Tech: Down Apple Mac Memory Lane

Subject: RE: Tech: Down Apple Mac Memory Lane
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 24 Mar 11 - 02:33 PM

I got my first Apple Mac around 1982. It had 128K. I had been using my soon-to-be ex-husband's Apple (not Mac) to do teacher stuff and knew it would disappear when he did. A few years later I bought a similar Mac for my son. He needed to begin using a computer for schoolwork but I didn't feel right about letting him use mine because I had purchased that with the Apple for the Teacher discount.

Subject: RE: Tech: Down Apple Mac Memory Lane
From: Bettynh
Date: 24 Mar 11 - 12:38 PM

I bought my first Apple machine in 1988, but it wasn't a mac. Apple GS - still a wonder. Color monitor, BASIC built into the ROM, able to use both 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 discs, a mouse, thousands of apps and games available. My twins were 6. It was perfect. They tried and tried to sell me the latest machine - a Mac classic. The resolution and publishing wonders of a Mac were lost on us.

I do remember well the first time I used up all the memory on a paint program, and it balked. In typical Apple overstatement, it suddenly showed "Fatal error 911." I thought I had killed the machine in its first hour of use.

Subject: RE: Tech: Down Apple Mac Memory Lane
From: Will Fly
Date: 24 Mar 11 - 12:14 PM

Mac Book back this morning - optical drive replaced and OS X reinstalled. Hard drive OK - hurray. (The system recognised the optical drive as a Matsushita, by the way).

The mention of Edlin reminded me of Wordstar - now that's a blast from the past.

Subject: RE: Tech: Down Apple Mac Memory Lane
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 23 Mar 11 - 08:00 PM

Edlin? Edlin? write letters with edlin?

in my days only a wuss would do that! A real hacker would use nothing but debug!


:-P

Subject: RE: Tech: Down Apple Mac Memory Lane
From: MartinRyan
Date: 23 Mar 11 - 07:47 PM

In the days of the SE30 or thereabouts, I remember being at a conference in the North of England somewhere, where if you wanted to move a luggable device like it from one room to another in the university, you had to be escorted by one of the security staff. Never did figure out what exactly they thought might happen. Anyone foolish enough to grab one from you was likely to end up with a hernia...

I also remember when they first brought in sound files which you could use to replace various system "beeps". One Friday afternoon, we sabotaged a colleague's Mac by replacing the "error" sound with a clip which, in a rather mournful, Clement Freud type voice announced - "I'm sorry - I can't DO that!". Monday morning was interesting....

Regards

Subject: RE: Tech: Down Apple Mac Memory Lane
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Mar 11 - 07:19 PM

Nostalgia! The old tan cube-like mac, the of the disc drive, the reassuring simplicity of a screen with no internet or email...

Subject: RE: Tech: Down Apple Mac Memory Lane
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 23 Mar 11 - 07:17 PM

There's a good chance that the hard drive manufacturer has a better (longer) warranty on your drive than Apple. There is a lot of variation in the industry, but it never hurts to check - when the occasion arises.

Optical drives, however, often don't even have a manufacturer's name on them. Either they last forever or you just replace them regularly as needed. Frequent changes in recording specs (that no one tells you about) kill more of them than hardware problems, and without a go-to mfr it can be hard to get BIOS updates that could save them.

I don't know how Apple marketed Office for Mac, but I still have a copy (probably unreadable) of the entire Word program on a single 3" floppy. A slightly more recent version of Office (Word, Excel, and Access) took a whole 7 floppies, according to my records from a while back. My first DOS machine had an enormous 30 MB hard drive as delivered. I added an aboveboard to kick the RAM up to 1.6 MB and (with some difficulty) added a second 30 MB HD.

Five years after I bought my own, the best I could get on at EA (enormous airplane co) had NO HARD DRIVE, MS-DOS 2.4 in ROM, less than about 300 KB RAM, and only a single 5.25" single sided Floppy Drive - and NO SOFTWARE. Does anyone else (except maybe Fooles Troupe?) remember when we wrote letters with edlin?

John

Subject: Tech: Down Apple Mac Memory Lane
From: GUEST,Will Fly on Mac No. 2
Date: 23 Mar 11 - 11:47 AM

I commented that the optical drive on my Mac Book Pro had gone kaputt recently - and only 7 months old...

I'm just back from the local Apple Store to have it replaced and the OS checked - the main drive wouldn't boot this morning - and hoping the boot fault WILL be cured by an OS re-install.

This machine was bought in August 2009 and this is the second time I've had the thing into be sorted out by an Apple "genius". It set me thinking about other Macs I've used - and I've been a Mac user since 1987.

Anyone remember the SE30 - with just 10Mb hard drive space? You could drop it, bang it, roll it around and it still worked OK. Remember Hypercard stacks? Tiny b&w screen... And, for those who really wanted to screw the Mac up themselves, there was ResEdit software, which allowed you to change system icons and do lots of other silly things.

My very first Mac laptop was a 4" thick brick with equally tiny screen - followd by the more modern 15" Laptop Pro in its black case

The days when the whole of MS Office used up just 40Mb. Hah! Seems like things just ain't built to last. Glad I've got a 3-year warranty on this machine. If the hard drive HAS gone, then the total cost of repair would have been £214...