Totally unnecessary accessory but still pretty cool.
#vintageapple #macmini

https://wokyis.com/products/wokyis-m5-10gbps

as far as i know, i found a software preservation zebra this week: this bit of extremely obscure archival work blends together HyperCard, Sierra On-Line and edutainment.

back in the early 90s, a company named EarthQuest started publishing educational reference titles for kids using HyperCard. the early titles were nice hypercard stacks probably drawn in macpaint. this one doesn't depart much from that format, except with nicer art and more creative page layouts

now, here's where things get weird. when saw it on ebay, only one pic buried at the bottom captured my attention: a weird stamped label on the bottom of the box that read Property OF SIERRA with the Half Dome logo. i bought it out of curiosity, and it arrived today.

back in the 90s, the larger game companies routinely maintained their own on-site libraries of competitors' games. Origin Systems in Austin had one. EA Burnaby, when it was known as Distinctive Software, had one. These were kept so marketing folks and developers could get an idea of what other studios were doing.

thing is, i've never seen mention of a library at Sierra On-Line in Oakhurst. the On-Line part of the logo is critical: Time Treks was published in 1992, and this is the year before Sierra moved its corporate offices from Oakhurst, California to Bellevue, Washington.

i have no doubt that there are other games from the Sierra On-Line corporate library somewhere out there, but i've never come across one even once in 30+ years. feel free to share this post with your fellow Sierra collectors :) it would be great if we could figure out where/when the Sierra library existed.

https://macintoshgarden.org/games/time-treks

#hypercard #macintosh #vintageApple #sierraOnline #adventureGames #retrogaming

I hope with a new #CEO at #Apple we can return to the brilliance and insight that former Apple CEOs were known for. E.g. CEOs that knew when the OS quality strategy had gone wrong and knew how to fix it. And when they had entertaining keynote speeches with amusing analogies and graphics (just hear how the audience is laughing, do you hear that anymore?)

#VintageApple #RetroComputing

catching up on important developments in the world of multimedia this morning with a 10/10 espresso

when i was 16 there was nothing more exciting than going to the Coles bookstore and dropping $10 on a new issue of CD-ROM Today! The coverdisc was dense with game demos, shareware, educational, reference and productivity applications. my love for edutainment games comes purely from its coverdisc.

best of all, it was a win+mac hybrid, so i could take it to school and play *different* games on the classroom mac LC. i can’t think of a single magazine that had such excellent well-rounded taste in every genre of multimedia

#multimedia #cdrom #vintageApple #macintosh #coffee

after a 4 year hiatus, i finally completed my podcast series on Another World. 🤯

if you're new to the podcast: Multimedia HyperGuide is my love letter to 1990s multimedia CD-ROM games, edutainment and productivity software. each episode is an hour-long dive into a specific game or application.

listen in-browser here:
https://podcast.vga256.com

podcast player rss here:
https://podcast.vga256.com/rss.xml

apple podcasts here:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/multimedia-hyperguide-windows-3-1-macintosh-and-ms/id1393890581

#podcasts #retrogaming #retrocomputing #dosgaming #msdos #win31 #amiga #macintosh #vintageApple

I had a good time restoring these five Macintosh IIsi, and I learned some things along the way.

I documented my progress at https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads/mac-iisi-repairathon.4923/

The IIsi may not be the coolest Mac of its era, but it deserves to live a long life.

#vintageapple
#retrocomputing

for years i've used a dual-core i5 2012 mac mini as my web server, file server, usenet client and music server. it's incredibly energy efficient, and has handled anything i've thrown at it.

less well known is that the late 2012 mac mini is the last of its series to have upgradeable SATA drives. it takes about 2 minutes to fully disassemble the machine - despite having a rather goofy internal design. it has room for *two* 2.5" sata drives, and the logic board has two sata ports. (by 2014, apple got rid of the two sata bays and replaced it with a single msata port)

today i replaced the dual-core i5 with its minihulk cousin: apple's BTO "Mac Mini Server" with a 2.3 ghz quad core i7. the server has two 500GB SSDs running - one drive handles mastodon, the other is for file sharing. those two extra cores are going to be a ton of help dealing with mastodon video encodes.

the old dual-core i5 has been turned into my home theatre plex client, and happily chews away at 1080p video like it's nothing.

these are 14+ year old machines, found dirt cheap through electronics recyclers. i've never had a single failure to date. with any luck, they'll continue to work for another 10 years.

#vintageApple #apple #selfhosted #permacomputing

I made a thing! Come help out?

retrorepro.wiki — a catalogue of modern reproduction parts for vintage computers. Reloaded logic boards, 3D-printable brackets, replacement chips, analog board recreations and more.
Mac-heavy right now (that's what my bookmarks look like), but Commodore and IBM PC sections are coming.
Missing something? Account requests are open.
https://retrorepro.wiki/Main_Page

(Who wants to make a logo?)
#vintagemac #vintagecomputers #vintageapple #retrocomputing