29 Nov
2005
29 Nov
'05
8:59 p.m.
James Fogg wrote:
OK, neither do I (it's too late to argue). It is the last of the classic
Macs and has the greatest number of features and capabilities.
My interests stop at the "classic"
Macs, of which the SE30 is the
height of engineering achievement (in my opinion).
Why? I know a bit of the classic Mac engineering history
thanks to Andy's retro website/book, but I know nothing of the SE30. 
30 Nov
30 Nov
3:19 p.m.
On Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:59:42 -0500
"James Fogg" <James at jdfogg.com> wrote:
Actually it isn't the last of the Classic Macs in a certain sense. Apple produced
several other inferior compact Mac machines that aren't nearly as expandable as the
SE/30. The Macintosh Classic is an example of this, if I'm not mistaken. The Classic
can't sport anywhere near as much RAM as the SE/30.
My favorite Mac personally is my PowerBook 165C, but that's just because it's so
nice and small and eminently useful for those occasions when I need a small footprint 68K
Mac for some purpose. And I have a box of SCSI-based ethernet interfaces that work with
it.
I'm very fond of my first SE/30, too, which is one I 'maxed out' with a lot of
RAM and a big SCSI drive, but it runs NetBSD.
James Fogg
wrote:
OK, neither do I (it's too late to argue). It is the last of the classic
Macs and has the greatest number of features and capabilities.
My interests stop at the "classic"
Macs, of which the SE30 is the
height of engineering achievement (in my opinion).
Why? I know a bit of the classic Mac engineering history
thanks to Andy's retro website/book, but I know nothing of the SE30. 
3:35 p.m.
Somewhat OT:
At orchestra rehearsal last night, one of the bassists proudly told me that
he'd bought a new computer--a Mac Mini for about $800, which included a 14"
LCD monitor and a gig of DRAM. I must admit that I'm not sure if he got a
good deal or not. You're definitely limited on expansion options and I'd
sure hate to repair the thing.
DVD/CD-RW drive, but no floppy.
OTOH, it is kind of cool from an industrial design standpoint, although a
small profile PC would be almost as small.
Cheers,
Chuck
4:15 p.m.
At orchestra rehearsal last night, one of the bassists
proudly told me that
he'd bought a new computer--a Mac Mini for about $800, which included a 14"
LCD monitor and a gig of DRAM. I must admit that I'm not sure if he got a
good deal or not. You're definitely limited on expansion options and I'd
sure hate to repair the thing.
They're not that hard to get into. Literally all you need is a putty knife.
I've done some work on the mini a friend of mine has and it was fairly
straightforward to do surgery on hers.
DVD/CD-RW drive, but no floppy.
So? ^_^ Macs haven't had floppies in them since the original iMac. This
isn't a new thing. For my dual G4, I just use a USB floppy drive.
The mini is basically an iBook G4 in a smaller case with no screen.
--
--------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ ---
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- "Kirk to Enterprise: beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack." ----------------
5:31 p.m.
On 11/30/2005 at 4:15 PM Cameron Kaiser wrote:
They're not that hard to get into. Literally all
you need is a putty
knife.
I've done some work on the mini a friend of mine
has and it was fairly
straightforward to do surgery on hers.
From what I gather, 2 putty knives work better than
one.
So? ^_^ Macs haven't had floppies in them since the
original iMac. This
isn't a new thing. For my dual G4, I just use a USB floppy drive.
But what's he going to do with all of those old 800K floppies?
The mini is basically an iBook G4 in a smaller case
with no screen.
...and no keyboard.
Cheers,
Chuck
1 Dec
1 Dec
12:43 a.m.
On 1/12/05 00:15, "Cameron Kaiser" <spectre at floodgap.com> wrote:
I've read that the official Apple service tool is a putty knife with a slot
cut into the middle, but obviously you don't believe everything you read on
the interweb :)
A
At orchestra
rehearsal last night, one of the bassists proudly told me that
he'd bought a new computer--a Mac Mini for about $800, which included a 14"
LCD monitor and a gig of DRAM. I must admit that I'm not sure if he got a
good deal or not. You're definitely limited on expansion options and I'd
sure hate to repair the thing.
They're not that hard to get into. Literally all you need is a putty knife.
I've done some work on the mini a friend of mine has and it was fairly
straightforward to do surgery on hers.
12:41 a.m.
New subject: Mac Mini (was: Re: "Market" for old macs?)
On 30/11/05 23:35, "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
Somewhat OT:
At orchestra rehearsal last night, one of the bassists proudly told me that
he'd bought a new computer--a Mac Mini for about $800, which included a 14"
LCD monitor and a gig of DRAM. I must admit that I'm not sure if he got a
good deal or not. You're definitely limited on expansion options and I'd
sure hate to repair the thing.
DVD/CD-RW drive, but no floppy.
OTOH, it is kind of cool from an industrial design standpoint, although a
small profile PC would be almost as small.
I'm typing on my Mini right now and it's an excellent little machine,
practically silent and so small it sits perfectly on the rotating base of an
18" flat screen monitor. Like all USB macs it's perfectly happy with my
Logitech 7-button mouse and for connectivity it comes out of the box with
bluetooth and 802.11G wireless.
My only issue with it is that it only has 2 USB ports and no mic input so by
the time you've got your kbd/mouse plugged in your remaining port is taken
up by the USB sound module though I guess I could plug that into the
keyboard too.....the hard drive is also slow....
Anyhoo, it only cost me ukp330 so I don't really mind :o)
A
6:34 p.m.
New subject: Mac Mini (was: Re: "Market" for old macs?)
On Thu, 01 Dec 2005 08:41:07 +0000
Adrian Graham <witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk> wrote:
On 30/11/05 23:35, "Chuck Guzis" <cclist
at sydex.com> wrote:
Can't you just plug a USB hub into one of the ports, and make it into a big maze of
cables if that suits your desires?
Somewhat OT:
At orchestra rehearsal last night, one of the bassists proudly told me that
he'd bought a new computer--a Mac Mini for about $800, which included a 14"
LCD monitor and a gig of DRAM. I must admit that I'm not sure if he got a
good deal or not. You're definitely limited on expansion options and I'd
sure hate to repair the thing.
DVD/CD-RW drive, but no floppy.
OTOH, it is kind of cool from an industrial design standpoint, although a
small profile PC would be almost as small.
I'm typing on my Mini right now and it's an excellent little machine,
practically silent and so small it sits perfectly on the rotating base of an
18" flat screen monitor. Like all USB macs it's perfectly happy with my
Logitech 7-button mouse and for connectivity it comes out of the box with
bluetooth and 802.11G wireless.
My only issue with it is that it only has 2 USB ports and no mic input so by
the time you've got your kbd/mouse plugged in your remaining port is taken
up by the USB sound module though I guess I could plug that into the
keyboard too.....the hard drive is also slow....
2 Dec
2 Dec
12:04 a.m.
New subject: Mac Mini (was: Re: "Market" for old macs?)
On 2/12/05 02:34, "Scott Stevens" <chenmel at earthlink.net> wrote:
Yes, and belkin produce such a thing that's the same shape as the mini but I
feel that that's not the point of the machine. Having said that I'm not
about to annoy myself for no good reason so I'll probably buy one anyway :)
Also an external HD as long as it doesn't require its own power brick....
A
My only issue
with it is that it only has 2 USB ports and no mic input so by
the time you've got your kbd/mouse plugged in your remaining port is taken
up by the USB sound module though I guess I could plug that into the
keyboard too.....the hard drive is also slow....
Can't you just plug a USB hub into one of the ports, and make it into a big
maze of cables if that suits your desires? 
1:29 a.m.
New subject: Mac Mini
Adrian Graham wrote:
On 2/12/05 02:34, "Scott Stevens"
<chenmel at earthlink.net> wrote:
Yes, and belkin produce such a thing that's the same shape as the mini but I
feel that that's not the point of the machine.
Yep, personally I'd only buy a Mac mini if it was 10-20% bigger and came with
some real ports - say serial, parallel, and SCSI. Then it'd be a nice compact
well-designed machine with some useful connectivity too. It seems that no
matter what the USB-advocates say, bodging that sort of stuff on top of
Universal Screwed-up Bus plain doesn't work...
cheers
J.
My only
issue with it is that it only has 2 USB ports and no mic input so by
the time you've got your kbd/mouse plugged in your remaining port is taken
up by the USB sound module though I guess I could plug that into the
keyboard too.....the hard drive is also slow....
Can't you just plug a USB hub into one of the ports, and make it into a big
maze of cables if that suits your desires? 
3:49 p.m.
New subject: Mac Mini
Yep, personally I'd only buy a Mac mini if it was
10-20% bigger and came with
some real ports - say serial, parallel, and SCSI. Then it'd be a nice compact
THis reminds me of something that I've been looking for :
A reasonably portable computer -- meaning it can be mains powered, but
must be all one box (including keyboard and display), although I suppose
I would accepta machine that needs a serial terminal (although not a
PC-like machine that needs a monitor and keyboard)
It needs to have some kind of local storage (either floppy disks or
battery-backed RAM), and some way of transferring data to my linux box
(floppies, or a serial port and e.g. kermit). And I want to be able to
probram it in something above machine code (BASIC, Forth, a
calculator-like keystroke language)
Now for the problem. I want user ports, and lots of them. Plenty of
digital I/O lines. An ADC would be nice too. And of course I want real
documentation.
Machines that come close are the HP71B (but the user ports are the 82165
modules, which need their own PSU) and the BBC Micro (but it's far too
many boxes, machine, monitor, disk drive, etc).
well-designed machine with some useful connectivity
too. It seems that no
matter what the USB-advocates say, bodging that sort of stuff on top of
Universal Screwed-up Bus plain doesn't work...
I prefer 'Useless Serial Botch', on the grounds it's not universal, and
it's not a bus.
I saw another useless USB product today -- the USB Hamster Wheel. It was
a little motorised treadmill wheel with a toy hamster in it, apparently
it plugs into a USB port, you run the supplied Lusedoze drives, and it
spins round when you typr. Hmmm....
-tony
4:40 p.m.
New subject: Mac Mini
Tony Duell wrote:
My immediate thought was BBC micro actually, as you mentioned, with a 3.5"
floppy drive grafted into the back-right corner of the case (I think one
*just* fits). Problem is I'm not sure what you'd do about display; I'm not
sure if flat-panel LCDs exist that take component RGB at 80's sync rates as input.
Not relevant in this case (because it's not documented and not fixable), but
my old IBM Thinkpad laptop does pretty well for itself - it's new enough to
have a USB port, but old enough to have both serial and parallel ports too. I
regret giving a PCMCIA SCSI adapter away a few years ago, as with that
available too, I could do *most* of the things that I do from the desktop PC.
Yep,
personally I'd only buy a Mac mini if it was 10-20% bigger and came with
some real ports - say serial, parallel, and SCSI. Then it'd be a nice compact
THis reminds me of something that I've been looking for :
A reasonably portable computer -- meaning it can be mains powered, but
must be all one box (including keyboard and display), although I suppose
I would accepta machine that needs a serial terminal (although not a
PC-like machine that needs a monitor and keyboard) I saw another useless USB product today -- the USB
Hamster Wheel. It was
a little motorised treadmill wheel with a toy hamster in it, apparently
it plugs into a USB port, you run the supplied Lusedoze drives, and it
spins round when you typr. Hmmm....
A USB microwave or video recorder would be handy for those people too inept to
use them directly :)
I don't think anything's going to quite top the hamster, though.
cheers
J.
4:54 p.m.
New subject: Mac Mini
On 12/3/2005 at 12:40 AM Jules Richardson wrote:
A USB microwave or video recorder would be handy for
those people too
inept to
use them directly :)
I assume that you've already ordered your USB pencil sharpener, USB shaver
and USB scalp massager. (Yes, they exist) for "stocking stuffers" for the
holidays.
--Chuck
5:06 p.m.
New subject: Mac Mini
On Sat, 03 Dec 2005 00:58:40 +0000
Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Chuck Guzis wrote:
It would be trivial to produce the 'legacy converter' version of
these devices since most of them only use the USB connector as a
power source. Except you can't 'steal' that much current from a
legacy serial device. I can remember serial Mice that wouldn't
work because I was trying to use them on computers with
pathetically low serial port voltage levels. I think it was an
old Northgate 386 system, and the serial interface rails were
about 3 volts.
I assume that you've already ordered your USB
pencil
sharpener, USB shaver and USB scalp massager. (Yes, they
exist) for "stocking stuffers" for the holidays.
No. Now, if they did legacy serial versions... :-)
3 Dec
3 Dec
1:30 p.m.
New subject: Mac Mini
On Sat, 03 Dec 2005 00:58:40 +0000
Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
The hamster wheel I mentioned didn't just use the USB connector as a 5V
power supply, on the grounds there was a CD-ROM of driver software with
it (you know, I can remember when a device driver and its source code
would fit on one floppy disk. Darn code-bloat!).
Before you suggest it, I have no intention of buying said product,
pulling it apart and trying to figure out how it works. There's going to
be some unknown silicon (at least a microcontroller) in there. To be
honest, I've got many more interesting _classic_ machines to work on.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
It would be trivial to produce the 'legacy converter' version of
these devices since most of them only use the USB connector as a I assume that you've already ordered your USB
pencil
sharpener, USB shaver and USB scalp massager. (Yes, they
exist) for "stocking stuffers" for the holidays.
No. Now, if they did legacy serial versions... :-)
power source. Except you can't 'steal'
that much current from a
Of course I have plenty of 5V PSUs around here....
-tony
4:52 p.m.
New subject: Mac Mini
On 03/12/05, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
The hamster wheel I mentioned didn't just use the
USB connector as a 5V
power supply, on the grounds there was a CD-ROM of driver software with
it (you know, I can remember when a device driver and its source code
would fit on one floppy disk. Darn code-bloat!).
I have a mobile that has a USB charger, but it will not charge unless
the driver is installed. I don't know if the specs of USB mean it
doesn't put voltage on a line unless it's told to. I keep meaning to
try it on a powered hub. But I don't have one.
With the driver cd, most new machines don't come with floppy drives.
Also I would guess it's now cheaper to buy cd's in bulk then floppies.
Dan
4 Dec
4 Dec
10:42 a.m.
New subject: Mac Mini
Dan Williams wrote:
On 03/12/05, Tony Duell <ard at
p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
That seems to be the case. If you have an iPod it won't charge from USB
if it's connected to a Windows machine without the drive mounted (or
whatever the Windows equivalent is) because it will turn the port off.
On Macs and PCs running Unixy OSes, it works just fine.
Gordon.
The hamster wheel I mentioned didn't just use
the USB connector as a 5V
power supply, on the grounds there was a CD-ROM of driver software with
it (you know, I can remember when a device driver and its source code
would fit on one floppy disk. Darn code-bloat!).
I have a mobile that has a USB charger, but it will not charge unless
the driver is installed. I don't know if the specs of USB mean it
doesn't put voltage on a line unless it's told to. I keep meaning to
try it on a powered hub. But I don't have one.
3 Dec
3 Dec
1:25 p.m.
New subject: Mac Mini
On 12/3/2005 at 12:40 AM Jules Richardson wrote:
Where do I find USB pencils to be sharpened by this device (the lack of a
proper way ro associate adjectives in English is a common moan of mine) :-)
A USB microwave or video recorder would be handy
for those people too
inept to
use them directly :)
I assume that you've already ordered your USB pencil sharpener, USB shaver and USB scalp massager. (Yes, they exist) for
"stocking stuffers" for the
holidays.
Well, not having got anything with a USB port, the answer shoukld be
obvious...
-tony
1:23 p.m.
New subject: Mac Mini
Tony Duell wrote:
My immediate thought was BBC micro actually, as you mentioned, with a 3.5"
The other thing against the Beeb is that it doesn't really have enough
user I/O lines (just one 8 bit port, I would prefer at least 4 times
that). Yes I could add more, but if I am going to start homebrewing stuff
I might as well make the whole machine.
A machine that comes close is the Sage II (it's got GPIB as standard, a
system bus I could easily add a user port to, but see above, and runs off
a seiral terminal). Another possibilty is the HP Integral PC (but where
the heck do I find the GPIO card for that?)
Yep,
personally I'd only buy a Mac mini if it was 10-20% bigger and came with
some real ports - say serial, parallel, and SCSI. Then it'd be a nice compact
THis reminds me of something that I've been looking for :
A reasonably portable computer -- meaning it can be mains powered, but
must be all one box (including keyboard and display), although I suppose
I would accepta machine that needs a serial terminal (although not a
PC-like machine that needs a monitor and keyboard) floppy drive grafted into the back-right corner of the
case (I think one
*just* fits). Problem is I'm not sure what you'd do about display; I'm not
Interesting idea!
sure if flat-panel LCDs exist that take component RGB
at 80's sync rates as input.
Flat-screen TV? I am not sure they come small enough....
-tony
12:18 a.m.
New subject: Mac Mini
Am zaterdag, 03.12.05, um 00:49 Uhr (Europe/Zurich) schrieb Tony Duell:
I use a portable DOLCH 386 for that : Lunchbox design with keyboard and
plasma display.
Fits a standard PC motherboard, mine now has a 133 MHz Pentium inside.
It is stocked with Eprom programmer , BMC 20 analog/digital IO card,
SCSI card , Ethernet, parallel port and dual RS232.
It does not (yet) have USB.
IDE and floppy interfaces are brought out, for those few occasions I
still need a 5 1/4 Floppy.
Best of all, these Dolch are very cheap on ebay.
Main problems are : limited to the supplied ISA VGA card, haven't yet
figured out how to use a PCI card for that
Also limited to monochrome 640x480, because of the Plasma display.
If you look upon the motherboard as a replaceable part, just like the
CPU itself, it should fit Tony's requirements.
( and it does read PDF's, although at standard VGA it is not a
pleasure. )
Jos
Yep,
personally I'd only buy a Mac mini if it was 10-20% bigger and
came with
some real ports - say serial, parallel, and SCSI. Then it'd be a nice
compact
THis reminds me of something that I've been looking for :
A reasonably portable computer -- meaning it can be mains powered, but
must be all one box (including keyboard and display), although I
suppose
I would accepta machine that needs a serial terminal (although not a
PC-like machine that needs a monitor and keyboard
1:43 p.m.
New subject: Mac Mini
A reasonably
portable computer -- meaning it can be mains powered, but
must be all one box (including keyboard and display), although I
suppose
I would accepta machine that needs a serial terminal (although not a
PC-like machine that needs a monitor and keyboard
I use a portable DOLCH 386 for that : Lunchbox design with keyboard and Main problems are : limited to the supplied ISA VGA
card, haven't yet
figured out how to use a PCI card for that
Also limited to monochrome 640x480, because of the Plasma display.
What do you do if the VGA card fails? Doesn't sound easily fixable or
replaceable?
If you look upon the motherboard as a replaceable part, just like the
CPU itself, it should fit Tony's requirements.
My views on this have not changed :-)
-tony
6725
days inactive
6729
days old
21 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cclist＠sydex.com -
chenmel＠earthlink.net -
gordonjcp＠gjcp.net -
James＠jdfogg.com -
jos.mar＠bluewin.ch -
julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk -
spectre＠floodgap.com -
williams.dan＠gmail.com -
witchy＠binarydinosaurs.co.uk