I don't remember 7.5.5 being too bad on a Mac Plus maxed out with 4GB RAM and a SCSI hard drive. 7.5.5 was released over 10 years after the Mac Plus was introduced and nearly 6 years after it had been discontinued. I don't know if any subsequent model was supported that long.
I think you meant to say, 4MB of RAM. My Mac Plus still sits on my bookshelf behind me in my office. Solder joints are failing, so it only works for about a minute before the display starts to flicker endlessly, but it has 4MB of RAM. I did the upgrade myself, in which you had to cut a resistor off the motherboard so it could recognize 1MB SIMMs. System 7.5.5 was the last OS to run on the Mac Plus. It was fully supported, and included OpenTransport networking, but ran slower than System 7.1. System 6.0.8 was the ideal, and fast OS, for the Mac Plus, but 7.1 did offer beneficial features.
Who'd want to run that piece of junk on the watch? Why doesn't he do something useful and get 8.x or 9.x running? They were actually both useful and quite stable versions of the Classic MacOS. 7.1 and it's .x siblings was a mess, upgrades were almost always broken and it was clear Apple was in trouble based just on it's OS quality. When Jobs returned and put a rocket up the OS group with 8.x and 9.x things improved dramatically, much better stability (flawless upgrades again for a start) and actually useful new features!
Why doesn't he do something useful and get 8.x or 9.x running? They were actually both useful and quite stable versions of the Classic MacOS. 7.1 and it's .x siblings was a mess, upgrades were almost always broken and it was clear Apple was in trouble based just on it's OS quality. When Jobs returned and put a rocket up the OS group with 8.x and 9.x things improved dramatically, much better stability (flawless upgrades again for a start) and actually useful new features!
I think you meant to say, 4MB of RAM. My Mac Plus still sits on my bookshelf behind me in my office. Solder joints are failing, so it only works for about a minute before the display starts to flicker endlessly, but it has 4MB of RAM. I did the upgrade myself, in which you had to cut a resistor off the motherboard so it could recognize 1MB SIMMs. System 7.5.5 was the last OS to run on the Mac Plus. It was fully supported, and included OpenTransport networking, but ran slower than System 7.1. System 6.0.8 was the ideal, and fast OS, for the Mac Plus, but 7.1 did offer beneficial features.
Excellent pic. My Mac Plus is dead due to its HD I think I am very sad.
Had to chuckle trying to imagine the cost back then of 4 GB of RAM. Maybe a Cray may have been in that ball park? I know Apple had Crays for prototyping ... and wow .. notice the cylindrical design of this Cray! Hello!
Huh, I didn't know that. Funny how both the classic Mac OS and OS X were able to boot off of just about anything from day 1, but Microsoft took 26 years. Better late than never, I guess.
Especially that one that would occasionally break out of the area it was supposed to be in, and surprise you in the next room over.
Which one of the three you like the most is pretty subjective, since they were all completely different games from each other. Each one had its own atmosphere, design aesthetic, storytelling style, and attitude which was completely distinct, which makes it hard to pick a clear favorite. I did love the eerie, lonely feel that the first one had. The music went a long way toward establishing that, as well.
The second game, of course, was a complete polar opposite. Bright colors, wide open spaces, cocky ass-kicking rather than the sense of helplessness that the first game had. I do think that M2 started pretty slowly, with a lot of the early levels being a bit of a slog to get through due to the level designers getting just a bit too excited about the new "liquids" feature and putting swimming sections *everywhere*. But then when you get to the back half of the game, you have a bunch of the best levels in the entire series. If I Had A Rocket Launcher might just be the most fun level of any video game I've ever played.
Infinity's a bit of a mixed bag. It's by far the most ambitious, in both storytelling and level design, and it has some truly creepy-as-hell moments, especially the levels set in some bizarre netherworld outside the universe with the surrealistic, nightmare-logic-following "durability" narrative. I still remember how creeped out I was the first time I played "Where are monsters in dreams." It's taken down a bit by how hard it is to figure out exactly what is going on, though, and the ending isn't as satisfying as the other two games'.
Of course. I contributed a few things to that site back in the 90s, under a different username. I'm not going to tell you what that username was, though, because I was a teen at the time and you know how that is — most of my remarks were far from profound.
Great to read about your experiences.
Some of the Infinity levels were very well done, no doubt.
I think part of the issue is simply the way memory works: I remember the first two being such-and-such simply because I played them the most, and by the time M3 was released I was all played out. I think it's time to revisit the series, though. I might just start with 3 and work my way back.
Some of the Infinity levels were very well done, no doubt.
I think part of the issue is simply the way memory works: I remember the first two being such-and-such simply because I played them the most, and by the time M3 was released I was all played out. I think it's time to revisit the series, though. I might just start with 3 and work my way back. ;)
Play it with the lights off, late at night, with headphones on. Feel a shiver every time that damn Jjaro station creaks and moans. Feel the cognitive dissonance of all the impossible geometry. Feel the existential terror of the crazy surrealistic nightmare terminals with the creepy, creepy terminal graphics, particularly the one that looks like an anthropomorphized *room* with eyes and a mouth THAT WANTS TO EAT YOU.
It's probably not possible to get the effect nearly as intensely as an adult as it is when you're young, but give it a try, hehe.
I do wish that someone could get Greg Kirkpatrick to come back and do a "Director's Cut" of Infinity, though. There are some things that feel like obvious oversights. Like on "Aie Mak Sicur", the Juggernaut in the terminal room respawns! So you have Admiral Tfear's account of the end of the universe, one of the creepiest damn terminals in the game, but if you stick around to read it slowly and take it in (with the creaking sounds going on in the background, no less), you'll eventually get nailed in the back by a missile. (You can still do it if you pause the game right after hitting the action key on the terminal, of course.)
Just was wondering if any of you guys had seen this; the QEMU team has done some pretty incredible work getting it to emulate the classic Mac OS. It's currently able to actually boot a modified version of 9.2.2! Sound and networking aren't implemented yet, but this is still exciting as all get-out. Once the project is complete, we should have a much more accurate and stable emulator for the classic Mac OS than what we've currently got.
Comments
I don't remember 7.5.5 being too bad on a Mac Plus maxed out with 4GB RAM and a SCSI hard drive. 7.5.5 was released over 10 years after the Mac Plus was introduced and nearly 6 years after it had been discontinued. I don't know if any subsequent model was supported that long.
I think you meant to say, 4MB of RAM. My Mac Plus still sits on my bookshelf behind me in my office. Solder joints are failing, so it only works for about a minute before the display starts to flicker endlessly, but it has 4MB of RAM. I did the upgrade myself, in which you had to cut a resistor off the motherboard so it could recognize 1MB SIMMs. System 7.5.5 was the last OS to run on the Mac Plus. It was fully supported, and included OpenTransport networking, but ran slower than System 7.1. System 6.0.8 was the ideal, and fast OS, for the Mac Plus, but 7.1 did offer beneficial features.
Excellent pic. My Mac Plus is dead due to its HD I think I am very sad.
Had to chuckle trying to imagine the cost back then of 4 GB of RAM. Maybe a Cray may have been in that ball park? I know Apple had Crays for prototyping ... and wow .. notice the cylindrical design of this Cray! Hello!
image from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray
Huh, I didn't know that. Funny how both the classic Mac OS and OS X were able to boot off of just about anything from day 1, but Microsoft took 26 years. Better late than never, I guess.
Especially that one that would occasionally break out of the area it was supposed to be in, and surprise you in the next room over.
Which one of the three you like the most is pretty subjective, since they were all completely different games from each other. Each one had its own atmosphere, design aesthetic, storytelling style, and attitude which was completely distinct, which makes it hard to pick a clear favorite. I did love the eerie, lonely feel that the first one had. The music went a long way toward establishing that, as well.
The second game, of course, was a complete polar opposite. Bright colors, wide open spaces, cocky ass-kicking rather than the sense of helplessness that the first game had. I do think that M2 started pretty slowly, with a lot of the early levels being a bit of a slog to get through due to the level designers getting just a bit too excited about the new "liquids" feature and putting swimming sections *everywhere*. But then when you get to the back half of the game, you have a bunch of the best levels in the entire series. If I Had A Rocket Launcher might just be the most fun level of any video game I've ever played.
Infinity's a bit of a mixed bag. It's by far the most ambitious, in both storytelling and level design, and it has some truly creepy-as-hell moments, especially the levels set in some bizarre netherworld outside the universe with the surrealistic, nightmare-logic-following "durability" narrative. I still remember how creeped out I was the first time I played "Where are monsters in dreams." It's taken down a bit by how hard it is to figure out exactly what is going on, though, and the ending isn't as satisfying as the other two games'.
Of course. I contributed a few things to that site back in the 90s, under a different username. I'm not going to tell you what that username was, though, because I was a teen at the time and you know how that is — most of my remarks were far from profound.
Great to read about your experiences.
Some of the Infinity levels were very well done, no doubt.
I think part of the issue is simply the way memory works: I remember the first two being such-and-such simply because I played them the most, and by the time M3 was released I was all played out. I think it's time to revisit the series, though. I might just start with 3 and work my way back.
It's probably not possible to get the effect nearly as intensely as an adult as it is when you're young, but give it a try, hehe.
I do wish that someone could get Greg Kirkpatrick to come back and do a "Director's Cut" of Infinity, though. There are some things that feel like obvious oversights. Like on "Aie Mak Sicur", the Juggernaut in the terminal room respawns! So you have Admiral Tfear's account of the end of the universe, one of the creepiest damn terminals in the game, but if you stick around to read it slowly and take it in (with the creaking sounds going on in the background, no less), you'll eventually get nailed in the back by a missile.
I think you meant to say, 4MB of RAM.
Ha! Indeed. Hard to believe how small it was. And my hard drive was 70MB. MB.
Your quite right, but not entirely so, Apple had a hand in that too.
Your quite right, but not entirely so, Apple had a hand in that too.
I think Apple helped form ARM, but the original ARM ISA (and first couple of chip core designs) were done by Acorn (British).
Just was wondering if any of you guys had seen this; the QEMU team has done some pretty incredible work getting it to emulate the classic Mac OS. It's currently able to actually boot a modified version of 9.2.2! Sound and networking aren't implemented yet, but this is still exciting as all get-out. Once the project is complete, we should have a much more accurate and stable emulator for the classic Mac OS than what we've currently got.
http://emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=7047&start=325