I'm typing this paragraph in MS Word 5.1 on a Mac Color Classic as part of an experiment. If all goes well, this fairly unskilled Mac user is going to use her opposable thumbs, her wits, and a set of AppleTalk dongles to transfer the file to a PowerBook 2400c. Wish me luck...
And now we’re on a PowerBook 2400c running System 8.6, typing in Word:2001. I simply hooked the dongles to the respective machines, powered up the ancient ‘030 Color Classic running System 7.5.3, opened Chooser on the PowerPC 2400, turned on AppleTalk, and BAM! There was the Color Classic’s hard disk, all ready to be browsed. Now to re-save it with new edits as a .rtf file, open Internet Explorer, and use gmail to mail it to myself as an extension via the PowerBook’s Farallon WiFi card…
Abracadabra! Now we're on the desktop of a G4 Sawtooth running OS 10.2.8, using TextEdit to view the .rtf file that was begun on a fifteen year old Color Classic that doesn't even have enough hard disk space to install the operating system that is currently being used to manipulate the file. Even better, the whole process of transferring the file was done by a user who had never used AppleTalk until... oh... thirty minutes ago or so, and who had time to eat dinner during the whole process (A nice tossed salad with a delicious Wasabi Dijon dressing) and even clean up the dinner dishes.
No muss. No fuss. A file handed across three machines with completely different generations of operating systems and CPUs, with less drama than it takes to dub a DVD. Now to cut and paste into Blogger's edit window...
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7 comments:
Ahh, the Color Classic - one of my all-time favorite Macs. It was the object of my desire when it was introduced, but I'd already scored a screaming deal on a used but a optioned-out IIci, which would run rings around the CC.
Still, I considered selling off the IIci and getting the cute little Color Classic. That was, however, until I scored a (relatively) dirt cheap Radius Pivot monitor and matching NuBus card.
After that I moved to the PowerPC and forgot all about the Color Classic. I still wish I'd had one, though!
-=[ Grant ]=-
U R Pro
ooh, AppleTalk. Now find a friend and play some Spectre.
History in the making..
Wait.. Can you make history with history?
Any reason other than "because I can?" I mean, that's almost good enough in and of itself, and if you were starting on the ancient box for the "no distractions" thing you've been talking about, networking is a good way to get the file created on the ancient computer onto the one that can publish to the blog, altho using an intermediate computer seems a little gratuituous.
LocalTalk was pretty damn cool for its day, wasn't it?
Rick C,
Mostly it serves as a way for me to get files off older machines and onto newer ones. The extra step of an intermediary machine is because I couldn't figure any other way to bridge the gulf between the Color Classic and the no-floppy/no-serial port G4.
I'd considered using the Color Classic for writing, but was worried about my ability to get stuff off of it.
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