working. It needs a hard drive replacement and some floppy drive service, but otherwise seems to be in good shape. Can’t wait to play some Shufflepuck Cafe!

Picked up a mouse for the //c. Didn’t expect it to come in its original box in like-new condition

I rekajiggered the cables on my Commodore monitor so that my Apple //c video is in monochrome green phosphor. Takes me right back to having one as a kid, though the official monitor that goes with it has a much clearer picture 🤫

Honestly a bit shocked that Executor still works more or less perfectly on Windows 10 when run as administrator

Couldn’t resist trying to run GEOS on the //c. Unfortunately I don’t have a mouse or joystick right now, so there’s not much interactivity. Something to revisit in the future

Got the Apple //c booting to a floppyemu! Unfortunately it cannot boot from most external drives natively, so I had to unplug the 5 1/4 inch internal floppy drive and run a cable out the back of the machine to the floppyemu. It works though!

The Apple //c has alps switches, it is an absolute joy to type on ❤️

I’m starting on an Apple //c adventure. I’ve got 2 now. The 1st unit I got turned out to not work. It boots to a screen full of colors, and that’s it. The 2nd unit works, and through it I was able to determine the 1st unit is booting into self test, and then crashing

Finally bit the bullet and bought Affinity Designer, and I’m amazed at how full featured it is for an iOS app! There’s really very little reason for me to turn on my Mac these days. It’s either to copy files to/from an SD card, to print something, or to scan something. Once I can do those from my iPad, I think it’ll be the only computer I use

Guess it’s time to relive my childhood, bought an Apple //c

It absolutely blows my mind I can browse the modern web on a PPC-based Mac from 2005. TenFourFox is really an amazing project

My long weekend project: getting music onto this 2nd gen iPod. Surprisingly difficult since I had to both find a software update package, and a version of iTunes that still works on OS X 10.4/PPC

I forgot how much I love the keyboard on the PowerBook G4. I’m sure it’s in part that I have had this particular machine a long time, but it still feels super pleasant to type on, and I don’t make many mistakes

Oh wow. The new iPad Pro really does feel like a device from the future

Got a set of drawers and tidied up my retro corner. Still a work in progress, but most of my collection is now in one easy to access place. Thinking I need some theme appropriate stuff on the walls next 🤔

I’ve been thinking it might be a good idea to proactively replace the hard drive in my PowerBook 2400 with a solid state drive. I finally got around to looking at the repair manual, and nope – not going to happen until it absolutely has to! I’m very glad it’s the only moving part inside the machine

After a relative searched through their old disks, a Discman driver has been found! If anyone happens to need a Mac driver for their Sony Discman, drop me a line 😆

Does a machine with modern networking, but a dead architecture count as retro in any sense yet? 🤔

Friday night? Time for some old school AppleTalk networking

I am super pleased to have a complete vintage PowerBook set up. This 2400c came with an Ethernet card, portable(!) SCSI CD-ROM, external floppy drive, 2 spare batteries, and assorted cables

I have never seen rubber feet perish so thoroughly before. They are the consistency of caramel

It’s more a novelty than anything else, but there is a (sorta functional) Apple I emulator for the C64

Taking apart a compact Mac is vaguely terrifying

maxed out my titanium PowerBook G4’s ram at 1GB! while I already had more than enough memory for retro Mac OS games – 768MB – this should hopefully make Leopard run Not Like Total Crap

at the prompting of a friend, I found a shell program for my SE/30

less esoteric, but more novel. running vim on the last PowerBook capable of booting Classic Mac OS