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Old Macs As Terminals
batwingTM asks: "Hey, I've have this old Mac Classic (the first computer that was completly mine) that I really wanted to do something with... It was suggested that I make it an aquarium (I remember After Dark for the Mac with "fish") but I also heard that it is possible to turn it into a simple terminal. I have a few Linux powered machines in the house and the thought of being able to access them from a terminal in the kitchen and/or bathroom seems appealing. So, I was wondering is anyone out there knows how this can be achieved?"
Please check out these HOWTO's
a l-HOWTO.html
r minal.html
http://www.linux.org/help/ldp/howto/Text-Termin
http://www.linux.org/help/ldp/howto/mini/Mac-Te
The latter answers your question!
To all people writing to Ask Slashdot:
Please check the HOWTO's before asking these silly questions, or in other words RTFM.
i still have my original Mac 1984 running somewhere at home with the system on an external 20MB HD.... If you'd like the system software, I'd be more than happy to send you a copy, but I need to get it on 800K floppies, and I'm having a tough time finding them. I also have a bunch of old 5 1/4's for my Apple II, Infocom stuff, Bards Tale, etc... but I'm REALLY looking for a copy of the old Galactic Trilogy (Empire,Trader,Revolution).... oh the memories
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
I believe that is the OS that I am running on the machine mentioned below this thread... Sorry....
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
If you want to keep running MacOS you basically have two choices:
1. Get a terminal program and a suitable null modem cable. Follow the text-terminal howto (or whatever) and you're go. I've tried old SEs with ZTerm and Kermit (ZTerm was nice:)
2. Get ConfigPPP and the works and set up a PPP link. Then fetch NCSA Telnet or BetterTelnet.
Jeez, thats a long uptime! 16 years? With a Mac?
Psst.. its a joke
You don't need ethernet to use it as a dumb terminal, just Zterm and a serial cable.
--
Hmmm... I've got an old one where the motherboard was completely trashed, the keyboard had several bad keys, and the case was done. (It was from my high school, and had spent a number of years first in the computer lab, then was retired to the electronics classroom.) Suffice it to say that it was trashed.
I welded the little holes on the bottom of the case shut, painted the inside with POR-15 epoxy, and filled it with kitty litter. My cat loves it, and it's a real conversation piece in my bathroom.
not even OS.If the ROM chips are still socketed on the motherboard, you still have an OS.
Type "pr#3" at a command prompt. If that doesn't make the floppy drive try to read, then type "pr#6". It one of the pr numbers, I can't remember which. If you try all of them in sequence, you'll find the floppy controller, the 80-column card (if you have it), etc.
From there, all you'll need is a little bit of software in the drive. I'm sure someone somewhere has written a program that will allow you to use a modern computer to format a 5.25" disk in Apple II format, then you should be able to download and copy something to it.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Wow. That takes me back. I knew it was either pr#3 or pr#6.
I can't believe that last time I actually used one of these things, I was in Grade 3. 1983. And I can't believe that I still sorta remembered the command. Spooky, ain't it?
I remember running Bank Street Writer, Gertrude's Boots, and a couple of video games that we'd snuck in. Man oh man, that takes me back.
I remember that the disk drives were attached to the controller with small ribbon cables; no additional leads for power. And, looking back at it now, I know the drives were just modified Shugarts with Apple stickers glued on.
I also remember one of them failing once. As improbable as this sounds - and maybe I remember it wrong - I remember the classroom started to stink of plastic burning. And I remember the teacher pulling a smoking diskette out of the drive. I don't remember if the disk was melted or not; looking back on it, I suspect someone stuck something metal into the drive and it fried something, and the smoke just happened to be around the diskette as it came out of the drive.
It took me years to get over my fear of 5.25" disk drives. 8" and 11" drives still give me the heebie-jeebies.
BTW, anybody remember the DuoDrives? Looked nifty, but damn if you weren't screwed if one went down.Yup. But there are lots of things like that now. I never used a DuoDrive, but I can imagine that the mechanism just mates up to a custom faceplate. How is that different from the disk drive on any notebook computer, or for that matter, lots of the highly-stylized HP Pavilions and stuff today? I agree it's still icky, but proprietary parts obviously have a long history in the computer industry.
On the other hand, I'd love to put a power eject floppy drive onto my computer, a la Macintosh.
When I used a Mac, they laughed because I had no command prompt. When I used Linux, they laughed because I had no GUI.When I used an Amiga, they laughed because my command prompt was in my GUI.
And I had to mount and unmount my disks.
And the disk drive ticked every two seconds.
Bastards.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I think I'd be a KarmaWhore, if anyone read these articles... :P
Classic Series
Status on some of these machines is unknown. In specific, we have confirmed boots of the SE/30 and Classic II. SCSI and serial should work on all these machines. CUDA-style ADB (all but SE/30) is working in several kernels. At this point in time, all models must have a FPU. Please note that a Classic II is also known as a Performa 200.
Current status on Color Classic is unknown.
-------------------- Hmmm... what does this button d
PowerPC with a PCI bus? Go with Yellow Dog Linux or LinuxPPC.
PowerPC with a NuBus bus? Go with MkLinux. That's what I use.
Old mac like the one that you mention? Try out Linux m68k.
The m68k is the processor of pre-PowerPCs. Supposedly, Red Hat, Debian, and Whiteline have distributions with the Linux m68k processor. I'm anxious to try these out because I have a old Mac beast that has three 68k processors. This thing will fly!!!! I doubt that you'll get any window manager to run. It may only be useful as a terminal. My triprocessor will be useful as three terminals ;-)
Keeping