43 replies to this topic

[Poopopyo]

I just picked up a Macintosh SE today and it is boring boring boring.

Does anybody know how to get games and/or access the internet on an SE without needing another mac?

[Megadragon15]

I can't imagine a slow and old computer like a Macintosh SE going online.

[Kripto]

Well some insane, masochistic S.O.B. has managed to get a "web browser" going on the lowly Apple II so that comparatively space age SE should have no problem...

OMzgp7xTp1k

[aftermac]

The SE has a PDS slot for an ethernet card, there are SCSI to Ethernet adapters, dial-up modems, MacIP routers - such as the Gatorbox. The recommended browser for the SE is Netscape Navigator 2, which works better with the 1-bit display than Netscape 3

The best thing might be a SCSI CD-ROM drive and burn HFS CD's from Windows and transfer games from the Internet like that.

Edited by aftermac, Sat Jul 25, 2009 9:51 PM.

[Megadragon15]

http://www.euronet.n...m_6_heaven.html

Check out this website for information.

[Poopopyo]

Also: How do you (if you can) get BASIC on the SE?

[aftermac]

Hmm... probably the best BASIC for the SE would be Microsoft QuickBASIC. Not sure if FutureBASIC or RealBASIC will run on it without checking the specs... and I'm heading out for the day. I can look and see if I have a copy of MSQB laying around somewhere. Any other BASIC's I'd have to research.

[liveinabin]

My solution was to buy two zip drives from ebay, one USB, one serial. Downloaded zip drivers for the SE HERE, copied them to a 3.5"" floppy (although you'll have to tape over a hole on the disc to fool the SE into thinking it's a single sided - Google around for that). Installed them and plugged in the Zip drive. Plugged the USB zip into my modern Mac (although a PC would be just as good) and searched around the net for stuff. There's absolutely tons out there.

[aftermac]

liveinabin, on Sat Oct 17, 2009 12:54 PM, said:

My solution was to buy two zip drives from ebay, one USB, one serial. Downloaded zip drivers for the SE HERE, copied them to a 3.5"" floppy (although you'll have to tape over a hole on the disc to fool the SE into thinking it's a single sided - Google around for that). Installed them and plugged in the Zip drive. Plugged the USB zip into my modern Mac (although a PC would be just as good) and searched around the net for stuff. There's absolutely tons out there.

I'm pretty sure you mean SCSI instead of serial. The DB-25 port on the SE is SCSI. Also, the tape on the floppy depends on the SE... certain models shipped with 1.4 MB floppy drives. If you can use the more modern Mac with the USB drive to put an SE compatible system folder on a Zip disk, then you should be able to boot the SE from the Zip disk without the Iomega driver by holding down command-option-shift-delete on startup. This way you can use the Zip disc to put the driver on the SE without the need for a floppy.

[Bruce Tomlin]

liveinabin, on Sat Oct 17, 2009 12:54 PM, said:

(although you'll have to tape over a hole on the disc to fool the SE into thinking it's a single sided - Google around for that)

Actually, that's to fool it into thinking the disk is double density (800k) rather than high density (1440k). The magnetic properties of the media changed between HD and DD, so while this is a bad idea for long-term usage, it's a good trick for trying to get something onto an older Macintosh with only 800k drives.

And FYI, you can usually tell whether an SE has HD floppy drives or not, because I recall they put "FDHD" lettering on the front of the case of an SE that shipped that way. However, they could still have been upgraded later with the new disk controller chip.

[aftermac]

Bruce Tomlin, on Sat Oct 17, 2009 3:14 PM, said:

And FYI, you can usually tell whether an SE has HD floppy drives or not, because I recall they put "FDHD" lettering on the front of the case of an SE that shipped that way.

Yeah, some of them were labeled FDHD, I also have one that says "Superdrive" in small lettering under "Macintosh SE".

[desiv]

Get Continuum!!
That and Dark Castle are great!

My Classic isn't on the interweb, so I use floppies, but it has a Superdrive and can read DOS format.

desiv
Of course, there's Daleks too.

[Hatta]

The real bitch with these old macs is dealing with the resource fork. I was lucky that the Classic I picked up already had ClarisWorks on it, which can do xmodem transfers and macbinary decompression. Without that I don't know what I'd have done. I used one of these cables, FWIW.

If you're going to use zip drives or floppies to transfer from a PC to a classic mac, how does that handle the resource fork? Will executables copied to the zip disk show up as executables on the Mac? Or do you have to use macbinary or something to get it across?

What about netatalk? If you had a classic mac with a virgin system 6 install, could you use netatalk to serve files to it? Will it work over a serial cable like the one I have, or would you need ethernet?

I was going to try out TCP/IP on this mac, which is in a Classic II case, but is actually a Classic inside. At half the CPU speed and less than half the RAM, I'm not sure that's worthwhile. Still works great as a network drive for my IIgs which was the main reason I got it. I can even run IIgs Wolf3d over the localtalk share.

[aftermac]

Hatta, on Sun Oct 18, 2009 1:04 PM, said:

The real bitch with these old macs is dealing with the resource fork. I was lucky that the Classic I picked up already had ClarisWorks on it, which can do xmodem transfers and macbinary decompression. Without that I don't know what I'd have done. I used one of these cables, FWIW.

If you're going to use zip drives or floppies to transfer from a PC to a classic mac, how does that handle the resource fork? Will executables copied to the zip disk show up as executables on the Mac? Or do you have to use macbinary or something to get it across?

What about netatalk? If you had a classic mac with a virgin system 6 install, could you use netatalk to serve files to it? Will it work over a serial cable like the one I have, or would you need ethernet?

I was going to try out TCP/IP on this mac, which is in a Classic II case, but is actually a Classic inside. At half the CPU speed and less than half the RAM, I'm not sure that's worthwhile. Still works great as a network drive for my IIgs which was the main reason I got it. I can even run IIgs Wolf3d over the localtalk share.

The safest way to deal with resource forks is to leave the file compressed until it has been copied to the older Mac. Most older Mac software you download should already be in macbinary, binhex, stuffit, or a disk image.

[Bruce Tomlin]

Hatta, on Sun Oct 18, 2009 1:04 PM, said:

If you're going to use zip drives or floppies to transfer from a PC to a classic mac, how does that handle the resource fork? Will executables copied to the zip disk show up as executables on the Mac? Or do you have to use macbinary or something to get it across?

That's correct. The absolute minimum stuff you need would be Binhex 4.0 and a version of Stuffit.

If you can get a Mac with built-in Ethernet (they did make SCSI Ethernet adapters, but good luck finding a driver), it may be possible to set up a file server, but unless you can find a copy of the non-free Appleshare Server software, you will probably not be able to connect to a newer computer, like one running OS X. That's because at some point they switched over from Appletalk to TCP/IP, and the client needs to be compatible with the server. (Localtalk is an option too, but it's slower than floppy disks and probably more trouble than it's worth.)

[Hatta]

Bruce Tomlin, on Sun Oct 18, 2009 9:20 PM, said:

That's correct. The absolute minimum stuff you need would be Binhex 4.0 and a version of Stuffit.

I thought as much. Really leaves you high and dry if you have a virgin Mac. Shame there's nothing quite like ADTPro for Macs. I should really write a floppy with Binhex & Stuffit (and a terminal emulator) in case I ever need to reinstall this thing.

[aftermac]

Hatta, on Mon Oct 19, 2009 1:05 PM, said:

Bruce Tomlin, on Sun Oct 18, 2009 9:20 PM, said:

That's correct. The absolute minimum stuff you need would be Binhex 4.0 and a version of Stuffit.

I thought as much. Really leaves you high and dry if you have a virgin Mac. Shame there's nothing quite like ADTPro for Macs. I should really write a floppy with Binhex & Stuffit (and a terminal emulator) in case I ever need to reinstall this thing.

Maybe two floppies, just to be safe.

[Paranoid]

There were just a handful of games worth the effort on older Macs.

Mac Playmate is some of the earliest, black and white interactive pr0n you'll even come across.

Mac Glider... I think is the same, is twice as well drawn, and many times more fun than Mac Playmate.

http://homepage.mac....ider%20PRO.html

It is evidently freeware for OS 9 and 10 now...

PGA Tour Golf is a nice old school Mac title if you happen to have an SE/30, LC, Quadra, or other later color Mac.

But basically, there is a reason Macs aren't known for being part of the glory day of 16 and 32 bit PC gaming. You can get some real cutting edge WYSIWYG word processors, CAD programs, and desktop publishing software for your SE, though.

[desiv]

Really, you have to get Continuum... It's kind of like Thrust on the C64.
http://www.ski-epic....oads/index.html

I had an Amiga 500 back then, and my roommate "wasted" (in my opinion at the time) lots of money on a Mac 512KE. (I think, maybe a Plus..).

But there were several times when he caught me using his computer to play Continuum.

I felt bad (I really bugged him alot about how much he spent on his Mac ), until I got a copy of a Mac emulator for my Amiga and could play it there..

...

But I still played in on his Mac. The display was sharper..

I still fire up my Mac Classic and play it from time to time... Great game..

desiv

[aftermac]

There were some great games for the Classic Mac, but certainly not enough of them. Apple really shunned the gaming market trying to prove that the Mac wasn't a toy, while pushing it in education, business, and especially publishing.

[Hatta]

aftermac, on Mon Oct 19, 2009 2:44 PM, said:

There were some great games for the Classic Mac, but certainly not enough of them. Apple really shunned the gaming market trying to prove that the Mac wasn't a toy, while pushing it in education, business, and especially publishing.

Yeah, I haven't found much worth playing on the Mac that I can't play on the IIgs with color and better sound. Continuum does look pretty cool though, I've always been a fan of the gravity based shooters. Some of the World Builder games piqued my interest, but they'll have to wait for a while.

Did a little googling right now, and I'm going to have to check out The Colony right away.

[thegoldenband]

Some of the games I remember enjoying on a compact Mac: Shadowgate, The Fool's Errand, Uninvited, Deja Vu, some of the Infocom text adventures, Dungeon of Doom, Glider, and a gomoku game called Jack (I think). So most of them were titles available on other systems, and mostly not arcade-oriented, but there were some platformers and things whose names I can't recall.

If you throw in early color games, of course, you get a lot more options, and some of those may be B&W-compatible. Oxyd (a puzzle game) and Taskmaker (a tile-based RPG) were two that got a fair bit of playtime some years back.

[chrisbid]

did they make glider pro and spaceward ho on the b&w macs? those are two of my old favorites

[Mirage]

Z-Basic was awesome on the old Macs. I used that on my Mac 512 enhanced back in the day. I have no idea where you'd get that now. I don't recall ever seeing it lying around on the internet, and I do remember looking for it at one point.

The SE may be boring now (remember though, you're on a retro site!), but when they came out, they rocked pretty hard.

[aftermac]

Mirage1972, on Tue Nov 10, 2009 3:36 PM, said:

Z-Basic was awesome on the old Macs. I used that on my Mac 512 enhanced back in the day. I have no idea where you'd get that now. I don't recall ever seeing it lying around on the internet, and I do remember looking for it at one point.

The SE may be boring now (remember though, you're on a retro site!), but when they came out, they rocked pretty hard.

Hmm... I don't seem to have Z-BASIC (unless it's compressed in some archive whose name doesn't contain "basic"). I have it for the Apple II, but not the Mac. I might have FutureBASIC laying around somewhere, probably on floppy. It was Zedcor's successor to Z-BASIC that I used for nearly 10 years. I'm not sure that it will run on an SE though.

I do have MSQB and that WILL run on an SE.