In Praise of the $100 Computer

A nice reminder this week of the value of old Macs, and a bit of crossover between Current and Vintage Macintosh computing. Always an enjoyable Low End Mac experience!

I recently acquired several old Macs while working with a client, one of which was an eMac. The eMac is a very capable G4-based system, the descendent of the G3 iMac. Originally designed for the education market (hence e-Mac), it was a good price/value configuration for under $1000 and Apple sold millions to consumers.

Compared to the iMac it's a rather subdued design, and heavy with a built-in 17" CRT monitor, but it's built to withstand abuse. This specific eMac had the tilt/swivel base option, which is quite practical and substantially improves the visual aesthetic of the system. We Mac nerds care about such things...

I reformatted the drive and installed Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" along with OS 9 for Classic and iLife '06. This combination runs very nicely on a G4 and provides compatibility with a wide range of old and new Mac software - run Classic apps side-by-side with modern versions of Mail, Safari and Firefox.

At about the same time, another client asked if I had any old Macs available for an associate who needed a functional computer for her family's use. Basically just internet and word processing, but she had a limited budget. eMac to the rescue!

We got in touch, and I offered to sell the computer for $100. She asked "why so cheap?" I said that's about what they're worth, and I'm just happy to see it go to a good home. Turns out video editing is one of her hobbies, so having a copy of iMovie and iWeb (along with FireWire ports) was very welcome. A 1GHz G4 running iMovie HD (version 6) is nothing to sneeze at, lots of good work has been (and will be) done on such a platform.

She stopped by one morning this week to pickup the computer. The next day I got this email:

Thanks for the eMac. I am in love with it. I have an external hard drive with video footage on it I forgot about so I will be having fun soon editing.

What one person has outgrown, now provides options for somebody else. There is room at all levels in the marketplace for Macs of all ages. A toast in praise of the $100 computer!

Lisa Earns Her Loyalty

Several months ago I mentioned that a pair of Apple Lisa computers were donated to the Vintage Mac Museum (see: Lisa Joins the Family and Why We Collect). The Lisa is a seminal item, both in general computing and Apple Macintosh history, and I'm lucky to have a pair that even partially work.

The resurrecting experience to date has been most challenging, and has only just begun.

The First Challenge - Finding a Keyboard

My two Lisas were provided without mice or keyboards. Missing mice aren't a big problem, the Lisa uses the same DB-9 connector as the early Macs so an original Macintosh, 512k or Mac Plus mouse will work. The keyboard is another story, it's completely proprietary (actually rather stylish, for its day) with custom electronics and a 1/4" phone connector. There are currently no substitutes.

I quickly learned they were hard to find. And in a case of "you are always your own worst enemy" (another hobby of mine), during my search I managed to get into an, err, emotional exchange with the one guy on eBay who deals in these things, thus earning each other's mutual dislike and thwarting me in my task even further. Good way to proceed...

Fortunately the Lisa community as a whole is sharing and generous, and after some time I managed to connect with somebody who had a spare keyboard available. All the way from Germany to the USA, a big thanks to Tom Sharpf from Bavaria (home of the original Oktoberfest!) for making a keyboard available and dealing with an international exchange.

It looks great in the kitchen with the now complete system, ehh?

The Second Challenge - Using That Keyboard

So after a 4 month delay, I haul out my two Lisas (not an easy task, they weigh 48 pounds each), connect the keyboard and fire one up. This is a slow process - maybe "warming up the car's engine" would be a better analogy. It can take about a minute from pushing the power button until the hardware self tests are completed.

Then I see the missing keyboard icon again:

What? I just connected a keyboard! The icon disappeared, and after another several minutes trying to find a bootable ProFile hard disk (which I know isn't working yet) the Lisa asks for a floppy disk. I shut off the system and try again. No missing keyboard icon the second time, but when I get to the floppy boot screen and try out the command key options presented (APPLE-2 and APPLE-3), nothing happens. Reboot again. Missing keyboard icon. Sigh...

I know Tom tested the keyboard before shipping it out and it worked fine.

I hookup the second Lisa, same thing. Keyboard is not recognized. I clean off the plug, try inserting/removing it a few times, reboot repeatedly. Nope. Try the first system again. Nope. Meanwhile you really should hear the sound of 30 year old hard drives spinning up and trying to come to life, it's a peaceful and soothing noise most suitable to calming one's nerves as they repeatedly attempt a failing task.

AAARRRGGGHHHHHH! I'm finding that a Lisa can be like an ailing older family member: someone you love and respect, but as they age the relationship can get stressful. They get Fragile. (Even, perhaps, Cranky :) I have to remind myself that I like working with vintage computers!

I asked for some help, and the incredibly knowledgeable Ray Arachelian (author of LisaEm, the definitive Lisa Emulator) offered some suggestions. If I'm lucky some contact cleaner on the jack and connectors might help, otherwise I will need to do some electrical testing on the cable and contacts. I will be mucking around with this over the next few days.

I may be drinking some at the time, too.

Once that's done I can get to work re-lubricating the 400k floppies and trying to get the ProFile hard drives recognized so that I can reinstall the Lisa OS. My Macs are anxiously awaiting a chance to talk with their Great Great Grandmother.

To be continued...

The Installer Log Says What?

I recently learned of a hidden capability of the Apple Installer application, namely the ability to display the installation log in real-time. While the Installer is running, choose Window --> Installer Log or type Command-L (aka Apple-L). If you then choose "Show Errors & All Progress" from the log window's popup menu, you'll be able to view what's happening while the wait cursor spins.

I suppose this isn't so much hidden as unpublicized, but few people seem aware of this capability. During long installations such as Mac OS X installs or upgrades, it helps to see the log being updated to know that your computer is actually still doing something and hasn't crashed.

During a recent Leopard upgrade - hmmm, is this now a Vintage Mac OS? - I enabled the log viewer and noticed a few odd things scrolling by. I decided to save the log when installation was complete, and parsed out some interesting lines after the fact:

Oct 15 18:12:16 localhost LCA[65]: Launching the Installer using language code "English"

The start of the process

Oct 15 18:12:41 localhost OSInstaller[155]: CPSGetProcessInfo(): This call is deprecated and should not be called anymore.
Oct 15 18:12:41 localhost OSInstaller[155]: CPSPBGetProcessInfo(): This call is deprecated and should not be called anymore.

If these calls are deprecated, why is the Apple Installer still calling them?

Oct 15 18:15:26 localhost OSInstaller[155]: Processing BaseSystem:
Oct 15 18:15:26 localhost OSInstaller[155]: Determining files to install
Oct 15 18:15:27 localhost OSInstaller[155]: It took 1.34 seconds to create the install plan for BaseSystem.
Oct 15 18:15:27 localhost OSInstaller[155]: Configuring deferred files

Much faster than I could create the install plan, that's for sure; what happens to the deferred files?

Oct 15 18:44:36 localhost root[721]: Begin script: RemoveClientLicense.sh
Oct 15 18:44:36 localhost root[723]: End script: RemoveClientLicense.sh

Interesting; Mac OS X Server is licensed. Perhaps the "honor system" policy Apple uses with Mac OS X Client may not always be so trusting?

Oct 15 18:46:41 localhost OSInstaller[155]: **** Summary Information ****
Oct 15 18:46:41 localhost OSInstaller[155]: Operation Elapsed time
Oct 15 18:46:41 localhost OSInstaller[155]: script 210.33 seconds
Oct 15 18:46:41 localhost OSInstaller[155]: zero 0.03 seconds
Oct 15 18:46:41 localhost OSInstaller[155]: install 1849.14 seconds
Oct 15 18:46:41 localhost OSInstaller[155]: validate 761.56 seconds
Oct 15 18:46:41 localhost OSInstaller[155]: os 2.23 seconds
Oct 15 18:46:41 localhost OSInstaller[155]: extract 829.08 seconds
Oct 15 18:46:41 localhost OSInstaller[155]: receipt 3.65 seconds
Oct 15 18:46:41 localhost OSInstaller[155]: disk 25.50 seconds
Oct 15 18:46:41 localhost OSInstaller[155]: config 44.41 seconds
Oct 15 18:46:41 localhost OSInstaller[155]: Finalizing installation.

Hmmm, this elapsed time totals out to 3725.93 seconds, or 62.1 minutes. According to the log entries, actual elapsed time is about 34.5 minutes. No wonder those "remaining time" calculations are always so far off...

Oct 15 18:46:56 localhost OSInstaller[155]: installAutoFSMonitor: open failed

The final word in the OS X install log is failed. That doesn't inspire confidence. Perhaps it's the Revenge of the Deferred Files!

Managing the Growing Piles...

Spent some time this weekend managing the growing piles o' stuff which accumulate at the VMM. It's an ongoing challenge to make sure the collection doesn't outgrow me in my own home, and one of the reasons the Museum is not a comprehensive one of all pre-Intel Macs made.

I like to keep spares around of the models I collect, and have periodic tear-down sessions to extract key parts while reducing the volume of stuff to store. Once I have one or two complete models, I just tend to keep logic boards, power supplies, hard drives, floppies, RAM, etc.

Some reorganizing this weekend allowed me to consolidate various external drives and peripherals into one shelving area, rather than scattershot among three rooms as before. I often need to reach for a Jaz or SyQuest drive (etc.) when doing file transfers for clients. Nice now to have a little library of peripherals for the pecking. Shown are some SCSI hard drives, SyQuest, CD-R, Jaz, Zip and USB floppy drives, plus a spare Cube with a few power supplies.

Also while digging through some boxes I finally found the AC adapter for a pair of AppleDesign Speakers I picked up years ago. These are colored PowerBook Battleship Grey, and include dual inputs for use with your computer and a CD drive or other device simultaneously. The AC plug's barrel is a non-standard size and I've been looking for an adapter for years. Had no idea I've had one all along!

These will become the new outputs for my MacTV, which has itself developed a garbled audio problem. Via the dual inputs I can also get them connected to an Airport Express for Music Streaming, and listen to the RetroMac Podcast whiile sitting amongst my old Macs.

That'll make 3 Airport Express boxes in the house - sort of a poor-man's Bang & Olufsen!

Pismo - We Can Rebuild Him

One of my favorite Macs is the PowerBook G3 "Pismo", the final iteration of the black G3 lineage. The Pismo is a marvel of elegance, in terms of aesthetics, design and serviceability. It is very reliable and has been a favorite of Mac fans since it's introduction.

Until last weekend I only had one Pismo in the collection. In order to keep the VMM functional I try to have redundancy among hardware, but the Pismo is a popular machine; I couldn't justify the $150 price that a functioning Pismo typically sells for on craigslist or eBay, just for a spare.

Well I lucked out last weekend, spotted an ad on my local craigslist offering 3 Pismos for $125 or best offer. They were all listed as missing hard drives and power supplies. I offered $100 for the batch - wondering if anything else was missing - and the seller agreed.

It's a good thing I bid low. Only 2 out of 3 had processor cards, none had optical drives, no Airport cards, no RAM to be seen, plus the aforementioned missing hard drives and power supplies. Clearly these were some "stripped" models. When I got home (where I have the needed AC adapters) none powered on or showed any signs of life.

Sometimes you can get old "shelved" machines to revive by leaving them plugged in for a few hours or overnight, which recharges the internal PRAM battery. Alas after several charging sessions each, no luck with these systems.

I asked the seller for a partial refund, which - fortunately and atypical for craigslist - he agreed to. I then set out for some heavy duty strip down forensics.

The Pismo is wonderful to work on. (Note: Torx and Phillips screwdrivers required). Two latches pop out the keyboard, you remove a couple of heat shields, and everything is accessible. After lots of swapping and testing I found I had two good processor cards, one 400MHz and one 500MHz, plus a single 128MB PC-100 DIMM which had been hiding on the underside of one of the CPU boards.

Using a spare 30GB 2.5" ATA hard drive I had handy, and borrowing the optical drive from my working Pismo, I eventually managed to get one of the three mutts to power on and boot from a Mac OS 9 install CD. I then formatted the internal hard drive using Drive Setup, copied over a full OS 9 installation from an external FireWire drive, rebooted and presto! One fully working Pismo.

Total purchase cost after refund: $60, plus a few evenings of bench testing and parts swapping. I'm pleased with the outcome.

Alas, no luck with the other two units, which will not power up at all. With luck the PRAM batteries are just dead, I'll have to try ordering some new ones. If not, well, maybe the screens still work.

But - I can now get the CPU board, RAM, hard drive and keyboard swapped from one Pismo to another in under 5 minutes! Try that on any Apple laptop made since!

UPDATE - PRAM Battery is the Key
Thanks to some tips in the reader comments, I've learned that completely removing a dead PRAM battery often allows a dead Pismo to boot from the AC adapter. I tried this on my two dead units, swapped in a drive and processor card, and indeed all started up and worked fine - fantastic! Thanks folks, the tips are much appreciated!

Other World Computing - a great resource for finding many old (and new) Mac parts - stocks replacement PRAM batteries for $28 each - ironically, about the unit cost of my three "new" Pismos! :)