So, here’s a shout-out to my recent correspondents:

• Grant Hutchinson — Thank you for the package you sent me in December. You’ve given me good RAM chips for my clamshell iBooks and for the PowerBook G3 Lombard, plus there was enough RAM to bring my Power Macintosh 9500/132 to a whopping 1.5GB RAM. The inclusion of reference materials such as WebObjects Developer’s Guide and a few issues of develop – The Apple Technical Journal was a very welcome addition to my small collection of vintage printed material. Other excellent items (not related to vintage technology) were just the icing on the cake.
• Eric K. — Thank you so much for sending me some RAM chips for the PowerBook G3 Lombard. The low-profile chips were essential in expanding the PowerBook’s RAM. For those who don’t know, the Lombard has two RAM slots, but when you remove the keyboard you only see one. To access the second, you have to remove the daughter card where the visible slot resides; the second RAM slot (accepting low-profile chips) is located directly underneath the visible slot, on the opposite side of the daughter card.
• Lyle B. — Thank you for writing me and offering me a very nice Macintosh Plus system. I told you we would talk again after the festive period and I promise we’ll talk soon. I had a few financial issues in the meantime and I thank you for your patience and for the kind words you wrote about System Folder
• Adam Rosen — Thanks for your email! I had already bookmarked your excellent website, The Vintage Mac Museum and it’s been an honour and a pleasure to hear from you. Adam too offers data retrieval services, so don’t hesitate to contact me or him if you want a chance to retrieve stuff you’re keeping on old media.
• TC Clark — Thank you for your email and your suggestions regarding the configuration of Netscape Messenger with Gmail. My old post, Classic Email Clients vs Gmail is in need of a follow-up, which I’ll publish as soon as I put the Power Macintosh 9500/132 back in service.
• Finally, thanks to all the people who have recently discovered my blog and have commented here. I’ll try to get back to you as soon as I can. And of course, thank you everyone for stopping by. You also make this place better. May you all have a great 2012!

• Email — Mac OS X’s Mail app is sufficient. I have set it up to handle my email correspondence related to vintage Macs and emails I receive from readers of this blog.
• Web browsing — In this case I think it’s better to rely on more than one browser. Safari 1.3.2 (the highest version supported by Panther) can still render websites in a decent way, but I’ve found that on Panther the best browsing experience is with Opera 10.10. Versions from 10 to 11.60 of Opera are available for download at this page. Older versions can be found in the Opera archive. Version 10.10 is the last supported by Mac OS X Panther. I’ve also added iCab 4.8 for good measure. (By the way, for vintage Macs the most updated browser around is TenFourFox, which supports G3, G4 and G5 PPC Macs. TenFourFox is the one that guarantees better compatibility with modern websites and it works great on my G4 Macs. You will need at least Mac OS X 10.4.11, though, so if you’re on Panther you’re out of luck).
• Twitter — The best solution for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther I’ve found so far is Twit Menulet.
• Text management – TextEdit for rich text formatting is enough, as is BBEdit 7.1.x for sophisticated text editing and code writing. BBEdit 7 is the last version supported by Panther. (I’m still looking for a reliable link to provide you with a legal download of this version, which is too old to appear on the Bare Bones Software website; System 7 Today has a download link for BBedit Lite 6, though, which may be enough for most people).
• RSS feed reading — I think the only usable option for reading feeds on a Mac OS X Panther machine is to use an older version of NetNewsWire. I managed to download version 2.1.5 long ago, but that link doesn’t work anymore, so I’ve made it available on my public Dropbox folder. You won’t have Google Reader syncing, of course, but you’ll be surprised at how well NetNewsWire works overall.
• Image editing — The best ‘Swiss army knife’ solution is obviously to download an older, suitable version of Graphic Converter. If your machine doesn’t support anything more recent than Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, Graphic Converter 6.5 X (CFM) is what you’re looking for (first link at the top of the list). For my needs, that is simply too much, so I’m sticking with an interesting little software called ToyViewer by Japanese developer T. Ogihara, who generously provides older versions of the application for earlier versions of Mac OS X as far back as 10.1 (Puma). As you will see, this software is quite lightweight and versatile enough to allow for basic image editing. Then, of course, you can use Mac OS X’s Preview, also for handling PDF files. Included on Panther’s installation discs is also iPhoto 2.
• Font management — Font Book will probably be enough. I find the free FontExplorer X 1.2.3 by Linotype more pleasing and flexible, though. You can download it here.
• Miscellaneous software — One evening I wanted to control my Lombard remotely from my MacBook Pro. Since my other vintage Macs with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger are easily controlled via Mac OS X’s Screen Sharing, I thought it would work with the Lombard as well. It turns out that, with just Mac OS X 10.3 Panther on the other machine, it doesn’t. Or maybe I missed something obvious. Anyway, Vine Server did the trick. The setup is rather easy, then you basically start Vine Server on the PowerBook G3 and it becomes visible and accessible from any Finder window on the modern Mac.
  For those who are accustomed to using solutions like Quicksilver to perform searches and launch applications, the good news is that there is a Mac OS X Panther compatible version you can download straight from the developer’s site.

As I said, this list is just a starting point, but with these little additions my PowerBook G3 Lombard is proving to be quite the functional machine. I can also watch DVDs if I want, but only after rebooting into Mac OS 9 — read more about this here. As for iTunes and QuickTime, I’ve already talked about them in this previous ‘Prepping the Lombard’ entry. If you have other Mac OS X 10.3-compatible software suggestions, you’re welcome to mention them in the comments.

Setting things straight

Since I started this weblog back in 2008, it featured a page called My vintage Mac wishlist, where I list some selected vintage Apple hardware I’m after. I think it’s all quite self-explanatory, but the kind of feedback I received over the years, generated by that page, has been rather absurd and disappointing. I’ve asked myself many times what’s wrong with people.

Therefore, allow me to reiterate what’s written on that page, with an added explanation for those who need things to be spelled out for them:

Have you got an old Mac sitting around doing nothing useful for you except taking up space? If the philosophy of this humble weblog doesn’t convince you about the usefulness of vintage Macs, or you simply just don’t know what to do with it, you can consider sending it to me.

I’m not looking for any vintage Mac, though. I have limited space as well.

This means: Hey, if you have one of the Macs or other Apple-related hardware that’s present on my list and you want to get rid of it, I’m here, let’s talk about it. But only if it is on my list. I’m amazed at the amount of emails I’ve received from people who wanted me to have whatever they were throwing away, vintage or not; I’ve even received proposals to acquire non-Mac stuff. Wasn’t I clear enough in that page? Isn’t this whole weblog clear enough about where I come from and what I’m interested in?

If you have one of these things and would like to sell or donate them, contact me and we’ll talk about it.

You talk about donating old stuff and people cringe. Yes, I know exactly how much you paid for your Macintosh Plus back in the day. No, nobody is forcing you to part from it at gunpoint. You either want to sell it for five hundred dollars or keep it rotting in your basement? That’s fine with me, I’m not interested. But for the sake of all that’s dear to you, don’t write me patronising messages telling me I don’t have a clue about the value of these vintage Macs. Don’t waste your time and mine by writing me emails basically telling me, Yeah I have that Mac, and no I won’t give it to you for free because if you think I want to donate it to you, you’re out of your fucking mind. Don’t give me that attitude because a) it’s unnecessary, and b) it only shows you haven’t been paying attention.

Read those words again: …sell or donate them…

The ‘Sentimental Value Tax’

I’m open to purchasing vintage hardware from you. And always willing to pay shipping costs. The only thing I haven’t specified — but, alas, hoped it was clear enough — is that your price be reasonable. Many people tend to add what I call the “Sentimental Value Tax” when they sell their old hardware. I understand the sentiment, but in this context it is out of place. Why? Because you’re willing to part with the hardware in the first place. I own a lot of things which have deep sentimental value to me and that is precisely why I don’t sell them or give them away. Instead, much of the attitude I felt from people who contacted me, was along the lines of “your offer should be high enough to make me want to give my old Mac to you”. Sorry, but that doesn’t work for me.

With computers, you have to live with the fact that they decrease in value at a frightening pace. Especially if they feature patently obsolete technologies. For a Macintosh SE/30 (a Mac that was produced between 1989 to 1991) to sell for more than $100, for instance, it has to be in exceptional shape inside and out, it has to have a good CRT screen with no burn-in, it has to have a generous amount of RAM, or a rare PDS or video card attached. If it hasn’t got any of these features, don’t call me a disrespectful cheapskate when I ask for less in our negotiation.

You have to detach yourself from the poisoning mindset of “I paid this Mac $4,700 in 1995! I can’t let it go for $70 now!” — if you want to make money with used items, you should deal with antiques: jewellery, watches, furniture, pottery, etc. Things that retain their value or even increase in value over time.

So you’re a collector…

Some people have this idea about collectors in general: that they’re all rich, eccentric and gullible fellows, willing to pay whatever price to get their hands on what they’re looking for. Some of them might be like that, of course, even in the vintage Mac market, but from my experience they’re not in the majority. If you decide to contact me because you own an item in my vintage Mac wishlist, don’t assume I’m that kind of collector. I hate when people have stuff in their attics, left there to collect dust and rust, stuff that evidently has no value to them, stuff they won’t give a crap about, but that suddenly becomes ‘rare, precious, expensive’ only because I’m interested in it. I could in part excuse this attitude if I were the one to contact you first, begging you to give it to me.

Also, eBay is misleading if you base your asking price just by looking at a few random Mac-related auctions there. Don’t assume that a PowerBook Duo 230 can be priced at $400 only because some fool on eBay let himself be ripped off and paid that price for an auctioned item.

The mysteries of correspondence

Last but not least, I have to mention a kind of correspondent I’ve often encountered since I’m into vintage Mac hardware (see also The strange cases of vintage Apple hardware sellers — Part 1 and Part 2). I’m talking about the disappearing correspondent. People who contact you out of the blue, proposing you a deal, or asking whether you’re interested in their items, and then do not follow up when you reply to them.

Guys, I’m as busy as you are. I may not reply to your email as soon as I receive it. But rest assured that I reply to all messages related to my vintage Mac wishlist. (Provided, of course, you’re willing to sell or donate some item that’s actually on such list). If you change your mind, if you found some other buyer, just tell me briefly and I’ll understand. I can’t translate your silence otherwise, and it invariably comes across as rude. If you’re not willing to deal with what you’ve started, don’t start it in the first place. It’s a time-saver for both of us.

International shipping

A final word on shipping. I’m not located in the United States. Some people are put off by the idea of shipping stuff internationally. Let me reassure you: I’ve never had a problem with packages sent to me via USPS. Even large and heavy packages (a Power Mac G4 Cube and a 22-inch Cinema Display, to give you an idea). It is, I think, the cheapest option; there are no hidden costs for the sender that I know of; items have always reached me in perfect shape and in a timely fashion. The only trouble I had in many years was caused by an incompetent postman at my end, so please don’t worry and don’t let international shipping compromise our deal.

Apple, 1984

User experience over all

There are people who like to push their vintage Macs to their limits. I don’t mean you should ditch your trusty PowerBook G3 or G4 and stick to your newest Mac. I mean that some people get, say, a Macintosh Classic, look up Mactracker, see that the maximum OS supported by the Classic is System 7.5.5 and proceed to install it no matter what. Sure, you can install System 7.5.5 on a Classic — provided, of course, you increase its RAM to the maximum as well — but I bet that the general performance and user experience won’t be optimal.

My approach is slightly different. I give precedence to user experience: whatever the vintage, the Mac I acquire must be smooth to use. In vintage Macs with a Motorola 68K processor, the amount of RAM installed makes a huge difference when it comes to installing the ‘right’ OS version. A Macintosh SE with 2 MB RAM is much more capable than a SE with just 1 MB. And a SE with 4 MB RAM will be remarkably more capable than a SE with just 2 MB. This sounds quite obvious, but you have no idea of the amount of misconfigured compact Macs I have encountered as a Mac consultant.

There are always tradeoffs. Often a newer OS version means more features and capabilities, and also more third-party software to choose from, so one could be tempted to upgrade, but unless you want some specific capability (given by the newer OS or by a piece of software only the newer OS can run), my advice is to be conservative and refrain from installing the latest OS version your vintage Mac is theoretically able to run. For instance, if the convenience of having a Control Strip at the bottom of the screen is paramount, then by all means install System 7.5 and do all the necessary things, hardware-wise, to help smooth the user experience: install the maximum RAM your Mac can handle and also a bigger hard drive (it never hurts). Otherwise, it’s just not worthwhile.

My Macintosh SE has 2 MB RAM and an 80 MB hard drive. If it had 4 MB RAM, I could install System 7.5.x on it, but the performance wouldn’t be smooth or satisfactory. So I first installed System 7.1, and things were generally fine. When I was given a SE/30, I took the SE and did a little experiment: I downgraded it to System 6.0.8 just to see how it would fare. All the (few) programs I was using on the SE were backward-compatible, so I wasn’t worried. After installation, I rebooted the SE and everything was noticeably faster and snappier (as I suspected). Now I have too much stuff and so little time to look for RAM sticks and perform RAM upgrades on my compact Macs, but even if I maxed the RAM on the SE and brought it to 4 MB, I probably wouldn’t upgrade the OS anyway.

All my beige Macs have enough RAM to support a newer OS version, but I keep every one of them with the previous Mac OS version installed. So, my PowerBook Duo 280c could run Mac OS 8.1, but it would be too sluggish, so it runs Mac OS 7.6.1, boots faster and is generally more responsive. My PowerBook 5300 could run Mac OS 9.1, but I keep it with Mac OS 8.1 and it’s really, really usable (in fact, it’s the most used vintage Mac in my small collection). Once I tried upgrading it to 8.6 just for kicks, but I was generally dissatisfied with that ‘improvement’, so I returned to 8.1. (I don’t even want to think about how things would go if I installed Mac OS 9.1.). The recently-acquired PowerBook G3/400 “Lombard” has currently installed Mac OS X 10.3.9. I could upgrade it to Mac OS X 10.4 (not directly, though, but by using XPostFacto) and I could look for a G4 card to speed it up, but I won’t, for a number of reasons I’ll explain below.

My approach: puristic & minimalist

Here I enter the realm of personal preferences even more deeply. By puristic, I mean that basically none of my vintage Macs has undergone any processor or speed-related hardware upgrade. My Power Macintosh 9500/132 could be made into a faster machine via a G3 processor upgrade card, and my PowerBook G3 could become a G4 machine via a similar upgrade. There is a sweet hardware upgrade for my Power Mac G4 Cube that could transform it into a G4/1.8 GHz beast with a 128 MB graphics card (instead of the stock G4/450 MHz processor and 16 MB graphics card).

The fact is, I like the challenge of putting a vintage Mac to good use without ‘cheating’. The point, for me, is What can be done today with a vintage Mac’s original processing power? A number of things, and you don’t even have to overstuff your vintage Mac if you start by choosing the main task that Mac has to perform and then the right set of tools for the task. Here comes the minimalist part of my approach. It’s hard to talk about these things in an abstract manner, so I’ll proceed by examples. (Feel free to skip to the last section if you’re not interested.)

1. My Colour Classic serves two main purposes at the moment: as a creative writing environment free from distractions, and as an instrument for cataloguing my books and the books I borrow from the Library of the Polytechnic University of Valencia. The Colour Classic supports a maximum of 10 MB RAM and can run System 7.1 to Mac OS 7.6.1. The only software I have installed on it is the software I need to carry out the aforementioned tasks, so my Colour Classic has Microsoft Word 5.1a (the best Word version ever), WriteNow, BBEdit 3.5 (for when I want/need to write bits of text with HTML code), and FileMaker Pro 3 for my book database. To run these applications I don’t need the latest OS, so I have kept System 7.1 on the Colour Classic.

2. My PowerBook Duo 280c has a great strength: it’s the most compact and lightweight vintage portable Mac I own (it’s even a bit lighter than the PowerBook 100). Its battery still holds a little charge, too. So I carry it around with my Newton MessagePads when I’m on the go, and it stores various Newton backups and essential Newton software in case I have to reinstall applications on the MessagePad. Therefore, the only software I have installed on it is WriteNow (a light word processor is always handy), the Newton Connection Utilities (NCU) (when I need to connect NewtonOS 2.x devices such as my MP2100 or the eMate), and the Newton Connection Kit (NCK) (when I need to connect my Original MessagePad, which is a NewtonOS 1.x device).

3. My Power Macintosh 9500/132 is the most powerful vintage Mac tower I have. Since it has enough CPU power, a rather generous amount of RAM (272 MB), and two internal hard drives (2 GB and 8.5 GB), I’ve been using this Mac for every kind of experiment, to the point that some time ago it was a triple-boot machine, with Mac OS 9.1, Mac OS X 10.1.5 (installed via XPostFacto) and Rhapsody Developer Release 2 running on an external 4 GB hard drive. After both the internal drives failed almost simultaneously, I reconfigured the 9500 as a Mac OS 9.1-only machine, and I use it for browsing the Web and testing Classilla, for email, and for the occasional vintage game. On this machine I also run older versions of QuarkXPress and Photoshop, and I use it to access all kinds of old backups stored in old but reliable supports such as SyQuest cartridges and Magneto-Optical disks. Thanks to its built-in floppy drive and CD-ROM drive, plus the external SyQuest 5200 and MaxOptix MO drive, this machine is a true bridge between the vintage and the more modern Macs in my home network. Despite all this, the software installation on the Power Macintosh 9500 is kept to a minimum: a browser, a couple of email clients, some utilities to verify and repair disks (such as Hard Disk Toolkit), Photoshop 4, Adobe Reader 4, QuarkXPress 3.x, and GraphicConverter. The only reason I decided to install Mac OS 9.1 was to be able to use Classilla without problems, and the hardware configuration is powerful enough to run OS 9.1 rather smoothly.

4. Regarding my Power Mac G4 Cube, as I wrote on my main website:

With the vintage but still beautiful acrylic 22-inch Cinema Display attached to it, the Cube is perfect for displaying information I want to glance at while I work. I also use it to check a couple of low-traffic email accounts; to open additional browser windows in Safari when the browsers I have open on my main MacBook Pro get too crowded; to listen to music (I have a separate iTunes library on the Cube entirely dedicated to classical music); and of course to check my Twitter stream and the RSS feeds.

For this kind of use, it’s not necessary to perform hardware upgrades on the Cube. Plus, any hardware acceleration card (processor and/or graphics) would force me to install additional fans inside the Cube, and I would lose one of the features I love most about this Mac: its silent operation. I could also install Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard with some tricks, but I see no real reason to make this hardware configuration struggle just because I want the convenience of Quick Look, for instance.

To summarise

Tuning up your vintage Mac largely depends on what you plan to do with it, along with other essential factors:

• The form factor: is it a compact Mac like the original Macintosh, Mac Plus, Mac SE, Mac Classic, Colour Classic, etc.? These Macs have all 9-inch, black & white screens (apart from the Colour Classic). They’re perfect for writing, file exchange, handling databases, acting as fax/print servers, and if you’re adventurous enough you can even try a web server project. Their expandability is rather limited. Is it a portable Mac? PowerBooks are handy because they don’t take up much space and you can easily put them away when not in use. PowerBooks with PCMCIA slots (like the PowerBook 190, the 5300, the 1400, the 3400, up to the PowerBook G4) are more expandable and you can add Wi-Fi and Ethernet cards, for example. Is it a tower or mini-tower? They’re usually powerful and expandable. The Power Macintosh 8600/9600, the beige Power Macintosh G3, the Blue & White Power Mac G3, and all Power Mac G4s are the easiest to open and add drives and additional expansions.
• Technical specs: How much RAM has it got? How much can it take? How easy is to find it? Has it got enough hard drive space? If it’s a PowerBook, does its battery still hold a charge or you have to use it always plugged in? Remember, tech specs play an important role when it comes to choose which version of Mac OS to install. My advice is to be conservative, especially when there isn’t much RAM available. See if you can sacrifice a bit of software functionality for a better performance and user experience overall.
• Software requirements: If you plan to absolutely have a particular application running on your vintage Mac, and that application has system requirements your Mac barely meets or can’t meet in its current state, see if you still can do the same task with an earlier version of that application.

When I acquire a vintage Mac I can put to good use, first I focus on the task. What do I want to do with it? Once I decide the task, I see whether the hardware is suitable for said task and I look for the necessary software to do it. Once I have the software, I see which Mac OS version I have to install on the Mac, if I need to upgrade or even downgrade the current configuration. Then my puristic and minimalist approach kicks in: keep things simple, install only what’s really necessary for the task. Consider a processor or graphics card upgrade only if it’s really needed. Keeping things balanced (e.g. refraining from installing a Mac OS version or other software that is too memory- or resource-hungry) will ensure a pleasant user experience overall with any vintage Mac.

Yesterday, by complete chance, I discovered Twit Menulet, and when on its home page I read Twit Menulet runs on Mac OS X, Version 10.3.9 and above, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

You’ll find detailed information on how to use it in the manual, but the basic idea is ingenious: as the name suggests, Twit Menulet resides in the menubar as a menulet (or menu extra). If you have enough screen real estate, Twit Menulet displays each tweet in your timeline right in the menubar, like a stock ticker. If you don’t (or if you find the constant updating too distracting), you can tell Twit Menulet to display only the avatar in the preferences.

What’s more, the latest version of Twit Menulet works also as a Tumblr client.

Here’s a screenshot of the application running on my PowerBook G3/400 Lombard with Mac OS X 10.3.9:

As you can see, Twit Menulet offers a wide range of options and actions, and it’s by no means a crippled or ‘simplified’ client. Perhaps some people won’t like the basic concept of it being a menu extra, and prefer to have an always-visible timeline. However I think that, especially on older Macs with smaller screens, this is a more practical, less distracting solution.

Twit Menulet costs $8, but there’s a trial version available for download. Give it a try, and spread the word. A developer who still supports older PPC Macs is surely worthy of praise.

This post made me smile for a number of reasons: firstly, it’s a cool setup, and I’m glad it works because it took quite the effort on Justin’s part — this is far from being a ‘plug & play’ combination. Secondly, Justin’s explanation includes a precious link that I had lost during my recent bookmark summer cleaning: Paul Weinstein’s post about setting up an Apple IIc as a terminal (and here you have a vintage Apple link, so I’m back on topic!).

Last but not least, I’m in full agreement with Justin when he concludes:

I learned a lot about how terminals work over the last couple weeks and the final result is quite satisfying, a soft amber glow and one less window on my desktop. It’s also a nice reminder that we didn’t get to where we are overnight, user interfaces and software development have been evolving in an unbroken chain for a long time and some of the old ideas are so solid that they persist 30 years later. Why not use the proper hardware?

Ah, to think I could have done something similar! When I was still living in Italy I had been given an IBM 5291 terminal [like this one], but regrettably I had to dispose of it during my relocation: I had too much vintage gear to fit in my flat here in Spain, and at the time I had no real use for it, so it had to go. I’ll always remember his large, heavy, all-metal keyboard, giving a literal meaning to the phrase ‘built like a tank’…

Now, I must admit that the Wikipedia was quite helpful in this regard, and my hunt ended way before I had expected. Wikipedia has two very useful pages:

1. iTunes version history, and
2. QuickTime ~ Platform support

In both cases you’ll find an exhaustive table outlining each Mac OS system version with the correspondent latest version of the software, with direct links for downloading (or at least with updated links to Apple Support pages from where you can download the desired version). So, within a few minutes I knew that the latest version of QuickTime supported by Mac OS X Panther is 7.5 and the latest version of iTunes is 7.7.1.

After installing both updates, I launched iTunes and tried to access the iTunes Store, but when I tried to sign in with my Apple ID, iTunes threw a strange error about not finding the keychain and suggested I ran Keychain First Aid from inside the Keychain Access application. I searched for a solution on the Web and turns out that Panther had a small bug of some sort affecting keychains and the possibility to access secure pages on Safari and iTunes (hence the strange error). Among my findings, the quick and dirty solution has been to launch Keychain Access, go to Keychain List and check the Global option for my account keychain and for the System keychain. Back to iTunes, I was able to log into my account, only to be shown this page as the Store home page:

Sorry, Apple, I can't upgrade to iTunes 10 on a PowerBook G3.

Which means that I couldn’t access the iTunes Store. Also thanks to my Twitter contacts, I soon discovered that you can’t access the iTunes Store anymore if you don’t have at least iTunes 9.2.1 (in other words, unless you have a Mac with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and a G4 CPU). At first I considered this limitation just another silly caprice on Apple’s part, then I remembered that it was a technical issue. Again, the Wikipedia came to the rescue:

Store pages are delivered using standard HTML with a special header. This change was made when iTunes 9.0 was released. iTunes uses WebKit to render these pages on the screen.

Prior to iTunes 9.0, The iTunes Store was delivered using a custom XML format that describes the position of all of the elements, boxes, album art and all of their properties — including whether a reference link can be dragged out of iTunes and into another document. The App Store portion of the store is still rendered in this fashion.

In the next part of my operation ‘Prepping the Lombard’ I will talk about the minimal set of tools I’ve put together to be able to use the Lombard for a series of basic tasks in case of emergency.

The brochure is focused on one of the most short-lived machines in Apple’s history, the Apple ///. Here are a couple of images to tease you:

The Apple /// in all its glory

But even more impressive is this spread showing the available peripherals:

Look, sir, paddles!

The biggest gap between that computing era and our present time I think is best represented by another spread with a series of internal expansion cards which customers could purchase to achieve the most varied tasks. Two examples (the text is taken from the brochure):

1. The Integer BASIC Firmware Card provides Apple II Plus users access to a variety of programs written in Integer BASIC. It contains hardware and software controls that allow it to electrically replace the existing Applesoft BASIC firmware in Apple II Plus computers.
2. The Apple II Hobby/Prototyping Card and the Apple /// OEM Prototyping Card are modular-printed circuit cards on which you can build custom interfaces for the Apple II and the Apple ///. They accommodate most integrated circuits and components and have built-in facilities for attaching a variety of edge connectors and switches to your circuits.

Oh, and in case you didn’t know, that big rectangular box under the monitor is a ProFile external hard drive, and had a whopping 5 MB (megabytes) of storage space… As I said, you should download this just to have an idea of Apple’s cutting-edge technology almost thirty years ago.

When finally everything was updated and after rebooting for the nth time, I noticed a missing piece: DVD Player. This Lombard came with a stock installation of Mac OS 8.6, and a 2x DVD-ROM drive in the right expansion bay. I played a couple of DVDs and was surprised to see how well the PowerBook handled them. That’s because this model has a built-in hardware decoder. So it was strange that Panther didn’t install its very own DVD Player software. Well, I assumed that OS X could detect that the PowerBook was able to play DVDs and act accordingly. I did a brief search on the Web and I found a discussion forum where a user was lamenting the same problem with the very same hardware. Someone suggested to use Pacifist to extract DVD Player from the Mac OS X Panther Install CD 1, but it had no effect: DVD Player would refuse to run, warning that the hardware was not compatible. I dug more, and on another discussion I found this quote:

The version of the DVD Player provided with Mac OS X is not compatible with the Lombard G3, as it does the decoding in software and your computer’s processor isn’t fast enough to effectively handle it. Mac OS 9′s DVD Player works by accessing the computer’s hardware decoder, for which there are no Mac OS X drivers.

Corroborated by this Apple technical note, from which I quote this relevant bit:

DVD Player 3.0 requires an Apple computer originally equipped with a built-in DVD-ROM drive and AGP graphics. It is installed and will open on computers that meet this requirement.

The following computers may meet the DVD Player requirements:

• iBook – see Notes 1 and 4
• iMac – see Notes 1 and 4
• PowerBook (FireWire)
• PowerBook G4
• Power Mac G4 Cube – see Notes 2 and 4
• Power Mac G4 – see Notes 3 and 4

So, in a nutshell, if you have a PowerBook G3 (Bronze Keyboard) a.k.a. ‘Lombard’, and you install Mac OS X on it, your only option to watch DVDs decently is to reboot in Mac OS 9. And no, you can’t run Mac OS 9′s ‘Apple DVD Player’ from the Classic Environment, you’ll really have to reboot. Some suggested to download third party software like VLC, but since it can’t rely on the hardware decoder either, I suspect performance would be too poor to watch anything.

Perhaps this information is obvious to many, but since it’s the first time I’ve found myself in this situation, I thought it’d be useful to share anyway.