Newton Poetry

Now that the iMac G3’s hard drive was installed into the PowerMac G3, it was time to see if my Newtons would get along with the new setup. My hope was that, since the OS 9 drive and OS 8 drive seemed to share a common Desktop, maybe the OS 9 drive would share some of its Entrega serial-to-USB adapter driver love. But no such luck:

As before, the PowerMac wouldn’t recognize it or the Keyspan adapter I plugged in. The Keyspan adapter drive I downloaded (USA-28XG) didn’t even recognize the adapter I plugged in. But then I remembered: back when Keyspan was gobbled up, I saved a backup copy of the USA-28X adapter installer. Maybe the one I saved would work.

After transferring the file over to the PowerMac, the installation process went smoothly. In the Control Panels, there sat both Keyspan 28-X controls:

The 28-XG hadn’t worked. Would the 28-X?

Sure enough it did. It recognized the Keyspan adapter and allowed me to mess with the advanced settings:

I had no idea what half of this stuff meant. The real question was, would it work with the eMate? And it did. Finally – although not before I had to remember to set up Newton Connection Utility to recognize the port:

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Before, in the run-up to the System 7 experiment, the lack of a Newton driver was all that was keeping me from going through with the plunge into obsolescence.

With the ability to sync the Newton, I can work more on the whole Claris Organizer project, and keep backup files of all the eMate’s packages on the PowerMac’s HD. If I need it, I can use the iMac’s HD as a backup system. It’s beautiful.

This whole deal taught me two lessons: how easily I forget, and how important it is to keep backups of files. Especially ones you can’t get on the Internet any more.

The main reason I couldn’t go through with my Seven Day of System 7 experiment was because I couldn’t get the eMate (or the MP110) to connect with the PowerMac. Shuffling between the iMac and the PowerMac seemed like a hassle in an already full-of-hassle experiment. Now I only lose the bulk of the iMac, not the brains.

Really, I was waiting to find that stupid Entrega driver CD. Since it never surfaced (notice I’m blaming the disc), the experiment never happened.

But now? Man, it’s on. I have everything I need: my iMac’s games, files, and configurations; the ability to connect and sync my Newtons; a faster, more expandable machine in the PowerMac.

My plans still include buying a flat-screen monitor to save space – probably some refurbished Dell el-cheapo LCD. In the meantime, the Studio Display will be an workable stand in.

You know what I really like? The hum of the PowerMac. More delicate and softer than the PowerMac G4’s fans, the Blue and White provides a nice, steady white noise that I find relaxing. It’s something you never hear on modern Macs; the noisiest thing on my desk now is a pair of external hard drives. You can hear and feel those things kick on, especially during Time Machine backups.

A room full of PowerMacs might be a bit much, but the one I’m keeping produces a soothing whir that’s not obnoxious or distracting.

So by transplanting my iMac’s brain and finding a Keyspan adapter driver, I’ve turned the PowerMac G3 into an all-I-need Macintosh – the best of all worlds in one complete package.

Since I made the decision to retire some of my classic Macs, I had some thinking to do: what parts, if any, would I keep? And would I miss any functionality?

I thought about all the hard drives, with their drivers and software, that were going bye-bye, when it hit me that I could install a hard drive or two into the PowerMac G3 I was saving. And since the iMac G3 was the only Mac that would work with my serial-to-USB adapters, maybe a brain transplant was in order. So that’s what I did – took out the iMac’s hard drive and installed it into the Blue and White, just to see if it would work.

This meant opening the iMac and getting to the hard drive. I’ve covered how to get into an iMac G3, but getting to the hard drive was a bit trickier since it sits snugly below the motherboard tray in some infernal metal sleeve.

There were screws to unscrew – quite a few of them. The CD-ROM drive also sat on top of the hard drive:

To top it all off, there are power and connection cables snaking around both drives, squeezed into that metal tray pretty tightly. So I had to figure which cable went to which drive and yank them out:

After I unplugged the cables and got the CD-ROM drive out of the way, I had to remove a few more screws in the side of the drive and get rid of the little metal prong that held the drive in place. A little bit of wiggling and the hard drive was out.

From there I placed the iMac’s hard drive in the second bay of the PowerMac (above), set the screws in the side to hold it in place, and plugged in the connection and power cables. After the installation was complete, I got the question mark Mac folder on startup, meaning either one drive or both were conflicting. The iMac’s drive was set to be a master drive, which is a no-no in the ATA world. So I set the original PowerMac drive to master and the installed iMac drive to slave, and the issue went away.

When the PowerMac did start up, it booted into its usual OS 8.6 drive, and what do you know – there was the iMac’s hard drive on the desktop.

Something weird that I never expected: the PowerMac and iMac desktops were combined. Looking at the desktop above, the Entrega file, Doom.jpg, and Grackle file were both on the PowerMac’s desktop, not the iMac’s. But each time I reset the system with a different startup disk, both environments seemed to share the desktop files. Pretty neat.

One weird issue that hasn’t gone away, however, is my iMac’s tendency to not shut down or restart. Heading to Special > Shut Down or Restart made the iMac’s screen flash, the icons blink out for a second, but then no restart or shut down would happen. To turn the thing off, I had to put it asleep and then unplug it.

Maybe installing the hard drive in the PowerMac would help, I thought. But no dice. After setting the iMac HD as the startup drive, the restart/shutdown problem was still there.

One suggestion had me dumping the OS preferences and emptying the trash. Trashing the Mac OS and Finder prefs didn’t help. Others suggested a complete reinstall of OS 9, which is a method that sounds more like a Windows thing than a Mac thing.

I tried a series of boot-up key combinations to no avail. The only thing that worked reliably was setting the iMac HD as the startup drive, and boot with extensions turned off (holding Shift on bootup). That let me turn off and reset the iMac HD.

The other weird issue: I set up Multiple Users on the iMac, thanks to OS 9’s then-new feature, but a while back the iMac started booting into the Owner account automatically – there was no login required and no Multiple User welcome screen. Heading to the Multiple User extension manager, I found the strangest thing: there wasn’t one. Well, the extension was there, but it wasn’t working. It showed up in the Applications menu as an option, but offered no interface for managing the actual extension.

It’s hard these days to find reliable troubleshooting information for OS 8 and 9, and a lot of my searches have come up empty. But really, I have the iMac’s hard drive in the PowerMac – saving both space and time. And I can still accomplish most of what I need without the physical iMac being present. So mission accomplished.

Next up: connecting my Newtons to this new setup.

It’s decluttering time around Newton Poetry headquarters, which means I’m cleaning out Macs that I either rarely use or that have become redundant.

This includes my PowerMac G4, iMac G3, Mac SE, and Apple Studio Display (the above CRT model that matches the G4). All of them are taking up more space, and less attention, these days.

The Bondi blue iMac may be the exception. It’s an always-on machine for testing Newton stuff, playing games, and doing my household budget. But after digging into the PowerMac G3, I find that a lot of what I do with the iMac can be done with a more flexible, powerful G3 in the Blue and White. It’s not important to have a Mac with every OS on it anymore. The PowerMac G3’s Mac OS 8 can do most of what the iMac’s OS 9 can do (run games, test software). And even though the iMac takes up less space, I’ve been thinking about getting a flat-screen monitor to use with other computers and recycle the ungodly-heavy CRT.

My plan is to either give away or recycle all the Mac stuff. I have to warn local friends that these are older Macs, and so maybe aren’t appropriate for anyone but a dedicated hobbyist.

Except for the PowerMac G4, since it runs OS X 10.3 Panther and handles web browsing and basic computing pretty well. I’ve even tackled some graphic design projects on it using Adobe CS2, which it handled nicely. Having that G4 as an everyday machine, as loud as it is, is still better than having no Mac at all.

These days I’m finding less and less time to devote to my Mac hobby, so weeding down the number of machines will help me dedicate the time I do have to the remaining Macs. To me, there’s a twinge of guilt that happens when a Mac is left off for too long – especially when I can’t think of a good reason to turn it on.

My original plan for the Mac SE, one of two that I own, was to turn it into a Macquarium. But that’s a project I don’t want to think about for a long time, and I’d rather scrap a non-working classic than this perfectly capable Mac.

All this leaves me with my new iMac, an iBook G4, an iBook G3 blueberry clamshell, the B&W PowerMac G3, the other Mac SE, the LC 520, and two Newtons. That’s a collection with a good mix of OSes, software, and desktop-vs.-portable variety. Most of all, it’s a collection I can handle.

With these Macs out of the way, I’m getting ideas on projects to tackle next, like stealing one of the PowerMac G4’s hard drives (or even the iMac’s, with OS 9 on it) and installing it as a second drive in the Blue and White. I’m using the one Mac SE as a writing station, the iBook G4 as an iTunes jukebox in my bedroom (With a fantastic JBL Creature speaker system), while the iBook G3 mostly collects dust.

Newton Poetry readers that are interested in getting their hands on one of these machines would only have to worry about shipping, if you’re interested. Drop me an e-mail and I’d be glad to send you one.

Lately, this has been my distraction-free writing environment.

Mike Grimm, darn near a neighbor to me over in Fowlerville, Mich., shared a collection of his own Apple portables – including an Newton eMate 300, several varieties of iBooks, and a PowerBook 190 (“Ready for PowerPac Upgrade“).

“Eventually there may be some of the vintage desktops, and maybe a couple of PDA shots,” Mike said over e-mail.

I don’t see the neon eMate styluses very often, but Mike shares a bright orange one in his eMate shots.

Steven Frank of Panic on “Collections” with a capital C:

A reasonable goal, it seemed to me, would be to stick to systems and consoles that have deep personal meaning to me; the ones that claimed years of my life: The Atari 2600, the Apple ][ series, and the Amiga. And for spice maybe I’d add a few things that, although I never owned them in their day, were particularly unique or iconic, like the Vectrex.

…I wanted something that I could plug in, tinker with, repair, and show to anyone who wanted to see. A living museum, not a stuffy tomb of priceless artifacts. Real live working interactive history, not skeletons under glass.

The whole piece is great, but it’s this idea, that if you’re a collector, you should actually use the things you’re collecting, that stuck out for me.

I’ve thought about my own collection over the past few months. Newton Poetry hasn’t been the booming place it once was because I either don’t have the time to play with my old Macs like I use to, or I don’t have the inclination. A lot of the old hardware I have sits unused, and that makes me feel guilty.

There are a few exceptions. I still turn on my iMac G3 for my budgeting needs (with Quicken 2000) and to play WarCraft II. Lately the Mac SE has become a little journaling/writing station. It’s great to just flip it on, fire up MacWrite, and type away on the ol’ Extended II keyboard. But the PowerMac G4? The LC 520? The iBook G3 clamshell? I haven’t turned them on in months, and so I wonder what the heck they’re good for.

Sometimes I can’t wait to update my VHS collection to DVDs or downloads. Or to buy all my Super Nintendo games on the Wii and never have to worry about cartridges again. But then I think, “When does it all end? When will I never have to upgrade?”

We all face this at a certain point. If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt a collector of something – probably MessagePads or Macs. Maybe upgrading isn’t so much an issue as time and attention and space to dedicate to whatever it is you collect. We have limited amounts of each.

So I’ll keep thinking about it, and maybe reserve my time and space for the Macs and hardware I actually use. I like having a PowerMac G4; they’re neat machines. But maybe it doesn’t have a place in what Steven Frank calls my “living museum.”

Patrick Rhone at Minimal Mac:

That shiny new phone you want you don’t want bad enough yet. That system that is getting “a little slow” is not yet slow enough. Even if it is too slow for you it is more than most of the world could ever dream of having. Seriously, use your technology until it hurts – bad. Because the pain all of this consumption is bringing to a world that is just beyond yours is immeasurable.

Amen, brother. It’s something I’m fond of saying, and often repeat (and practice): just because it’s a few years old doesn’t mean it’s not worth using or tinkering with.

Rhone points to Free Geek, a larger, more organized version of my One Used Mac Per Child brainstorm a few years back.

But there’s a larger issue here than just taking old computers and fixing them up. The materials inside them, when shipped overseas, become hazardous beyond belief. We sit here in modern comfort, tossing out our old cell phones (I once saw a guy throw his phone out his truck window, smashing it on the street) or “recycling” our old Macs, never knowing where they end up.

I do my part, but I’m only one person. I do know many others that care about this stuff, and care about geeking out with old Newtons and Macs and keeping that stuff out of landfills and smelting pots. Kudos to Rhone at Minimal Mac for spreading the word.

It’s finally here: episode 11 of The hello Show, with David Kendal, me, and special guest Damian Ward.

Damian is a classic Mac collector in the truest sense. We talk about collecting old Macintoshes, why people do such crazy things, and a bit about recent Apple news.

Side note: when it comes to Mario Kart Wii racing, David and I are dead-even. Balloon and coin matches however? That’s another story…

What’s fun is that, with David in Northern England and me here in Michigan, we played a great series of Mario Kart races – even an ocean away.

Through my dragged out Seven Days of System 7 experiment, a few obstacles have blocked a full immersion in mid-90s Mac’ing. First, there was my lost Entrega USB adapter disc. Now I find that Claris Organizer and Newton Connection Utilities (or perhaps my eMate) can only hold hands. They never get past first base.

Throwing PIM data into Organizer is a snap. The whole thing is setup just like an Outlook/Entourage/Address Book + iCal system. Even the search works like a charm, and it’s a wonder why Apple didn’t keep Claris Organizer, instead of selling it to Palm, and making a unified PIM system. Maybe it’s the Outlook pro in me, but I prefer it that way.

I built a test account in Organizer, adding a few dates and contacts just to see if it would sync with my Newton. Organizer is a little different in that, once you get your information logged in, you have to save the whole thing as a profile file (in this case, the “davelawrence8”). Everything – contacts, calendars, to-dos – lives in that file. And at first, everything seemed easy and promising.

Through Newton Connection Utilities, you set the Newton’s sync file to whatever Organizer file you saved as your main profile. To sync, you manually connect each Newton data pool to the appropriate file. In this case, I want everything – my to-dos, my contacts, etc. – to sync with the Newton.

And for this first time, I set NCU to let the Mac’s information override anything already on my Newton. After the initial sync, I would let it go the other way around, where anything changed on the Newton would be dominant.

Clicking “Synchronize,” NCU looks like it’s going to sync everything with the Organizer data. And then bonk. There’s a connection error.

Since I tried to fit the whole PIM bundle the first time, I wondered if it was too much. Instead, I tried syncing the PIM info bucket by bucket. For the first test, I tried just syncing the contacts in Organizer.

Everything goes fine. NCU takes a few seconds to pull down Organizer’s data and push it through the serial connection with my eMate. No problems.

Next, I try the calendar data. And here again, NCU looks likes it’s going to work, and then bam. Another connection error.

“Maybe it’s my repeating meeting appointment,” I think to myself. So I set my recycling meeting to occur only once instead of a repeating appointment.

PHFFFT. Nothing.

That’s where things stand now. I’ve been defeated. The only thing left to try is to-dos, and maybe do a reverse sync – to see if an appointment added to the eMate manually gets synced with Organizer.

All this is part of the fun of setting up a system for the Seven Days experiment. I haven’t even got a good start on the thing when, POW, some roadblock stands in my way of full integration.

A side benefit: I did come up with a simple Automator Services script (above) that takes PICT files from OS 8/9 and adds the .pct extension to the files in batches. Since I do this quite a bit, making the mundane task a Service was pretty handy.

However, as you can see, Preview gives me sass on how to open up these files for viewing. So I said to hell with it and used Photoshop for any editing. But the “add .pct” Service is still a hit.

Funny how one little driver can set your plans back.

Here I was, all ready to begin the week-long experiment using nothing but classic Macs and Newtons, when I discover that I lost my Entrega serial-to-USB dongle’s driver disc. The CD came in a little white envelope and was next to a bunch of other RAM sticks, adapters, Firewire cords, and software CDs. Now it’s gone.

A search through the Internet yielding absolutely squat, and the Newtontalk list didn’t offer any suggestions. The closest I came was one of those sleazy driver sites that makes you wade through stupid ads to get to what you need. When the driver download came up, it still wasn’t what I needed.

Apparently, Entrega was bought out by Xircom, who was in turn bought out by Intel. Intel posts a bunch of downloads for the old Entrega/Xircom adapters, but only an old manual for the one I needed (model U1-D8). The driver is nowhere to be found.

The Entrega adapter was a marvelous piece of technology, helping me to connect to my iMac G3 and becoming my go-to gadget for all things Newton. Even though it’s a USB adapter, it needs a driver to operate correctly. And the usual Keyspan adapters don’t work on my pre-OS X Macs.

My hope in this system 7 experiment was to have my PowerMac G3 run as the hub of the whole operation, syncing my Newton, doing most of the heavy lifting, and connecting with the outside world. It’s true that I could simply connect my Newtons with my iMac G3, but I’d rather have just two Macs running during the experiment: the PowerMac, and the LC 520.

So everything’s on hold for now, until either that Entrega disc shows up (after a fifth or sixth sweep of my apartment) or I give up and go with the iMac for everyday tasks.