Quadra 660AV what's with the "PowerPC" label?

[Swift Griggs]

On Tue, 14 Jun 2016, Liam Proven wrote:
> Might have got it like that & never noticed...?

He claimed to be the original owner, and he was a teacher. He probably got 
it as part of some educational program, maybe it was used then. I dunno. 
Maybe it was at a school that had a lot of macs and they robbed a case 
cover from a dead one. It's weird, but I'm okay with weird.

> That's very true. I've never used a live A/UX system and badly want a 
> play.

I still haven't either. I've got it, and I'm dorking around trying to get 
my hardware straight (still waiting on AAUI 10BT dongles and a few other 
bits of kit). Fortunately, it's easy to get a hold on from places like Mac 
Garden, et al. They have ISOs for NextSTEP and OpenSTEP, too. I'd like to 
try those on my Quadra 700. I just ordered an extra SCSI2SD for that guy.

PS: I like the word "kit" to describe "gear". I hope I'm using it right. I 
also prefer "grey" over "gray". I hope you British folks don't mind an 
American bootlegging those terms. Oh, and I'm drinking some Earl Grey. :-)
 
> Tempted to try Shoebill... [...] but emulators aren't the same.

I like emulators for "helping" with real hardware. Ie.. making disks or 
disk images, transferring files, etc.. However, I'm with you, emulators 
aren't as fun. They are awesome tools, and they are *some* fun, just not 
as much as the real thing for me.

> I guess so -- I don't know all the models that well. There are also 
> US-model Macs that always remained very scarce in Europe. The G3 
> All-in-One is an example -- I've never seen one in the flesh.

Well, you guys had Acorn and I never got to play with those, much. Shame 
that there wasn't more import/export of such things, since more is better. 
:-)

> It's a nice OS, I like and appreciate the NeXTstep heritage, but it's 
> not a _proper_ Mac.

I can't really back up that position, but I totally agree. Not that I have 
anything "against" OSX. It at least doesn't have an identity-complex that 
Linux does. It's just it's own thing. They have SUS and UNIX 03 standards 
conformance, but they don't pretend like they are focused on being a UNIX 
variant. Apple just goes it's own way and everyone hopes for the best. 
It's GUI is just it's own unique creation with some very loose visual (and 
strong code-based) connections back to NeXTSTEP, and has a quality and 
value all it's own. Linux+systemd desperately wants to be Windows nowadays 
but adherents still get offended when UNIX purists frown at their 
"unification" efforts (ala systemd and others) which de-emphasize KISS, 
small-is-beautiful, make everything a filter, etc... Linux wants to cop 
that cool, without any binding respect towards the UNIX philosophy.  
Linux seems the most engaged in the "re-invent it poorly" activity that is 
so emblematic of why a lot of folks are leaving. Most technologists I know 
who were long time Linux users are now fleeing to BSD or elsewhere. I read 
someone say recently of OSX, BSD, and Linux: "Where does Linux belong? OSX 
makes a far superior workstation and BSD is better on servers. Why do I 
need Linux again?" I very much agree with the spirit of those questions.

That's one thing I liked about IRIX. It's still a true UNIX variant, not 
"based on UNIX". The GUI is old-looking and primitive by today's 
standards, but still I think they struck a nice balance or at least one 
that appeals to me, personally.

When it comes to GUI operating systems, I want them to drink the whole 
bottle of GUI kool-aid. Classic MacOS did that, IMHO. It was totally a 
desktop OS and didn't try to bifurcate to also make a good server. Hence, 
Apple turning to A/UX and AIX back in those days for servers.

> But I spent real money -- very very rare for me

Do you normally just find free stuff or grab folks cast-off items ? The 
stuff I find cool is too rare and too many other geeks liked. I paid about 
$150 for the Quadra 700 recently. Most were selling well above that level, 
but mine didn't have a HDD included (no big deal with SCSI2SD, baby).

> -- on upgrading an old 7600 or 7700 I got for free to run OS X 10.0, to 
> get to know the new OS. More RAM, G3 upgrade, EIDE controller, etc. Then 
> I got a free Blue'n'White and it was my main machine for a while.

I see B&W Macs on Craigslist a lot and for cheap. I want a machine of that 
generation, too. However, I haven't decided which one, yet. The only PPC 
box that ever caught my eye was the G4 cube. I see a lot of those on Ebay, 
but I'm kind of waiting to catch one locally.

> Then I switched to Linux full-time and never looked back.

I too used Linux from 1993 to about 1997. Then, the more I learned about 
BSD, the more I liked it. Hordes were flooding in to use Linux by then, so 
I bailed out.  I haven't really run Linux as a workstation since then. I'm 
a current RHCE and I still interact with Linux a ton at my job, but there 
is little joy in it. I find myself pursing my lips and shaking my head a 
lot while fixing systemd problems or working on some dirty PoS of a JBOSS 
server. It was a nice well when it was first dug, but now it's fouled by 
too many people and too much toxic admixture.

> Me too, although I'd not call my s/w collection massive.

There is so much "free stuff" online these days for M68k Macs. You can get 
just about _anything_ you ever remembered or wanted and it's all 
considered "abandonware". For me, these "productivity" programs don't 
change much. A word processor from 1993 is just as good for my purposes as 
one from 2016. Photoshop still has layers and channels in 5.5, etc..

> But the snag is that 68K means SCSI, and SCSI is a pain when it doesn't work.

It sure can be. It's made worse by the stupid stupid fact that Apple's 
disk utilities don't recognize non-Apple devices without a patch. There 
are a lot of chicken & egg problems to solve until you can get that FTP 
client installed. Then it's smooth sailing. :-)

> It also means AAUI, ADB, weird monitors, etc.

AAUI == Pita. Yet another ugly dongle, too, ugh. I got a Farallon Nubus 
ethernet card for the Quadra because of this. Unless I'm dealing with 
fiber, I hate AUIs, MAUs, etc...

ADB == Not too big of a deal since KB & mice are still plentiful. However, 
it's disappointing that there aren't easily accessible converters for PS/2 
and USB.

RGB == Another PITA, but at least VGA HD15 converters are cheap and work 
well.
 
> The G3 era meant more standard bits, but the beige machines are still a 
> classic Mac. They'll take a cheap PCI USB card, you can use vanilla USB 
> mice, with a graphics card a standard monitor, etc. -- but they're still 
> _Macs_. They boot to a happy (or sad) Mac, and they run Classic.

Those sound a lot easier to cope with. If it wasn't for my love for the 
68k, I'd have probably gone that direction, too.  Like I said before, I'll 
probably still get one just to use as a "bridge" for the older gear. Maybe 
I can get a cheap G4 laptop and avoid sucking up too much more space in my 
retrolab.
 
> Nice boxes, but they don't feel all that Mac-like to me.

Yep. I agree. Perhaps getting too used to the older interface and dynamics 
pre-biased me. 

> Yes, true. An OS I still miss, for all its instability and quirkiness. 
> I'd love to see a modern FOSS recreation, at least of the concept and 
> the style, even if it was binary-incompatible.

That would be great. Did you hear about Apple making the marketing change 
from "OSX" to "MacOS" ? That makes me sad. Some completely irrational part 
of my brain still dreamed that Apple would license the classic MacOS to a 
hobbyist shop to continue with new releases etc.. 

> I wish the Star Trek project had come to some kind of fruition.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project

That would have made things a lot more interesting in the 1990s. Windows 
seems pretty unassailable, but the public can be fickle. I've always 
wondered why companies don't make operating systems for free, then sell 
licensing rights, partner deals, driver development, etc... Either you 
can't make enough $$$ that way, or the draw of charging for the OS is just 
too lucrative. I'm not sure which it is.

-Swift