Living with a Mac Classic II – Day Seven
Dateline – August 20, 2011
The more I use this machine, the more I realize how little I need in my every day computing. It also emphasizes what things are necessary for maximum utility in modern life. When the original Asus eeePC came out, reactions were mixed, but once you took the cramped keyboard out of the picture (as Asus did with subsequent, models of the eeePC) it was clear that a new computing market was born. Thanks to Intel’s Atom processor, what I like to call the Age of “Good Enough” computing was born. People did not need dual core processors, with monster GPUs to do most of what they wanted to do: they needed only modest hardware that could support the most important of modern software (a browser, Flash, music, word processing, etc.). They found that at a specific price, they were happy with a computer that was “good enough.”
In some ways, my Mac Classic II is “good enough.” With some modifications, it could in fact be almost entirely “good enough.” But its age has some issues. For one, its SCSI hard disk may need replacing in the future (being SCSI, this limits options, eliminating most SSDs and makes use of CompactFlash cards difficult). It already has issues with the lubricants gelling if the disk isn’t spun up every once in a while (requiring me to crack open the case and smack the hard disk to jar it loose). Its CRT is affected by my stereo being put on top of it. It’s somewhat bulky, it’s not that quiet, and Apple rates its maximum power consumption at 100 Watts (for comparison, what’s called a 100W CFL consumes 26W; a USB powered device, like a cell phone, consumes 1W; an iPad consumes closer to 10W; my 2008 MacBook Pro consumes 85W, and the average PC consumes around 250-350W). This makes it somewhat impractical.
This makes me wonder if it is possible to build a newer implementation of the classic Macintosh platform. The architecture is well understood enough for emulators to run the classic systems. Why not build a new physical machine? Perhaps implement it in an FPGA, much like how the 1chipMSX and C-One operate. However, there may be legal issues in developing a new implementation of the Motorola 68000 series processors (such as the 68030 which the Mac Classic II runs, and the 68881 mathematics co-processor it can run) on any kind of new silicon that Motorola doesn’t license. And, of course, there are problems with the legality of using Apple’s proprietary boot ROMs, and apparently there are no known clones of these ROMs floating around. But regardless, one could theoretically build a new physical machine, centered around modern 68000 processors (I believe Motorola still builds them, with modern examples including the Motorola Dragonball processors that were used in all Palm PDAs running OSes below 4.0), and the intention of plugging in a ROM salvaged from another Mac. A modern SCSI bus (or an ATA bus for use with SD or CF cards, assuming the OS could support that), an Ethernet port (emulated internally as a known SCSI ethernet adapter, perhaps even a WiFi adapter that masquerades as such an ethernet adapter), utilizing an LCD instead of a CRT, USB appearing as an Apple Desk Bus, things like that. This could reduce the problems associated with older hardware, perhaps making such a system a little more practical.
Or perhaps being away from my laptop for a week has made me a bit loopy. All I know is that I still can’t find a decent Oregon Trail for OS X.
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http://ivankowalenko.com Ivan Kowalenko
