Saint Softalk dot Mac

Softalk was one of the most highly regarded computer magazines focused on the Apple II series of computers, running from September 1980 until August 1984. They’ve been mentioned here before. In the later years, however, the publishers branched out to a couple of other platforms. There was a second magazine […]

Bell & Howell: Power test, and the outlines of a crazy plan

On the Bell & Howell front, I have now cleaned it all up, and reassembled it. In the process, I found this stamped under the keyboard, which pretty definitively indicates that I was right about this being an August, 1981, machine. (Further evidence that the “8138” really does mean “38th […]

iMac G4 1GHz moves upstairs

I moved the 1GHz iMac G4 upstairs and installed Leopard on it today. Not much going on there yet, and it is on the network via DHCP (so doesn’t have a stable IP address), but I can screen share into it from my office iMac, which I can screen share […]

What is it with people?

I also don’t approve of this: [Photo credit: macgeek on instructables.com, hosted here.] But it is mitigated (slightly) by the fact that one of the people responsible for doing this to a G4 Cube at least put the (working!) parts up on eBay. Here, incidentally, is my new-to-me G4 Cube. […]

More thoughts on HDD replacements, with boring table

I’ve been exploring drive replacement options for the various machines that I have and which might need drive replacements, and I’m finding a surprisingly small amount of information about exactly what all of the drive options really are. This is a much more complex task than I’d originally given it […]

Brainstorming about the iMac G4 as an auxiliary display

So, I have a number of 15″ iMac G4 machines, some of the 800Mhz/512MB variety and at least one of the 1GHz/512MB variety. The 800Mhz machines are capable of booting Mac OS 9.2.2, and are among the last machines Apple made that can, although my G4 MDD is about the […]

Rambling about modern usefulness of vintage machines

So, I’ve been collecting a bunch of vintage machines, mostly because of the nostalgia value, but practically speaking, what good are they? What realistically might ever lead me to turn one of them on? Some of these are just visually appealing (the G3 and G4 iMacs, the G4 Cube), or […]

Polishing the lamps

Things that come from computer recyclers tend to be a little on the grimy side. So, I spent a little while cleaning up all five of the iMac G4s and checking to see if they worked. A couple of them appear not to have hard drives in them. Really, none […]

iMac population explosion

Before today, I had a graphite iMac DV/SE which got pretty badly cracked during shipping. And I had a iMac G4 (which is currently kind of cutely perched atop my IIgs, Snoopy-style). Today’s trip to the computer recycler (a different one from the one I visited last time) yielded quite […]

ImageWriter II

The next up in the line of things that I have re-bought after having had, then dopily disposed of, is an ImageWriter II. It arrived today, and I wasn’t sure what to expect, really, given the description in the auction. But, I expect the description helped it be at least […]