/dev/null

Old Fraud

Jun. 13th, 2009 at 3:29 PM

So, say hello to Old Fraud. Old Fraud (named after the House character) is a Macintosh Classic II, with a build date of October 1992. Old Fraud has Macintosh System Software 7.5.3 (revision 2) on a Motorola 68030 processor (It’s closest cousin can be found in the Palm III) with 4 MB of RAM (you will typically find flash drives with about 512 times that much storage on them today), a black-and-white screen with a resolution of about 512x342 (very odd resolution, though higher than your typical smartphone).

So I’m sure you’re wondering at this point, what can a seventeen year old computer be good for these days? After all, I own an early 2008-era MacBook Pro (named Ayanami) with enough computing power to emulate about a thousand Mac Classic II’s, and has 1,024 times as much RAM, a much bigger screen, with more colors, is more capable, has WiFi (Old Fraud doesn’t even have a built-in modem), and is significantly more portable (though Old Fraud has a carrying handle and requires only two plugs, it is significantly heavier). What’s the point? Perhaps it's an exploration of retrocomputing, maybe it's an attempt to get back to basics, to get into the habbit of writing (tinged with shades of my technolust), a study of history, or an attempt to understand (probably revel in) retrocomputing. Either way, it's certainly out of the ordinary (and that's how I like things).

When I bought my MacBook Pro I bought it with a near-excessive amount of power because I knew I was going to use that power for video editing. Indeed, I have used that impressive 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo to do more than a few edits, including a light smattering of work in Motion and AfterEffects. But outside of that, do I really need the excessive power of Ayanami for the rest of the stuff I do? No, not really. Most of the stuff I do is web browsing, Twitter, and writing papers. For all of this, a netbook would have done the job. I find all of the power at my disposal to be distracting. Every few minutes, I’m checking my Twitter feed, popping over to FaceBook or Spymaster, watching videos, things of that nature. The Classic II was something like the netbook of it’s time (well, closer related to nettops): it did most of the common every day stuff. It let you run a card file, a a spreadsheet, databases, word processing, those kinds of things. this made me wonder: why not do the same thing now? I’ve already got the machine and all the hardware I need to make it work. I was given a USB disk drive, so I can move data to and from it. It has a copy of Word 5 (and copies of 5.1 aren’t hard to find). It’s relatively stable, and most of all: distraction free.

At the moment, I’m writing this entire essay on Old Fraud (though pictures and posting is going to be handled by Ayanami, mostly because the JPGs for the images are big enough to fill a large portion of a 3.5” disk) while Ayanami makes itself useful by testing out Hulu Desktop. While writing this, I’ve gotten a quizzical look from my sister who is younger than this computer (though only by a month), who doesn’t understand my attachment to the machine.

Anyone who knows me will confirm that I’ve got quite a lust for information. A lot of my interest is historical. I know almost everything there is to know about modern computers, except there are big holes in how we got here. Why did we decide to implement a short messaging service into the GSM specification? What was the inspiration for USB’s four-pin design when its predecessor had nine? It also answers mysteries of the present: how does a Serial-to-USB adaptor work? How can we use these old printers on a modern computer? In this case, it’s the history of the computer that is currently feeding me a decent dose of Babylon 5. From using this computer I can gleam a look into the history behind the Command button, the Apple menu, and bits and pieces like Aliases.

All of this is retrocomputing. It’s the geek equivalent to buying an old car and maintaing it. Since it’s not my main production machine I can afford to play around with it. I have the curiously entertaining task of hunting down legacy parts in odd and different places. I make contacts with other retrocomputing enthusiasts with whom I swap anectodes and tips. I get to engage in dubious repairs such as hitting the hard disk with the butt of a screwdriver to fix an unreadable disk (and it worked!).

Like being an old car enthusaist, retrocomputing has to face with the problems of lack of documentation (especially with Macintoshes), hard-to-find parts, and the limitations of the original device. Perhaps, however, that those are the appealing sides of retrocomputing. Dealing with problems that seem otherwise insurrmountable. Working within limits. No, pushing limits. Seeing how far you can take this old, tiny, limited machine go. Seeing what you can make it do. Taking it beyond it’s expected operating parameters and creating something wholly new from it all. Limits make for challenges, the make us be inventive and ingenious, to get around them, or make something work in spite of them.

A perfect example of what I'm talking about is multitasking. In truth, it began on UNIX systems, but for most users it began with the Macintosh. Not the original Macintosh, but 1988 with Macintosh System 5 as "MultiFinder" on the Mac Plus (http://bit.ly/chSfm). It became the first consumer system to allow simultaneous execution of program on a processor that could only handle one task at a time. This is something we currently take for granted (except for iPhone owners) as everything in our lives multitask, from our cell phones to our cable boxes. Once consumers started running multiple programs, the race was on to develope more efficient ways of multitasking. It started with cooperative multitasking, and this lead to pre-emptive multitasking in operating systems, and the development of computers with more RAM to support simultaneous programs, and eventually to technologies like HyperThreading and multi-core technology, which actually puts two separate and distinct processors into a single chip. It all started with a computer that ran an operating system sold in 1987, working with less than a meg of RAM. For comparison, your average digital photograph these days takes up around 1MB (unless it's taken with a cell phone).

So that's what this is. It's an attempt to develop good habbits, with a wild goose chase down history, wrapped in a challenge, within limits that are to be pushed, draped in a juicy bit of knowledgesauce.

Location:Minnesota
Mood: inventive

Tags:

Links

Tags

Page Summary

Syndicate