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cheesestraws' conquests (cheesequests?)
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2019-12-18 13:16:16 I feel terribly irresponsible because a reasonably large pile of hardware and software has just arrived, but most of this is stuff I was storing at a friend's place in California and brought back with me, which I bought over a reasonable period. So perhaps it's not so irresponsible. An HD20. Was sold as "untested but stored in good conditions". Was expecting trouble from it, partly because it was rattling, but that just turned out to be the light pipe for the LED and actually it works fine! A couple of SCSI/Ethernet boxes, an Asante EN/SC for use with compact macs etc, and a Dayna Pocket SCSI/Link (don't the random slashes in product names look charmingly dated?) to be a companion to PowerBooks. An Apple Ethernet LC Twisted-Pair card, still sealed in its box. I got this because I want to use it but I find myself oddly, almost superstitiously reluctant to actually open it. A boxed, sealed copy of Farallon Liaison Internet Router, which seems to be an alternative AppleTalk routing product that is controlled via the Chooser (?!). This doesn't seem to be available on the garden or on mac repository. The price ticket on it says it originally cost $395, which might go towards explaining it being a bit unusual. This one I really must get over my superstition about and unwrap it, or at least open it. An LC II logic board that doesn't work, to add to my other LC II logic boards that don't work. Sigh. Probably just a recap job but I don't have the time or facilities set up now to do it. Was sold as 'untested, but probably works' so I deserve what I get. I really could do with getting a working one (or two, preferably) though. Sigh again. Two PowerBooks I got from slomacuser on these forums 🙂
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2019-12-29 13:02:05 Here's a photo of the HD20 plugged into my one of my poor battered but sentimentally important Pluses 🙂
Posted by: Crutch on 2019-12-29 13:41:56 Nice. I love my HD-20. I don’t use it for much because I mainly use my SE/30 but there is something terrific about the sound and feel of those. I was so jealous the first time I saw one circa 1986 hooked up to a Mac Plus with one my friend proudly told me was “not 512 K but one M” of memory. Definitely consider replacing the fan if it gets loud, and you can always lube the drive too (though various people don’t recommend that if not strictly necessary, I had great results and really improved the sound when I did).
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2020-01-01 01:37:10 Nice. I love my HD-20. I don’t use it for much because I mainly use my SE/30 but there is something terrific about the sound and feel of those. Yes. This one seems to be running beautifully smoothly: it sounds lovely and the fan isn't too loud. I was really surprised, honestly. I'm not planning on using this with the Plus long-term, it's more against the day when I get a 512K/512Ke. The plus is going to get a scsi2sd (I'm going to use it to display train times, probably using a HyperCard stack and some kind of proxy on my home server)
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2020-01-14 10:15:00 I managed to get hold of a trackball to go with my Pluses (which is great, because I much prefer trackballs to mice). It was also cheaper than getting a new mouse, which was nice. I could live without the built-in keypad, but it's certainly very period. What's really interesting is how much trouble the manufacturer, Assimilation, took to make it look Apple-y, right down to having their own logo in the same places the Apple logo would be (even on the mouse cable!) Looking at it from across the room, it fits in perfectly with the keyboard next to it, and except for it wedging two functions into one object, the attempt to look Apple-y pays off really quite well.
Posted by: LaPorta on 2020-01-14 10:53:20 It really is nice how well it matches. Any reason you are keeping the mouse as well?
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2020-01-14 11:54:32 It really is nice how well it matches. Any reason you are keeping the mouse as well? The trackball needs cleaning and I wanted to check that the passthrough mouse port worked. 🙂 The mouse will be going back in the rodents drawer.
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2020-01-27 04:41:15 I have acquired a Lisa 2/10 (working except for the widget and the keyboards need refoaming) that someone has, rather unaccountably, marbled. It doesn't show up well in photos, but in person it's very striking and is actually extremely well done. Bits of it have been worn off, it looks like it's been used a lot since it was done up: the paint has mostly worn off the mouse, for example. I am told this was done for some kind of (allegedly) Apple publicity event, where they had two of them done up, one in marble and one in woodgrain effect. The whereabouts of the woodgrain one is unknown, apparently...
Posted by: jessenator on 2020-01-27 08:01:39 That is wonderfully awful and yet so charming. 'Grats on scoring a mostly working Lisa 2!
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2020-01-27 09:01:05 That is wonderfully awful and yet so charming. I have a real fondness for bad ideas executed well. This is certainly an æsthetic. It kind of reminds me of the slightly odd "everything is marbled" RISC OS UI from the 90s, but presumably is earlier.
Posted by: jessenator on 2020-01-27 09:20:57 I think I used a Kaleidoscope theme like that on my Quadra!
Posted by: Byrd on 2020-01-27 18:46:29 I have acquired a Lisa 2/10 (working except for the widget and the keyboards need refoaming) that someone has, rather unaccountably, marbled. Interesting story - it's too good for a home paint job, clearly professionally done consistent with it being an Apple display product - I'd keep it as is, apart from cleaning up the worn paint on the mouse,
Posted by: MOS8_030 on 2020-01-27 19:58:49 Neat-O! Nice Lisa 2!
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2020-01-28 03:10:44 Interesting story - it's too good for a home paint job, clearly professionally done consistent with it being an Apple display product - I'd keep it as is, apart from cleaning up the worn paint on the mouse, Yup, that's the plan. It's been really well done and at the time it must have looked absolutely stunning. It's still very impressive, honestly. It actually came with a spare keyboard (that also needs refoaming) so I may put the original keyboard and mouse away to stop them getting any more worn and use the "spare" keyboard and another mouse that has a less interesting history 🙂 .
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2020-02-06 09:40:32 I had both the TAM and the Lisa out for different reasons and I thought it'd be rude not to post a photo, really. Good grief.
Posted by: equant on 2020-02-06 13:49:20 Mmmmmm. Love it.
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2020-04-21 14:31:12 So—I'm thinking I'll post in here about each previous conquest of mine as I get them up to the new office, poke them, try to get them working properly, etc. Because a number of my old macs have been necessarily neglected recently, and the ones I have got recently haven't really been looked at yet. So—today, as I said in the "What did you do to your mac?" thread, I gave the TAM a semi-permanent home in the other corner of the office from the Lisa. Here is the Lisa's new home: And the TAM is over the other side of the room. This TAM has most of its gubbins that it came with still intact, including the pens (!) (although they are now so sticky they won't actually come out of their pouch thing, which may be a mercy). More to the point, it came pre-upgraded with a USB/Firewire combo card and a Sonnet G3. It got rather beaten up in shipping, which was a shame—you may be able to see that the plastics are quite badly damaged—but it was insured in-flight, and so it was annoying, but not much more than that. The previous owner left his pun-ridden (!) installation of MacOS 9 + Applications on there, and informed me that he'd deleted all his files so I could poke the applications with impunity. Which was nice of him. So this needs a software clean-up soon.
Posted by: demik on 2020-04-21 18:59:09 Nice setup, especially on the Lisa. Those new MacBook keyboards are really top quality aren't they ? 😉
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2020-05-13 03:35:06 Those new MacBook keyboards are really top quality aren't they ? 😉 Such unutterable rubbish. Fortunately, that's my work machine so it's work's problem to get me another one, at least once I can go into the office again... On forum topic, this month's inadvisable is a PowerBook 3400c/240 which came with a lot of RAM and one of the most extension-overloaded installs of MacOS 8.6 I've ever seen. I got this for two reasons: firstly, to swap bits out from my old PowerBook that I am mildly sentimental about but which doesn't work so I can work out what's wrong with it, and second to install Rhapsody on and have a go with it, because I've always wanted to. Probably just to visit, though.
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