I’ve been seeing a lot of arguments about software claiming proprietary software is evil because it forces users to agree to EULAs. These arguments tend to then claim open-source software is better (less evil) because it is free and defended as such by the GNU Public License. I would just like to remind everyone who sees this post that the GPL is an EULA. Thus, any evilness imparted by EULAs is present in GPLed software as well. Just a quick note.
I am sitting here, outside, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. And yet, I still have full access to my home LAN and the Internet beyond. All because of my little 802.11g access point. Of course, I would probably be inside reading my CMPT 321 textbook in order to gain material for my final, but I locked myself out.
Yesterday, I was leaving my house to pick up some Coke from Brunskill, and what did I see before me? A Macintosh SE. Just lying there in a cardboard box. Discarded by some heathen. Being the kind-hearted soul that I am, I immediately grabbed the orphaned computer (along with its keyboard and cables) and quickly deposited them inside my flat. I then went and picked up some Coke.
Returning home, I set about assessing the condition of the machine. It had a small dent in its faceplate, but otherwise seemed fine. Dirty, but intact. Throwing caution to the wind, I plugged it in and threw the switch. Amazing! It beeped and proceeded to show a grey checkerboard (that is, it POSTed and started trying to load an operating system): it was a perfectly healthy Mac! At that point, of course, something went wrong. The hard drive (20 whole megabytes of storage power) began making a very unhealthy assortment of sounds. So, I threw the power switch and returned it to a more nocturnal state. Rather than start tearing into it right away, I decided to give it a little time to warm up and get used to being upright again in the hopes the hard drive would recover.
In the meantime, I began cleaning the keyboard. A little disassembly, some Fantastik, a number of paper towels, and a little reassembly later, I had a working, fully functional Apple Keyboard connected to my PowerBook.
Deciding it had been long enough, I turned the SE back on. The hard disk was still making unhappy noises, but, emboldened by the fact I had a spare 500MB drive in the closet, I waited… and waited… and… eventually, the drive started sounding happier and the machine actually started to boot. I was a very happy boy at this point.
Upon booting, a few facts were ascertained about this machine. The system clock was 1 hour and 3 minutes off. It was running Macintosh System Software 6.0.5 (circa 1990) and contained 2.5 MB of RAM. The file system’s modification dates indicated it had been in use up until March of 2002. That’s 15 years after the model’s introduction! Given that it is labelled as a 1MB machine, it is probable it received a RAM upgrade at some point. Aside from that, every thing about the machine seemed stock. The contents of a few files, when examined, indicated that this machine had been used by someone running a daycare service. Finally, the hard drive had been formatted in 1992.
That wouldn’t do. First off, there were someone else’s files all over the hard disk. Files that looked like they had been transferred to the hard disk from a floppy used on one of the original Macintoshes. Secondly, the hard drive hadn’t been formatted in 12 years! So, I rebooted the machine off a system floppy and proceeded to reformat the hard disk and reinstall the system software. After this process, the hard drive started to sound much healthier. This made me happy, so I set about cleaning the case. It cleaned up quite nicely.
Thus, with the machine proven working, the software side of things taken care of and the exterior seen to, it was time to crack that baby open. Improvising a few of the necessary tools, I was able to open the machine with little difficulty. Inside, I found a few computer components wrapped in a nice woollen blanket. At least, that’s what it looked like. Dust was thick upon the interior. So, I began pulling it apart in accordance with the service manual. Upon removing the hard disk, I immediately decided to replace it with the aforementioned 500MB disk. As cool as it is to have a computer that sounds exactly like Mother from Alien, I decided to go with the quieter, larger, physically smaller drive over the full-height behemoth.
Thus, I cleared away the dust, and reinstalled all the components save the new hard drive. I had plans for it first. Digging out my PowerBook Duo 230 and its Duo Dock II, I set them up and installed the hard drive in that. Then followed three hours of getting the Duo to talk to my PowerBook G4, finding and downloading a proper system for the SE (System 7.1), getting that onto the Duo, formatting the 500MB disk, installing the system software on it and watching Secret Window. The incredible frustration encountered in bridging the decade-plus generation gap between my PowerBooks was nothing compared to the pain that is Secret WIndow. Sadly, not even Johnny-fucking-Depp can save the morass of stupidity Stephen King sees fit to regularly spew on the movie-going public. In short, Secret Window has a shitty, shitty ending. Now back to the techy geekness.
With a newly set up 500MB hard drive, I proceeded to begin upgrading the SE. First, the RAM was maxed out at a whopping 4MB, and then the half-gig of disk storage was installed. I then set about adjusting the video; I increased the brightness, reset the raster size and tuned the focus. The case was then sealed up and the moment of truth arrived. The power cord was reattached and the switch thrown. A few seconds later, I was greeted by the System 7 desktop. Success. It being about 7 am by this point, and having started this oddessy around 8 pm, I now went to sleep.
Coming back to the project a little (well, more than a little) later I hooked my recently-aquired Asante EN/SC SCSI Ethernet Adapter up to the SE and installed the proper drivers. A few settings were made on the machine, some cat-5 plugged in, and I could see the SE’s shared hard drive from my PowerBook G4. And I was a very, very happy boy. I proceeded to move a few applications onto the SE (doing this via the now once-again packed up and put away Duo was a massive pain in the ass, but accessing the SE over EtherTalk was a breeze once the software and hardware was in place).
I then left the SE running, with its hard drive mounted on my G4’s desktop while I went about my regular web surfing. And that’s when things went wrong. The wonderful 500MB hard disk that had served my well since I got it in 2000 spun down. Then it tried to spin back up, failed, tried again, failed, tried again, failed, and proceeded to repeat this until I turned the SE off. In a brief moment of optimism, I turned the SE back on and was greeted with a machine completely unaware of its hard drive. I turned it back off. I then decided to wait for a while and try again, after all, that procedure had worked with the old drive. And, indeed, it did improve things, the SE could get about halfway through booting before the hard drive crapped out. This made me less happy. And that’s where I am now.
However, all is not lost. It’s only my 500MB hard disk (that I’ve had for years) that failed. Not the decade and a half old computer. I can, if necessary, just put the old 20MB drive back in. But first, I’m going to open the machine back up and flip the 500MB drive over. Why? Because it is currently installed upside down. It just fits in the SE better that way, but it will still fit right way up. This shouldn’t really make a difference, since modern hard drives are fairly orientation-agnostic, but I’ve never run this drive upside down before, so who knows. And, as I said, I can always just throw the 20MB drive back in. Or, I could always pick up a refurbished 1GB drive on eBay…
2005-04-25: Fixed a year-and-10-days-old typo. Transitioning servers seems to have a way of making you go back over your archives.
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