Hello? Is this thing on?
Published: Wednesday, 24th January 2024
Well, it’s been a few years since my last post… And a whole hell of a lot has happened in the world since January 2020!
Global pandemic aside, in February 2020 I started a new job and ended up getting distinctly sidetracked away from the world of vintage Apple Macs and retrocomputing.
That’s not to say that I didn’t do anything of note regarding the hobby. In the summer of 2020, after several years of hunting, I was very proud to play a small part in the preservation of the seminal HyperCard stack The Electronic Whole Earth Catalog. I’ll write that up in a subsequent post, but in the meantime please do go and check it on Internet Archive, it is immense!
My posting today was prompted by my seeing in passing that today is the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Macintosh. A banner day, indeed, and motivation enough to dust off the site log-in and make a post. Happy birthday Mac!
I’ve actually been getting back into the Macintosh hobby for the last few months. I recently had a clear out of a lot of old Macs and Mac software as part of a desire following a house move to thin out the sheer volume of Stuff I had stacked up in storage.
I’d already off-loaded most of my Mac computers when I moved a couple of years ago but I still had a formidable pile of old treasure that I had accumulated over a decade or more of solid eBaying. Painful as it was to part with a lot of these exceedingly rare bits (not least to mention the Apple PC Compatibility Card…), it was also quite cathartic and the very nice stack of cash it generated softened the blow significantly.
So, I’ve thinned out to a much-streamlined collection, and that’s rekindled my interest. I currently have my trusty G4 MDD PowerMac tower set up alongside a Performa 5320 all-in-one, giving me coverage from OS 7.6.1 through 9.2.2, the true Golden Age of classic Mac OS, imo.
I’ve been laboriously backing up approximately 600 or more Mac magazine cover CDs, spanning 1994 through to the mid-2000s, dragging and dropping the CDs to an external drive on the MDD. Slow work but satisfying to see the drive gradually fill up with a couple hundred GB of Macintosh software, which I intend to eventually archive and make available. I’ve still got a couple hundred CDs left to back up, so it’ll be a while.
Anyway, that’ll do for now. I’ll try and get back into the habit of posting!
so glad to hear you’re happy and healthy and posting again! many happy returns, friend!
Welcome back! I have been clearing out a collection of Macs that I’ve accumulated over the years so I know how bittersweet it can be. I had 3 storage units full and am reducing down to only the G3 and G4 Macs.