[geeks] Princeton Surplus Haul...

[Phil Stracchino]

Mark Benson wrote:
> On 16 Nov 2006, at 06:13, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
> 
>> I had a pair of Q650s, the last version of IICi type machines.
> 
> Ugh, the Q650 used the horrid later metal case taqt the IIvx and vi  
> used. I used to have a 7100 which was also that style case and I cut  
> my hands working on it so many times I hacked the board and PSU into  
> an old IIcx case (plastic type ala IIci/Quadra 700) that had died. It  
> only took a bit of light plastic surgery and it makes a much nicer  
> finger friendly 7100 :P
> 
> Oh and FYI technically the PowerMac 7100 was the last IIci form  
> factor type, but it was PowerPC so it never really gets counted in.
> 
>> After not powering them on for about two years, I was in the same  
>> position.
> 
> They take up room, and I have more than I can ever use, but I spent  
> time restoring them and I am loathed to just junk them. They'd have  
> to go to another loving home if they ever did go.

We have a Quadra 650, a Centris 650, a whole stack of beige G3s, plus a
smattering of oddballs like a Classic and an LCII (or maybe an LCIII, I
can't recall offhand).  Truthfully, if I had my choice, we'd get rid of
the lot.  The only two pieces of software we have of any significance
that run only on the Macs are Kid Pix and the original Logical Journey
of the Zoombinis (which is Mac/Windows, but doesn't run properly on
Windows 2000 and later), and the sheer number of hoops we have to jump
through to bludgeon passive-aggressive MacOS into approximating what we
want it to do on the kids' computers is actually more trouble than a
Windows box would be.  On Windows boxen there are at least workarounds
to most of the problems involved in setting up kids with restricted
access and no need to physically handle optical media.  On MacOS, a
restricted account isn't allowed to mount network shares or disk images.


In the days of the Mac Plus, I briefly liked the Mac.  On a screen that
tiny on a machine and OS that only really ran one app at a time anyway,
the idiotic single-fixed-menubar model wasn't really a problem.  On
anything with a real screen, it's utterly imbecilic.  It's my considered
opinion that the human-interface "experts" who said a single fixed
menubar is better were smoking as much crack as the loons who still
insist that the butt-ugly Studebaker Avanti, one of the weirdest-looking
contraptions to ever roll off a Detroit production line, is the most
beautiful car ever built.


-- 
 Same geek, same site, new location
 Phil Stracchino                     Landline: 603-429-0220
 phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net         Mobile: 603-216-7037
 Renaissance Man, Unix generalist, Perl hacker, Free Stater