Young People Try a Mac from 1996!

[James]

Windows may have changed a lot over time, but old-school Mac OS was a COMPLETELY different beast to modern-day macOS. Can our youthful subjects figure out how to do anything with a system older than they are?

 

 

 

[Uttamattamakin]

If you haven't already thought of it.  Young people use a LINUX variant from the late 1990's.  I'd suggest Caldera Open Linux.  It was mainstream enough to buy in a box from Best Buy.  Yet things like say your printer or modem working was still a crap shoot unless you were super careful in what you bought.  As I recall some mainstream commercial software existed for Linux back then that does not exist now.   Simple things like an official Adobe reader.

Funny how some things were easier with older OS's while other things were harder.

What makes me feel old is hearing people refer to a mid-late 90's Mac as old.  For me in elementary school it was Apple II / IIGS if lucky, and a Coleco Adam computer... basically a game console with add ons that made it a computer.   Then latter a Tandy 1000RL with Deskmate.  Those were all both more limited yet in a way also easier. 

[LloydLynx]

As a young person that rescued a PowerMac G4 off the side of the road years ago, I can't wait to watch this. I installed OS9 and it became my favorite computer for a long time. I fell in love with the UI and work flow. Tried to replicate it with Linux, but could never get it just right.

[Zodiark1593]

I definitely remember hold-to-select menu scheme, back when I played on my Grandma’s Macintosh Performa, when I was about 4 years old. 
 

Back then, there was an atlas program (that was on CD) that I would frequently play with. There was also the game Power Pete I used to play on it, though never particularly liked it. BTW, to eject a disc, you dragged the program to the trash can. 
 

My old elementary school also had some Macintosh systems (pre-iMac). Along with stuff like typing games, and dot to dot, there were games such as Oregon Trail, and Super Solvers Outnumbered. 

[iggy12345]

I bought an Apple IIgs at VCF midwest last weekend, and I love it! Doesn't have all the bells and whistles that this thing does, but it's still great! Emily probably knows about this, but you can use a search engine called frog find, a search engine for vintage computers that allows you to browse the modern internet.

 

It was made by this guy:

 

[dmmsta]

Can someone tell me the game that Sarah & Horst played

 

 

it’s so familiar from my childhood, but the name escapes me…

[KiHuld]

44 minutes ago, dmmsta said:

Can someone tell me the game that Sarah & Horst played

 

 

it’s so familiar from my childhood, but the name escapes me…

Another World (or "Out of This World")

[dmmsta]

1 minute ago, KiHuld said:

Another World (or "Out of This World")

Bingo - thank you so much!!!

[Kilrah]

Heh, having to browse the filesystem to the apps folder to launch things definitely will throw people off. One common trick was to make a shortcut to the Applications folder and drop it into the System Folder/Apple Menu folder, then you got an approximation of a start menu... but that'd be a "power user" move. Also some apps would install to the HD root instead of the Applications folder as can be seen in the video so you'd have to know to move them to have that easy access to everything (which would usually work, unlike in the PC world).

 

 

Our school had Mac Pluses, and we had one at home since my dad was a teacher and all schools were Mac back then thanks to the "generous" discounts Apple were giving schools to get people used to the system hoping they'd buy their own later.

[Sousuke]

I love vintage Macs, especially from the "Lost Era" as it's called. 

 

I only own one a Macintosh Performa 532, the one I have is running Mac OS 8.1 but originally ran System 7.5.1. It can run Mac OS 9.1 but is a machine from the same time as the one used in this video.

 

 

[themrsbusta]

I would totally appreciate to see a Mac-expert like Horst building a PC with no help...

Linus, can make it happen?

[Needfuldoer]

Oh boy, old Macs! My special interest!

 

1:08 That's a 72 pin SIMM, not the onboard memory. The 475/476/Q605 logic board had 4 megs onboard, and could take up to a 128 meg SIMM.

 

1:10 That's VRAM, not system RAM. That machine can take up to 1 MB of video memory, giving you 8 bit color at 1024x768 or 16 bit color at 800x600 or below. What you have are two 256k VRAM SIMMs, giving you 16 colors at 1024x768 or 256 colors at 800x600 and below.

 

Linus's VO is correct ("with a 16 meg stick installed, with a whopping 512 kilobytes of video memory"), so I assume this happened in editing.

 

The premise is "watch young people flail with System 7.5", but Emily's not a contestant...

 

Horst and Sarah have good taste; the rocks was always my go-to stock desktop pattern on System 7.5.

 

How did you set up the proxy? TheOldNet?

[power666]

I'll second the error between identifying the system memory and the VRAM.   There is 4 MB of on board memory and you can see it between the single 72 pin SIMM slot and the two VRAM slots.  Practical limit is 68 MB of RAM as I haven't seen a single 128 MB 72 pin SIMM but have encountered a 64 MB unit.  I have seen a slot adapter that would connect two 72 pin SIMMs into a single 72 pin slot.  The gotcha here is that such an adapter wouldn't let you close the chassis due to this system's small size, limiting you to 68 MB in total.

 

I also hope that some one there also figured out that old school classic Mac OS didn't dynamically allocate memory for you.  That extra 16 MB SIMM installed isn't going to be used unless you manually assign RAM to an application prior to launching it.  (Select the application in the Finder and then Get Info under the Finder's File menu.)  If you had the extra RAM, things generally were snappier even on this old hardware.  Even to this day Apple ships about half the amount of RAM that they should on every system for their baseline.  

 

For those seeking ultimate performance and had the RAM to spare, these systems can boot off of a RAM disk.  This would improve load times dramatically for games.

1:55 This machine could run System 8.1 however, a little bit more advanced than System 7.5.5, in particular the improved Finder.

9:00 Should've pulled up a game of Bolo if you wanted to know what retro Mac gaming was like in the early '90s.  Then again, I did see Marathon which would have been since to see played since Bungie is dusting off that old series for a new installment soon.

[danwat1234]

@Emily Young How would one set up seamless browsing thru the Wayback machine? 12:00

 

SimpleText to speech was so annoying for the teachers at my school. Probably someone has made a web version of it

[Irukandji]

I would of put At Ease on the old mac. It would been a big shock for old timers.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease

[silentdragon95]

I actually took my first steps in the computer world on Mac OS 9, which isn't so much different from Mac OS 7. I still have a soft spot for classic Mac OS, although I can certainly see why people who never used it would struggle with it

 

There was a time where I was hoarding vintage Macs (as well as some other old computers), and I still own a Performa 5200 (which used to be my grandmas), a beige G3, a B/W G3 (which was the one I took my first steps with as a child), a pink iMac G3, a G4, and a G5 (which is unfortunately the ill-fated Late 2004 entry-level one, complete with random system freezes, yay). There's also a Power Macintosh 8100/110, which I believe has a dead power supply (it was originally working when I got it) as well as a 7100/66AV which was never working so IDK what the issue with it is. I haven't really had the time to touch most of them in years though, which is a bummer (but don't worry, there are no clock batteries in them, as those tend to leak).

 

Oh, and let's not forget the trusty old Apple LaserWriter 4/600PS, the only printer that has literally always worked whenever called upon, despite being left unused in the basement for years at a time. I firmly believe that it is the only printer in existence that is not inherently evil. Unfortunately it lacks an ethernet port, so using it requires setting up the beige G3 (since it's the newest Mac to have the AppleTalk port) with an FTP server to send PDFs to. It's, well, somewhat inconvenient, but it has saved me a number of times back in school when all of the three other printers in the house refused to work.

[Middcore]

On 9/21/2023 at 2:57 PM, danwat1234 said:

@Emily Young How would one set up seamless browsing thru the Wayback machine? 12:00

 

I am going to guess it was done very similarly to this video