Slashdot Mirror
Where Old Macs Go To Thrive
foghorn666 writes "Still have an old all-in-one Mac buried in your basement somewhere? Wired reports that Japanese collectors are paying a premium for the 'toasters,' including $500 for a HD-less Mac SE and $1000 for a used Newton."
Confession #2: I use the poor little thing regularly. Honest. Over time, it's become my word processing machine of choice (w/ Word 5.1, of course). Some people can't write unless they're seated in front of a manual typewriter -- yes, I have one of those, too: a cast-iron Royal relic -- but me? I need my Classic.
For whatever reason, it gets me in the writing mood. Maybe it's because the experience is so focused: the WP completely fills the little 9" screen, so there aren't any distractions to worry about. No email. No IM. No surfing. Heck, not even color.
Sorry, Japan. I'm keeping my lil' box. =)
"People care about Macintosh," Lee said. "I have no Windows PC customers."
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that MIGHT be because you have no Windows PC's for sale.
I initially picked up my 8mhz, 1-bit display powerhouse down at the local goodwill as a kind of novelty. I thought it might be cool to bring back childhood memories. When I got it home and turned it on, the happy little mac face on the 9" black and white display was somehow pleasing. I got to rummaging around and the thing had a whole slew of software on it. Word, Pagemaker, Eudora... you name it. The version of word that shipped back then is sweet (can't remember the version number).
And then I found the games. The games they made back then were perfect. Simple, fun, and addicting. If you have never played the game Crystal Quest, you have not lived.
Eventually I became obsessed with getting the thing on the internet. I searched on e-bay for a network card that would work with the thing (well... actually i needed an external scsi box). I finally found one that would work, but the next day at work, i stumbled acroos the same box in storage. Some hours later, the mac classic was on net! Problem is, only mosaic www 1 ran on the thing (it runs system 6), and it's unusably unstable. So my good friend lynx came to rescue. I simply telnet to my linux box (sorry, no ssh for this puppy) and surf away. I actually use it to code on when I'm getting really distracted by other more full-featured computers.
At any rate, I highly suggest even the most hardened anti-apple among you to pick up a mac classic, an SE/30, or any of the compact models and see what you can do with it.
wiki = _[^o^]_