I’ve got one more disk to share from the current batch. This is the guided tour disk that came with my family’s Mac IIfx back in the day. Note that while the disk itself is titled “Macintosh Basics”, it doesn’t actually include the familiar Macintosh Basics tour from the 90’s - rather, this is a revision of the earlier tour that came with the Mac Plus and SE.

This one’s also a pain to get running under emulation - you have to boot from the tour disk in order to run the tour - and the tour disk was installed using a “Minimum System” install that won’t boot on anything that doesn’t present itself as a IIfx. Fortunately I was able to get it to run using the MAME emulator.

Now available on the Garden here: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/apple-tour-of-the-macintosh-iifx

Alright, now for the disk you’ve been waiting for 😎

“Looking Inside the Macintosh IIfx” is an interactive presentation created with VideoWorks II. It came with our IIfx when we bought it used - but I’m not sure if it originally came bundled with all IIfx’es from Apple, or if this was some kind of sales demonstration.

It shows you a picture of the logic board, and you can click on individual components on the board to see what they do and how they communicate with the rest of the system.

This thing is an absolute nightmare to get running under emulation - until Snow came along, that is, due to its strict hardware and software requirements:
- OS must be at least 6.0.5, but no later than 6.0.8
- MultiFinder disabled
- RAM Cache disabled
- At least 4 MB of RAM in the system
- A video card supporting 8-bit colour
- 32-bit colour QuickDraw

BasiliskII and QEMU won’t run anything earlier than System 7, so those are out right away. Mini vMac (running with the Mac II emulation enabled) _almost_ works, but fails on the video card check despite the fact that it does run with 8-bit colour 🤷

However, with Snow’s Mac II emulation combined with its Mac Display Card 8•24 emulation… well, initially it fails on the 32-bit colour QuickDraw check. But we can address that in software by installing the “32-Bit QuickDraw” extension from the System 6.0.8 install disks, and then… it runs! 🎉

Ironically, this doesn’t even use colours - the app is entirely in greyscale!

(It’s possible that this can run under MAME as well - but I can’t figure out for the life of me how to set MAME up, it’s not a user friendly experience and it doesn’t seem to support DiskCopy floppy images).

I was so excited when I got this to run yesterday - first on my real IIfx and then on my MacBook running Snow. I hadn’t seen it running since I was around 8 years old!

Anyway, this wonderful piece of Mac history is now preserved on the Garden here: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/looking-inside-the-macintosh-iifx

The Writing Center is a word processor from The Learning Company. We used it on the Macs in my elementary school. It’s infamous for playing a jingle when you launch it (hear it in action here: https://oldbytes.space/@smallsco/109367148497730093)

It was already archived on Macintosh Garden, but they only had version 1.05. I uploaded version 1.02 from my disks, and you can download it here: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/the-writing-center

I found a way to make it reliably “crash”, by trying to select a colour using the colour picker on System 6 (see attached screenshot)

Except, instead of crashing, it just pauses execution and says that there’s an unimplemented FPU instruction. And then you can click the resume button and carry on your merry way.

It seems some PC disks got mixed in with my Mac disks :\

Remember 98Lite? It’s a shame that we still need debloating scripts for Windows in this day and age.

From first glance, it looks like I made a second compilation for my cousin as well.

But no, it’s just a copy of the Mac OS 8.5.1 update split onto 5 disks 🤦‍♂️

Anyway, for those of you located outside Canada - did y’all know that “AOL Canada” was a thing (and had its own logo)? I like the reflective label on the last disk 😎

Next up is a set of disks that were originally installation disks for CompuServe & Prodigy. But each has a number written on it - what could this be?

I popped the first one into my IIfx and immediately had a laugh - it’s a software collection that I made for my cousin, it might have been a birthday gift for him, inspired by the similar one I received from another friend (see: https://oldbytes.space/@smallsco/114227019966008785 earlier in the thread) But it came back into my possession when my aunt got rid of her Mac and my cousin moved out!

It uses an InstallerMaker installer, complete with an absolute cringe-worthy README in which I tried to emulate readme files from shareware compilations of the time. As for the software itself, it’s a mix of random QuickTime video clips, MIDI files, some sounds and shareware games, and some “utilities” for Diablo and Warcraft II (which we played online quite a bit back then).

Now, all the apps are archived already - except for one - a utility for Warcraft II called “TheB|ade”, which modifies the preferences file to allow you to change the colours used in your player name. I couldn’t find this one on the Garden (or _anywhere_, for that matter).

But when I went to install it… unfortunately, the first disk in the set has succumbed to corruption. It mounts and I can launch the installer, but I can’t image the disk, or copy the installer to another volume, or complete the installation, which chokes early on in the install process. I threw a bunch of utilities at it but got disk read errors. Boo-urns.

Fortunately, however… “TheB|ade” just happened to be in the area of the disk that was not corrupted, and it would successfully install that before the installer crashes at a later point. And I don’t care about what’s on the rest of the disks because that’s all available online already.

Anyway, long explanation aside, here’s “TheB|ade” now available for download on the Garden: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/thebade