Mondays suck. So why not spend yours playing with an original Mac and games in your browser

The Internet Archive has hooked up an Apple Mac emulator to its collection of vintage software so you can breeze through your afternoons reliving the 1980s – all from the comfort of your browser. The tech preservation organization is hosting the emulator online along with 45 applications and games for the original MacOS, …

[Youngone]

Vague Memories

I spent many happy hours watching a Mac restart after some system error in the early 1990's.

My memories are pretty vague, but I thought we used System Software version 7 at the time, but we had colour monitors, so maybe it was a later version.

We ran Photoshop V2 (I think) but not well, and no-one really enjoyed it.

Even though it was all pretty slow, it was obviously going to get better and the noble trade of Photolithography was on the way out.

[Uncle Slacky]

Re: Vague Memories

System 7 handled colour pretty well on colour-capable Macs, the emulation is based on a (B&W) Mac Plus, though.

[davidp231]

Re: Vague Memories

And System 6 did support colour if your Mac could run it still. I think the LC II was the most recent colour model that could, with the earliest being the Mac II.

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Re: Vague Memories

I worked somewhere similar in '96 . People would leave their macs on all night to render a 3D scene.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Vague Memories

When it crashed - a bomb symbol would appear and you had to click OK ... even when it clearly wasn't

[davidp231]

Re: Vague Memories

And even then it didn't always work - you had to physicall press the reset button (if present), do ctrl-cmd-power, or power cycle it to get back to normal operation.

[redpawn]

I Remember...

thinking GUIs were for people too dumb to learn commands. I'm often this wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I Remember...

That reminds me of the Mac vs DOS wars of the late 80s / early 90s, where Microsoft fans believed they were superior because they used a CLI and the Mac used a dumbed down GUI. Fast forward a decade or so, and it became the Windows vs Linux wars, where Linux fans believed they were superior because they used a CLI and the PC used a dumbed down GUI. Fast forward another decade, by which time everyone was using a GUI, so the only thing left to fight about was iOS vs Android - two Unixes with GUIs :)

[Jason Hindle]

Re: GUIs exist for two purposes

1. Run up IDE of choice.

2. Run up multiple terminal windows.

Cross out 1 if your IDE is Vi.

[razorfishsl]

Least you could have done was preview MacPlaymate.

[Wade Burchette]

Oregon Trail

My memories of the Mac were playing Oregon Trail in grade school. I popped in the 5 1/4" floppy and had fun. Looking back now, I wonder why I ever thought Oregon Trail was fun. I guess it was because I rather play a game than learn.

[newspuppy]

Re: Oregon Trail

5 1/4 floppy? You may be recalling the old apple II.... mac had 3 1/2 inch floppies (actually they were in a hard shell...... and Oregon trail was on both platforms.....

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Re: Oregon Trail

Also DOS , Yopu can play it in your browser here

https://classicreload.com/oregon-trail.html

whoops we're supposed to be maccing in our browsers today...

[Anonymous Coward]

Amateurs, if you are going to invoke a sub routine like the one in the picture you would first learn how to disable break. As I'm not a mac o/s person I can't advise on the correct procedure but I do remember the methods of other o/s's and the fun I had in the many stores that used to have computers on display.

[Sanguma]

Shuffle Puck brought back memories

Mostly how I got thrashed playing Shufflepuck Cafe! And where's Tetris?

I'm beginning to wonder when archive.org's going to get someone to rewrite simh as simh.js and set up Edition 5, 6, and 7, plus of course the 2.*BSD line for those who want to play with ancient Un*x ...

[fruitoftheloon]

Blimey, am I really THAT OLD?

Err yes, I have v fond memories from 1988 of a Mac SE with a 17" screen (for doing this new-fangled DTP thing), which was quite a bit of kit then, if memory serves correctly [it probably doesn't], it cost about £7k.

Cheers,

Jay

[davidp231]

Re: Blimey, am I really THAT OLD?

Well the expansion slot in said SE did let you drop in appropriately designed graphics cards to add another monitor - and System 7 would happily let you extend across... many moons before Windows could.

[Youngone]

Re: Blimey, am I really THAT OLD?

I wouldn't be surprised if a Mac Se with a 17" monitor cost 7k of your pounds in 1988, in about 1994 my boss was paying about 15k of my local dollars for a Mac with 19" so seems right.

He also paid 1 meelion dollars for a Crossfield machine for image editing.

[Michael Thibault]

vMac

That is all.

[J. R. Hartley]

No thanks

[David Lawton]

Despite its age, i'd rather use that GUI day in day out than Windows 8.

[I am the liquor]

Amazing what could be done with a 512x342 black and white display... not even greyscale, just black and white! Now we have 10 times as many pixels and 8 million times as many colours, and has it made our UIs more usable? Not really.

[Timbo]

I still have some original Apple CDROMs with Mac System 7 on them. And somewhere I have an external Apple CDROM drive, using a SCSI interface.

The Mac I was using at the time, (to use with an Apple Newton !!) was recycled a while ago though.

Might have to dig them out and see if they are still OK?

[BebopWeBop]

I still have (a working Mac+) along with a whopping great SCSI hard drive - all 20MB of it full of all sorts of odd application, including a rather wonderful chess program (which includes migratory and aggressive black holes). From what I remember this was a little bit of skunk ware c/o Apple engineers. It ran on the original OS (which I can boot from floppies still) but broke a few generation in - well before OS6. Reputedly this was because they had used one two many system calls that were not part of the standard set and which were deprecated.

I can't find (OK did not look too hard) any mention of it online so I might document by still running variant.

[Richard 81]

"nya nya nya"

Blimey Dark Castle was hard. I've played some of the 2006 version, but I swear they made it easier. I was able to finish a level!

[Nimby]

No RoboWar?

Many years ago in a land now far far away, I bid at auction and won an ancient Mac Classic, for a fiver. Just to play one game: RoboWar. (Because at that time it had not been ported to Windows yet.) It somehow seems wrong that this is missing from the list. It's like an unfrosted cake, biscuits without tea, or pizza without toppings. Oh, sure, technically it is still viable ... but really, who wants it?

[deadlockvictim]

PRAM batteries

To anyone who has an old mac in the cupboard, open it up and take out the PRAM battery. It is a 3,6V ½AA battery. These were never intended to be left in machines for 30 years and they been known to rupture and ruin and otherwise working motherboard. Most macs don't really need a PRAM battery as it is (some, though, won't start without it).

[Michael Thibault]

Re: PRAM batteries

"Most macs don't really need a PRAM battery as it is (some, though, won't start without it)."

Those that did and which came with a hardware switch (e.g. LC 475) could still be started in the absence of that PRAM battery. You'd never guess how, though, so here it is: turn it off, and immediately turn it back on again. It's macgical!

[Lotaresco]

I must go down to the lock-up again, down to the lock-up in the barn...

... where I shall dig out my Mac SE/30 with a RasterOps ColourBoard 264 and a 13" Apple Monitor.

I recall lugging this into work, having paid thousands of pounds for it and being quickly surrounded by sneering and jeering colleagues who told me it wasn't as good as a PC. The all told me Macs were monochrome only and useless little toys. I started up the 13" display and showed the interactive Authorware demo for new owners. This started in B&W and there was more jeering about that. Partway through the screen fades out and enters a 24bit colour demo. The room suddenly went quiet. These were the days of blocky PC EGA colour screens with 16 awful colours. The slide show was displaying full colour photographic images and fading neatly between images. There was a "my PC can't do that moment" and then they all faded away.

[Anonymous Coward]

why don't you just switch off your computer and go and do something less boring instead

Q: "So why not spend yours playing with an original Mac and games in your browser"

A: because i have better things to do with my life :)