Posted on 06/20/2015 11:12:19 AM PDT by Swordmaker
Reviving an old computer is like restoring a classic car: There’s a thrill from bringing the ancient into the modern world. So it was with my first “real” computer, my Mac Plus, when I decided to bring it forward three decades and introduce it to the modern Web.
It’s a lowly machine, my Mac. The specs pale in comparison to even my Kindle: 8 MHz CPU, 4 MB RAM, 50 MB hard drive, and 512 x 384 pixel black-and-white screen. My current desktop PC is on the order of 200,000 times faster—not even including the GPU. Still, that Mac Plus was where I cut my computing teeth as a child. It introduced me to C, hard drives, modems, and the Internet.
Yes, in a certain sense, my Mac has already been on the Internet, first via BBSes and later via Lynx through a dial-up shell sessions. (There’s nothing quite like erotic literature at 2400 bps when you’re 13 years old.) What it never did was run a TCP/IP stack of its own. It was always just a dumb terminal on the ’net, never a full-fledged member.
How hard could it be to right that wrong?
Everything went smoothly at first. I had my mom ship the computer to me. It arrived in good condition, having been stored undisturbed in her basement since the mid-1990s. I plugged it and its external hard drive in, flipped the power switches, and watched the happy Mac glow to life on the tiny CRT. Sure, the hard drive gave a groan of protest when it first spun up, but that quieted down, and everything seemed stable with the data intact. At least for the first few minutes.
(Excerpt) Read more at kernelmag.dailydot.com ...
19 kbps!
road hog!
lol
Damn. . . do you have a replacement value insurance policy? You might be surprised what you can get for what they stole.
If I say my truck is twice as fast as yours, that doesn’t mean that one particular part in my engine runs twice as fast, it means that I can get from point A to point B in half the time.
Ooh kay.
There are websites dedicated to getting their old Commodore’s on the web!
As requested, Sunken CIV, here is a ping to the published article. I loved this mac. It was so cutting edge for that time. One of its features was Mac Draw. My daughter and I would create ‘masterpieces’ and record accompanying stories. Like all Apple products, it was fun and easy to use.
Exactly. What these very nice Freepers, members of the Apple Hate Brigade, can't seem to grasp is that in 2003, the third fastest computer in the world, which turned in 17.6 GigaFlops/Second, was at Virginia Tech, made up of 1100 dual core Apple G5 PowerMacs at 2.0MHz, nine months later upgraded to1350 2.2GHz Apple G5 xServers, turning in 19.6 GigaFlops.
The Virginia Tech supercomputer was bested only by the Los Alamos National Laboratory's 1.25GHz HP Alpha-Server with 8,192 cores, which turned 20,420 GigaFlops, and Japan's Earth Simulator with 5,120 Cores which turned 40,460 GigaFlops. . . and the most $ per Gigaflop efficient was the Apple.
Today, the fastest computer in the world that we know of, is the Chinese Supercomputer cluster composed of 3,120,000 Intel™ XEON core processors clocked at 2.2GHz which reportedly turns in an astounding 54,902.4 TeraFlops per second.
Those early supercomputers are, of course, no where close to modern supercomputers, but the clock speed of the Chinese latest and greatest is 2.2GHz, the same as that 2nd generation 2003 Apple G5 supercomputer cluster! What it does demonstrate is that computer clock speed has very little to do with the speed of computing.
My favorite of the original one-box monochrome Macs was the SE/30. All of those one-box Macs were quintessential, or as one of the early Apple fellows said, it wasn’t the first computer, just the first worthy of criticism. :’)
I can remember dialing into CompuServe on my C-64 through a 1200 baud modem. After waiting for what seemed like hours, there was nothing much to look at - sure was cool, though.
300, to 1200, 2400, to 56k and every step in between. . . We always had to have the fastest as soon as it became available. . . and were disappointed when the promise didn't match the performance!
Ahh, the old sounds of dialup.
I remember jumping for joy when I connected at 50,666 for the first time. It was blazingly fast.
I remember when Compuserve was a blue screen with white text. I can still remember my user ID...72327,120.
We have replacement value coverage, but almost no documentation so the insurance company is probably not going to pay much if anything. I have been procrastinating on the claim because my recollections are a little foggy and that is about all that I have for them. I wish now that I had photographed and documented everything. Even if I had I am not sure how one establishes value on such items.
Mine was 72175,601
However, one of the stolen items was an original Mac model 100 laptop I bought at a garage sale for $10 in u working condition. I found that the hard drive was kaput, bought a new one, installed it, installed an up-to-date version of Mac0S 7 that it could run and reported exactly what it was to the police and the insurance company and that I was into it for about $100 total loss. Imagine my shock when I came hoe from work one day and found a package from Apple containing a brand new $2400 Mac laptop to replace my garage sale junker! Replacement value means replacement value.
Funny thing is THAT laptop got stolen in another burglary six years later and they replaced it yet again!
Thanks for telling us of your experience. I have never made a homeowners claim in my life and have been procrastinating. The adjuster was so nasty that it has probably made me overly pessimistic.
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