[HN Gopher] Apple Macintosh before System 7
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Apple Macintosh before System 7
Author : rbanffy
Score : 21 points
Date : 2024-11-08 21:17 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (earlymacintosh.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (earlymacintosh.org)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I went through the process of gathering old sources for the games
| I wrote in that era. Using 68K Mac emulators (BasiliskII for
| example) I was able to also get the compilers and other dev tools
| of the era such that I could compile and run from source.
|
| Looking through the sources, it was on one hand fun to marvel at
| the simplicity of the OS (and Mac Toolbox) from that era. I
| thought it was hard at the time though. Funny how hindsight (and
| lots and lots more experience) can change how you now see the
| past.
|
| (I see so many cleaner styles of coding I could have adopted -
| have since adopted - when I look at my old sources.)
|
| But I was amazed at how often the apps/OS crashed as I worked
| through trying to get them up and running within the emulators.
| At first I thought it was the emulator(s). But my next thought
| was ... maybe System 6 crashed all the time back then? I think
| so.
|
| Example, I would run ResEdit (a development tool) and open a file
| that was also open in the IDE (THINK C or THINK Pascal). Crash!
|
| Crashes required a reboot (often then requiring running Disk
| First Aid on the disk image and rebooting again...). I kind of
| see why Amiga guys laughed at us.
|
| In fact I found a few bugs in sources from 35 years ago.
| ido wrote:
| Rest assured the Amiga crashed plenty too.
| floren wrote:
| I've spent a good bit of time over the last few years playing
| with a Plus and an SE/30, and I'd say yeah they just crashed
| all the goddamn time.
|
| Games especially seemed prone to messing things up when you
| exited, I think Arkanoid was particularly bad about it.
| bsimpson wrote:
| ResEdit was awesome!
|
| For those unfamiliar, Mac files of the era had two sections: a
| resource fork, and a data fork. Resources were structured
| chunks of information, like icons. You could open ResEdit and
| mod any app you liked.
|
| I missed resource forks when they moved to the UNIX way in
| what's now macOS.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Favorite hack: taking goofy pictures of my friends faces and
| ResEditing them into SimCity 2k in place of various
| departmental advisors.
| zerocrates wrote:
| The crash dialog box with the bomb icon was a pretty common
| encounter as I recall it.
|
| Similar to Windows 95 and the "illegal operation" box.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| System 7/apps would crash from time to time. I think we just
| had lower standards then. IIRC Macs prior to OS X didn't
| separate one process' memory from another?
| whartung wrote:
| > But I was amazed at how often the apps/OS crashed
|
| Which is one reason why Step 1 after unpacking the computer was
| to install the "Programmers Switch" to get access to the reset
| button.
|
| Rebooting the machine was completely routine. And it wasn't
| particularly slow (in context, by todays standards, everything
| was slow, all of those machines were glacial), at least for the
| time. I don't recall having to ever really run Disk First Aid
| on anything though.
|
| In fact, I remember making a "toy" that was a simple app that
| all it did was bring up the "Bomb box" (the infamous dialog
| with the sizzling bomb an reset button akin to the Blue Screen
| of Death). The detail was that if you moused to the Reset
| button in the dialog (which was, essentially an autonomic
| response for most Mac users), the Reset button would move away
| from the mouse. So, you "couldn't" hit the reset button.
|
| There was another button, typically disabled (I think is said
| Resume or something, I can't recall -- it was always disabled),
| if you clicked that, it would "melt" the screen and exit the
| app, no harm done.
|
| I spent a lot of meticulous time duplicating the dialog box and
| bomb icon. Run the program, note the box and icon, hit the
| interrupt button (on the Programmers Switch) to bring up the
| original, tweak, rinse and repeat.
|
| Someone eventually uploaded it to the assorted BBSes. I found
| it in a book in a bookstore once.
| joshmarinacci wrote:
| I remember that app! I think the version I had was named
| "Sexplosion" to encourage people to click on it.
| hedgehog wrote:
| I don't remember Glider crashing at all but running anything
| really big and complicated like Netscape it was only a matter
| of time.
| threeseed wrote:
| I had a Mac Plus and those owners manuals were a work of art.
|
| Shame we don't get the same care to documentation we used to.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Is this the same manual listed here
| https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/66123/Macintosh-Plus...
| ?
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