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 | Re: Cool! | |
| Posted By: Jorge | Date: 2/16/05 4:00 p.m. |
| In Response To: Cool! *NM* (Bob-B-Q) My second purchased Mac, which was an LC 575. http://www.apple-history.com/frames/body.php?page=gallery&model=575 This machine lives on today, emulated by Basilisk II on my current gaming PC (a homebuilt job which sits next to my G4 MDD). I wrote a little article/story about saving the soul of my trusty LC575 a while back, which I kept even though I bought a G3 266 desktop to replace it. Here is the story in its full glory for those who want to kill a few minutes before going on to the next post. It was written a few years ago, and my G3 is now gone, replaced by a G4. ---------- My Mac Lives On – A true story of the soul of a machine - by Jorge The first Mac I ever used was a Mac Classic, I think. I’m not really sure, as it certainly was a long time ago. But I do remember having to check out a boot floppy from the college computer lab help desk and placing it in the machine (which had no hard drive) in order for it to boot up. In those days, that was the only way to work on a Mac to get that darn paper you needed to write done. MacWrite was the latest in word processor technology at the labs, and what a thrill it was to work on a paper and not need to have a bottle of “White-Out” always handy. And oh the beautiful printout that the ImageWriter could produce with Palatino selected as the font. The computer help desk promptly informed me I had to go buy my own floppy and create my own boot disk, as they dutifully notified me that the lab was open during hours that the desk was not, and if I wanted to get that paper done at 3 AM, I had better have my own boot floppy. So that is how I ended up making my first computer related purchase ever. My very own 800K floppy. (I even decided to splurge on a name-brand floppy, instead of the cheaper generic one… just in case.) You have to understand… I really hated computers at that point in my life. My god. Who would pay close to $2500 dollars (not including a printer), when my Olivetti portable typewriter which I bought at the Salvation Army could really do the same thing for the $30 I paid for it. I thought about all the “White-Out” I could purchase with the money I had saved. But, since our college had just received a $100,000 donation of Macs from Apple, as they were trying to infiltrate the education market, I figured: “Hell, if they will let me use one for free… why not?”. Well… probably for the same reason you don’t try crack cocaine. I was SOOOO happy with my Olivetti, and now I was hopelessly addicted to a small black and white screen which ran something called system 6. (I think it was system 6… could have been something earlier.) Before I knew it I was madly trying to figure out how the hell I could ever raise the money to buy one of my own. It took three years, and I signed my name in blood to my father for a loan, but eventually I could get my very own box. And it was the perfect box for me… for anyone. The very first color Mac that was affordable to the masses. The LC. I was in love. COLOR! After my first encounter with a IIfx (my god, what a speed demon), I knew I wanted color. I needed color. Shades of gray were not enough for me, and I got what I wanted. $2200 dollars for the box and $349 dollars for a printer, a brand new technology which was revolutionizing the printer industry… inkjet. Looked as good as a LaserWriter, but costing hundreds less, and I got one of the first one’s to come out. The HP Deskwriter. I also threw caution to the wind and installed the latest untried operating system, System 7. My god… I felt like an astronaut. I was so in love with my new machine, I even bought a case for it so I could take it with me everywhere. A padded case for the LC in which the monitor fit, and it had a side pocket for my floppies. “What the hell for?”, I thought, “with a 20MB HardDrive, I’ll probably have to spend my entire life working before I need some additional space.” SIDEBAR: This HP Deskwriter has proven to be as reliable as a Russian tank. Even now, it sits on my desk, printing out my drafts and anything in black and white which I ask it to. It’s over ten years old now, and it still won’t abandon me. Personally, I think it has the 9 ½ weeks syndrome… so I’m not about to unplug it anytime soon for fear of my life. Well, how fleeting the good times are… computers have woefully short lives. It’s like trying to raise a colony of fruit flies. Go to the bathroom and come back, and they are already three generations into their cycle. UGH. I knew this was going to be an expensive habit. I knew that I was going to abandon my first Mac. Like getting rid of your first girlfriend, it’s the most painful thing you’ll ever have to do. I was still VERY short on cash, and the prospect of a new computer was daunting. I managed to get a good bit of measure out of my LC, as I sold it to a business man who wanted a second machine for $800. Halfway to the price of the monster of a machine I had my eye on. The LC 575. I was still in love with the “compact” computer concept which Apple had implanted in my brain, and the LC 575 was without a doubt the perfect machine. An original Mac on steroids. Everything you need in one nice compact unit, with glorious color like I had never seen before. (Didn’t even have to buy a printer either! ) In very short order, the LC 575 became my most passionate friend. I finally had the horsepower to run the music software on my own machine. And that machine was where I wrote 75% of the music that is now released on my two CD’s I have made. I splurged big time and spent $300 to upgrade the RAM to 12MB, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Guilty thoughts of abandonment regarding my trusty LC were long gone, and I could only please my new mistress. Ahhh… true love. (The purchase of a blazingly fast 9600 modem and the discovery of online BBS’s was the beginning of the end of my free time… or so I mistakenly thought. A greater foe was on the horizon, to be sure.) Enter the G3 product line. Very impressive, and enticing. But I bit my lip and remained faithful to my 575. It fulfilled all my needs. My music was flowing, it did everything I asked, why would I need a G3… really? Why?
A little explanation is probably in order now. I am a product of the 80’s video game generation. Have you seen those 80’s movies with the cool arcades and kids pumping quarters into Defender and Dig-Dug and Asteroids. I was in that movie… and really, still am to this day. So when surfing the net one day, (the days of BBS’s were winding down, and this “new” thing called the web was being touted as the next great thing), I came across the answer to my prayers, and the beginning of my spiral all at once. I literally fell off my seat, knelt down, and thanked God for all the good tidings he had just sent me. MacMAME OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! Here was- FOR FREE -the ability to play every single arcade game (almost) I had grown up with in perfect emulation. These were not copies of the games, they were the REAL thing. Saved and archived in the manner of downloadable ROMS. And all I needed to do was spend a couple of hours downloading on my blazingly fast new 33.6 modem. There was one slight problem however… MacMAME needed horsepower… and lots of it. I looked at my LC 575, and I honestly thought I heard it whimper. You know… like the *sigh* that Charlie Brown makes when he’s given up all hope? I was heartless and cruel. I needed that G3 now. Before I had simply lusted for it. Now it became a necessity for me, like food and water, and my LC 575 didn’t stand a chance against this primordial urge. It was getting dumped, and it knew it. I took out a loan and bought the G3. A 266mHz Beige Desktop model, and I went all the way with the monitor too, getting a 19” monster. Sure, I justified myself like all guilty lovers do by trotting out a hundred reasons why I got the new machine… but in secret… my 575 and I knew deep down that it was all about MacMAME. The LC 575 went in the closet, and I promptly forgot about it. Who could think of an LC 575, when I had a brand new G3 staring me in the face, with Robotron running smooth as silk on the 19” monitor? That was a couple of years ago, and the G3 (which was a while ago overclocked to 333mHz and fitted with 200+ megs of RAM, maxed internal video memory and a Voodoo2 card) still sits under my desk. It now serves as the control center for my home recording studio. I have an iBook which my school allows me to use, and that is my day-to-day Mac. It’s beatiful.
As fate would have it, while looking through my closet the other day for some old pictures, I came upon my old LC 575. Dusty, dejected, practically unusable… I took it out and plugged it in, for old times sake. The battery was gone on it. I barely was able to manage to reformat the drive and install a fresh copy of 8.1 on it. The screen seemed so small, and I wept when I thought of the horrible way I had discarded it in my passion for faster, better, sexier. I had to make it up to it… it deserved better. Upgrade? Not even thinkable. It was so old. I don’t have space for it on my desk, and I have no money for those kind of things… it was out of the question. So how do I bring back my old friend from the dead, to sit beside me so I can converse with it and console it for my evil treatment of it? In an ironic twist of fate the likes of which is the stuff of legends and great novels… the LC 575’s demise, would also be it’s rebirth. Emulation. Finally!!! The Athlon would get to do service to it’s master in an honorable way. It would be the container for the spirit of my 575. Like Dr. Frankenstein trying to conjure life where none had existed before, I frantically scoured the internet for a solution. It was there… I had read of emulators for old macs… I just needed to find the “perfect” one that would do my old friend justice. And I found it. BASILISK. It was a miracle. After investigation and research, and a couple of installation attempts, Basilisk was finally functional on my PC. A couple of more downloads and I was ready for the crucial step. To extract the soul of my LC 575 and place it inside my Athlon. This soul, of course, is the ROM. The DNA of a computer… it’s lifeblood. I got my floppy which would house the ROM after extraction, a couple of utilities and a boot CD, and I was ready. Fire up the LC 575 from the boot CD, run the utilities, insert the floppy, and pray. A couple of attempts, no luck. I was getting worried. Could all this have been for naught? I had gone too far, there was no turning back. Finally… SUCCESS. The soul of my LC 575 was now on a floppy, ready for transfer to the Basilisk program on my PC. Just to be safe, I copied the 1MB ROM image file to my Mac first, and burned it on it’s own dedicated CD for safekeeping. The soul of a computer is not something to be taken lightly, especially when it’s a Mac. The floppy was inserted into the PC, and through the use of an HFS utility for the PC, was copied to the proper directory in the Basilisk folder. The extracted soul was in place. It was only a matter of raising the platform now and waiting for the lightning to strike and breathe life into my old friend. I started up Basilisk with a Mac Boot CD in my PC’s drive, and the screen went black. Seconds felt like years, but suddenly… out of nowhere… the screen flashed… and there was a smiling little Mac against a grey background… looking at me… IT’S ALIVE! IT’S ALIVE! I cried out. Here was my LC 575, reborn. It’s soul now harnessed in a powerful 700mHz container, running at full speed with 64MB of emulated RAM. Oh what a joyful day! As quick as my hands could let me, I installed a fresh copy of 8.1 onto the disk image which now housed my PC-Macintosh, and before long, my old trusty friend was ready for me to visit it anytime I wanted to by simply clicking on a shortcut placed on my Windows desktop. We don’t spend the kind of time together anymore like we used to when it was my only machine, but to know that my old trusty 575 lives on inside my PC has finally given me a TRUE reason for justifying my owning this dark windows heathen. It’s almost like the PC is different now, because I know it has GOOD in it. And for any future PC that I may or may not buy, the first thing that will be installed is my trusty old friend… so that I may never forget… why it is that I love computers. THE END
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