Waaay OT - Macintosh software

OK, I'll admit to creeping senility. We went to an estate sale Friday and I bought a "fat mac" Macintosh from 1984 for the magnificent sum of $1.

I'd planned on making a "Macquarium" out of it, but just for the heck of it I plugged it in. It came up and beeped with an icon of a floppy with a question mark. How about that.

Now I'm intrigued. I did some research and found it uses 400K 3.5" floppies in some strange format which a PC disk controller can't write. I also found that Apple has no interest in supporting anything that old.

I did find some disk images of various O/S releases, but they do me no good because I can't write them in Mac format.

I'm going to look for Macintosh newsgroups as soon as I get through here, but I've seen such a wide range of interests and expertise on this group that I thought I'd give it a try too.

Does anyone have the fat mac software and the ability to copy it and send it to me? I'd pay a few bucks to cover expenses, but obviously don't want to put a lot of money into a $1 obsolete computer :-).

Reply to
Larry Blanchard
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Donate the computer to the smithstonian (sp) they could use it as a display for what never worked lol. Seriously I believe those computers did not have what would be a hard drive, but I could be wrong. Try the mac groups. But I like your original idea bettter

Good luck

Reply to
Clif

By "Fat Mac", I assume mean you got a 512K, the second Mac? The early ones are starting to get valuable, as far as older computers go. Good find. Don't chop it up for an aquarium.

It uses 400K, single-sided disks. Same media as the 800K (or 720K for PCs). It was the first coomputer to use "modern" Sony floppy diskettes. PC makers didn't catch on for another few years.

If you can give me some time, I can find and copy most of my original System disks. I have about 50 vintage computers, mostly Apples and Apple Macs. That includes an original 128K with a 337 board serial number. I could have sold that for $1000 a couple years ago when the Japanese collecting market peaked.

GTO(John)

Reply to
GTO69RA4

????? Macs work fine--always have.

Didn't _need_ no steenkeeng hard drive. At the time very few small systems had them.

Reply to
J. Clarke

I know they work fine, they are GREAT and unparalleled when it comes to graphics and that has never been a question, it just that I find it incrediblyt difficult to believe that they do not have MORE Software like the PC's. I personally like PC, and the only time I used a Mac was when I was working with a graphics program working on a newspaper

As far as the Hard Drives, PC's didnt have them either originally, and when they did , my first PC the 8088 onlyhad a 10 MEG hard drive

Good Luck

Clif

Reply to
Clif

I have 'em. Just sent you an email from a disposeable account.

Reply to
Australopithecus scobis

Larry,

Try the newsgroup: alt.binaries.mac.applications.retro

I'm sure someone can fill your request.

Joe

Reply to
10x

Let me make it easier for you to understand why there is not more software for the older Apples and basically why Apple bassicly failed.

Apple was stingy in the beginning years and insisted that they would be the only ones to sell software or peripherals for the Apple computer. Since IBM did not discourage other makers of computers and software writers to make software for their style computers the PC naturally flourished.

Kinda like comparing a Socialist economic system to a Capitalist economic system.

Reply to
Leon

All a matter of market. Hobbyists knew about Apple. _Everybody_ had heard of IBM. So when IBM brought out a PC that's the one that people bought, until the clones got established. And the software went where the market was.

Personally I never much cared for Macs, but the current generation is quite tempting.

Reply to
J. Clarke

If 8 billion dollars a year is "failure".

Except that the CP/M community was even more open and IBM killed them dead. Is _any_ company that started out making CP/M machines still in business?

IBM was successful mainly because of brand recognition, not because of the superiority of their product or their policies toward developers.

I think that's quite a stretch.

Reply to
J. Clarke

When it could have easily been in the trillions. Yeah a failure, and had Microsoft not bailed them out, probably the path of the Comodore. I wonder what the Net profit is? Sales mean nothing if the cost is equal or greater.

Still they were much more effective at marketing.

Did anyone dispute this? I do not recall reading that IBM was more successful because of a better product. They were simply superior at marketing. Hence, Apple fell way behind.

Socialism by definition,

Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.

Basically Apple had the theory or system that produced, distributed and controlled its goods by itself.

Capitalism by definition,

An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.

IBM used this method.

Again, only a comparison that describes why Apple got stomped by the PC economy.

Reply to
Leon

After IBM's first few models, they were hurt _bad_ by all the cheap clones that came out. They went from being "the company" to just the most well-known one, and a rather expensive one at that.

Apple chose the company over wider platform distrubution. When Apple did get into allowing clones in the mid '90s, they almost got IBM'ed. The clones were cheaper and sometimes faster, though not usually the best quality. Apple nearly went under, and when they brought Mr. Steve back he whacked the clones. Apple still got to keep their niche markets, sales went up, so the company survives. Recently they've really big ignoring the education market, and that has me worried. Used to be nearly 100% Apple user base.

GTO(John)

Reply to
GTO69RA4

As a matter of interest all the specs for it are here:

formatting link

Reply to
Frank Campbell

If you ask me, the reason Apple got stomped was the lack of a capitalist system in America. MS doesn't even market that well. They manipulate and litigate well. If they had real consequences for their crimes, they probably wouldn't exist.

Reply to
p_j

???

Apparently they do as market well as "most" every computer has their product on it. They did in deed bring their product to the market place and have been rewarded for it.

What crime is that?

Reply to
Leon

Yea what ever. Why is it windows haters like yourself always compare a proprietary hardware vender to a generic runs on anything OS. Bill wasn't competing in the same market. Apple got stomped from the Steve Jobs elitist overpriced marketing blunder thinking the "total package" would capture the market. Anyone that was involved in computers in those days knows half the geeks... (like me) were down in the basement soldering together bits and pieces from Heathkit and Team electronics... all we needed was an operating system and some cassette tape. Bill knew exactly who he was marketing to.

Reply to
Eric Johnson

Uh huh. Now _who_ sued _who_ over user interface look and feel?

MS made one very good business decision. The sold to IBM at the price IBM wanted to pay. Once that deal was done they'd have had to screw up pretty bad to avoid becoming the predominant OS vendor for personal computers.

Reply to
J. Clarke

C'mon Leon success in the peoples state of the USA "IS" becoming a crime. The gov't doesn't want law abiding citizens they want people they can control with more law and charge 'em for it.

Sorry Ayn Rand Rant off....

EJ

Reply to
Eric Johnson

LOL I had failed to look at it that way.

Reply to
Leon

Larry.

I believe you need a program called "rawrite" which is a PC program that writes raw binary data to a floppy without trying making it PC formatted. This should create a useable mac-formatted system disk that will boot up your old machine. (You might want to troll around the linux boards - rawrite was usually used for creating Linux-formatted bootdisks, back in the day before everyone had CD-R drives).

I predict you'll boot it, realize how brutally slow it is, squint at the tiny screen, and wonder why you went through the trouble!. Good luck with the macquarium, it sounds like a cool project!

-Marc-

Reply to
marcj

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