jonesing for Norton Speed Disk memorabilia? You are so lucky, or something.

June 10, 2006 12:13 AM

The Vintage Mac Museum – if there's anything you remember about working or playing on old black-and-white Macs, anything at all, there's probably an animated .gif screenshot of the program you used somewhere on this site. From MacPaint to Stuntcopter to Photoshop 1.0 to, no joke, Norton freaking Utilities, it's all been preserved on the internet. Go... internet.
posted by furiousthought (43 comments total)

Wow. What awesome nostalgia. Got my first Mac Classic back in junior high school and played with most of this stuff. Even old Tetris screenshots!
posted by chasing at 12:57 AM on June 10, 2006

I bought my first Macintosh as a junior in college back in 1990 (or so). I went into debt to get it, of course. (Surprise!) It was a lovely Macintosh SE.

It still boggles my mind that one of the first things I did was to accumulate as much clip art as possible and print it all out on my dot-matrix Stylewriter. I burned through ribbon after ribbon. I filled several three-ring binders with stupid clip art that I never looked at again. Curse you, MacPaint!

(I can even recall mailing away for $5 disks of clipart. What kind of fool was I?)
posted by jdroth at 1:24 AM on June 10, 2006

Oh, my god. I'm having flashbacks. Thank you!

I've been thinking of buying an old mac just so I can run Word 5.1.
posted by brundlefly at 1:34 AM on June 10, 2006

This is great, furiousthought. Although the animated gifs only serve to leave me wanting more... Fortunately, in many cases, the "more" part is available here.
posted by jonson at 1:35 AM on June 10, 2006

Also, I miss seeing the extensions load at start-up.

*sighs*

Damn you, OS X.
posted by brundlefly at 1:36 AM on June 10, 2006

What I don't get is that Macs had 1/10th the userbase, if that, compared to now, yet such a strong selection of original games, ca. 1989 - 1994, compared to now, whereas now there's just a trickle of stuff coming out, most of it total crap.

I guess back in the day sane programmers ran screaming away from MS-DOS with its segmented memory, vendor-specific APIs, and brain-dead ISA.

These days DirectX has made Windows the more approachable and usable platform, ALL the PC gamers are on Windows (while back in the late 80s/early 90s the PC game market was more evenly split between Amiga, Speccy, and MS-DOS.

But as a Mac programmer who's been working on some ideas lo these past 3 years, I do wonder if there's not a ton of money just waiting for me should I pull the finger out and get my game onto the market...
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:44 AM on June 10, 2006

Thank you, furiousthought! That helped me identify a game I played on my aunt's Mac oh-so-long-ago but could never figure out the name for. It was a side-scroller with really goofy sound effects... Turns out it was Dark Castle.
posted by jiawen at 2:05 AM on June 10, 2006

toastytech has extensive galleries of old GUIs.

I find simpler interfaces easier on the eyes than fancier ones, but this seems to be a minority view. Evidently the demand for glitz is such that vendors have to throw in everything the hardware can support.
posted by jam_pony at 3:37 AM on June 10, 2006

But as a Mac programmer who's been working on some ideas lo these past 3 years, I do wonder if there's not a ton of money just waiting for me should I pull the finger out and get my game onto the market...

The problem with gaming on the Mac is that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The people who buy Macs are those who can:

a) can live without gaming, or
b) can afford both a Mac and a gaming machine (pretty small segment, this)

Because of a), the gaming market for Macs is even smaller than it would appear at first glance. Bootcamp should be helping to change that, but it's not going to be an overnight thing. Also, the majority of PC gamers aren't going to settle for anything that they didn't build themselves.
posted by Ryvar at 4:58 AM on June 10, 2006

I have a collection of working classic macs: 128k, 512k, Mac Plus, Mac SE, Mac Classic, Classic II, Color Classic (x2)

All work ;)

Shameless Self-Link to Flickr picture
posted by theducks at 5:25 AM on June 10, 2006

Hey! The mouse pointer on my MacBook and on the screenshots is exactly the same size. Now that's impressive.

Lets not get too nostalgic here, though. I'm still using OS 9 every day at work, and god damn that's one poor operating system.

That said: I love looking at these. These apps were solid and great in their time. It's a pity "the mac" has changed so much over the years that they won't still run. Word 5.1 was fast as hell in Classic on a G5, but won't run on an intel Mac at all. If it did, it'd still be among the best word processors.

I mean, this computer runs at 2ghz. The Classic ran at 7mhz. We should be able to run its apps at lightning speed. Photoshop 2.0 would start in seconds, Word would be snappy. Instead Photoshop takes three weeks to launch and Word is a dog.

The only April Fools I ever fell for was TidBits saying Microsoft were going to make Word 5 carbon. And that's because I wanted to believe.
posted by bonaldi at 5:41 AM on June 10, 2006

The problem with gaming on the Mac is that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The people who buy Macs are those who can:

a) can live without gaming,

This is true, except that games would still be a nice option to have. There are a lot of mac users who have switched to PCs because of OS X, and I think a lot of them miss the games.

They can live without gaming, so they can have a computer that just works, but it's not a preference.
posted by adzuki at 6:03 AM on June 10, 2006

I guess back in the day sane programmers ran screaming away from MS-DOS with its segmented memory, vendor-specific APIs, and brain-dead ISA.

Are you retarded?
posted by delmoi at 6:46 AM on June 10, 2006

omg. Warlock. The hours and hours and hours of my childhood that were eaten by that game...
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 7:07 AM on June 10, 2006

I still have a Lisa......
It works, but takes so long to boot, it sits in the corner with my old gaming machine: macIIvx.
posted by DesbaratsDays at 7:36 AM on June 10, 2006

Real old timers remember PhotoShop before Adobe bought it.



And MacroMedia whan it was MacroMind with VideoWorks

And my copy of Illustrator 1.1 still works just fine on a new Mac (OS9 mode)

And then there was THIS guy...


posted by HTuttle at 7:37 AM on June 10, 2006

I miss System 6 & 7 and in some ways prefer it over OS X.
posted by cmacleod at 7:59 AM on June 10, 2006

I miss when calculators were the fevered dream of a madman.
posted by ryana at 8:17 AM on June 10, 2006

[this is good]

I do miss Despair immensely, which I don't see on the site. Not so much a game as a stress outlet, it consisted of little stick-figure people running around various platforms while you dispensed various Random Acts of Godly Violence upon them.

Good times.
posted by mkultra at 8:24 AM on June 10, 2006

Oooh, Oscar the Grouch in the trash can! I loved that.
posted by JanetLand at 8:50 AM on June 10, 2006

I was just thinking about that creepy moose.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:14 AM on June 10, 2006

I've been thinking of buying an old mac just so I can run Word 5.1.

So's you know, it runs fine in Classic under OS X.
posted by mazola at 9:59 AM on June 10, 2006

Dark Castle was a fun game. It ran under Mac OS 8 on a G3 too - problem is that it ran SO EFFIN FAST that it was literally impossible to play. Before you could blink, your character had run off the side of a cliff to his death.

/had to get an old SE to play Dark Castle properly.
posted by drstein at 10:09 AM on June 10, 2006

Oh Lode Runner of my past...
posted by whimsicalnymph at 10:10 AM on June 10, 2006

That's assuming he doesn't have an Intel machine, where Classic doesn't run at all.
posted by secret about box at 10:11 AM on June 10, 2006

What? No Scarab of Ra? I spent many an overnight shift at the Kinko's in Normal playing that wonderful game.
posted by NoMich at 10:32 AM on June 10, 2006

So's you know, it runs fine in Classic under OS X.

Ah! Well, I'll have to dig out my install disks and find an external floppy drive. Still, I want an old machine. Just 'cause they're neat.
posted by brundlefly at 10:36 AM on June 10, 2006

I still have my Powerbook 100, which I bought for 2 grand back in 1992 (I think). It had an external floppy drive, and I bought a little 1400 baud modem for it and thought that it was the greatest thing ever to plug it into the phone line and read Usenet and check my email at home...

*sigh*
posted by jokeefe at 11:01 AM on June 10, 2006

Scarab of Ra's in there (scroll down one), pretty far at the bottom of the games page... me, I can't believe they forgot ResEdit.
posted by furiousthought at 11:09 AM on June 10, 2006

I came onto the Mac scene with the Centris 750, and System 6.5. It was the first Mac with a color monitor. Ah, how I miss those days. Even today, PCs seem like such a cheap cobbled together cludge.
posted by slatternus at 11:42 AM on June 10, 2006

Ah, I see that now. Thanks, furiousofthought.
posted by NoMich at 11:51 AM on June 10, 2006

I directed the first TV commercials ever aired on national broadcast TV that were produced on Macs.

http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2005/07/first_broadcast.html
posted by jfrancis at 12:33 PM on June 10, 2006

I had a Mac on a floppy disc for my Amiga. I remember some sort of pornographic 8-Ball man demo that came along with it.
posted by juiceCake at 1:06 PM on June 10, 2006

Two words that make me nostalgic for Mac:
Lunatic
Fringe.

that's about it, though.
posted by Busithoth at 1:33 PM on June 10, 2006

@Heywood Mogroot
What I don't get is that Macs had 1/10th the userbase, if that, compared to now, yet such a strong selection of original games, ca. 1989 - 1994, compared to now, whereas now there's just a trickle of stuff coming out, most of it total crap.

Are you kidding me? Mac games were almost non-existent back then. We took whatever we could get, and most of them sucked. It's true that nowadays you have to wait for big games (aside from Blizzard, which has always supported Mac), but at least you usually get them. Bring on Civ 4!
posted by jdroth at 2:32 PM on June 10, 2006

But the real question is - where can I play Spectre and Shufflepuck Cafe on the internet?
posted by StopMakingSense at 2:38 PM on June 10, 2006

Holy crap, StopMakingSense. Those bring me back. Those two + Cyberblast consumed a lot of my HS days.
posted by brundlefly at 2:44 PM on June 10, 2006

I've been thinking of buying an old mac just so I can run Word 5.1.

I still have my System 7 Classic II around for just this reason. That puppy served me well for some of the best writing years of my life. It never crashed once, I never changed the software on it. It never connected to these goddamn internets once. Hmm... maybe there's a lesson in there about the whole "best writing years of my life" thing...?
posted by scarabic at 4:20 PM on June 10, 2006

jfrancis - youtube that shit.
posted by scarabic at 4:22 PM on June 10, 2006

Lunatic Fringe was great. I keep wishing they'll work its system of spiralling damage into the next iteration of EV. Nothing like trying to hold a ship together when it won't turn left, barely has any power, and its cannon keeps shooting off at random angles.

Didn't they have After Dark for PC's, though?

I, too, anxiously await Civ 4.
posted by furiousthought at 4:22 PM on June 10, 2006

It never connected to these goddamn internets once. Hmm... maybe there's a lesson in there about the whole "best writing years of my life" thing...?

Funny that.

And true here too.

(Not 'writing' though)
posted by HTuttle at 7:48 PM on June 10, 2006

Remember PhotoShop 1.0? Ha! I retouched the watchband from silver to gold onscreen with PhotoMac practically a full two years earlier. And this was a step up from the greyscale Digital Darkroom.
posted by hal9k at 9:25 PM on June 11, 2006

Extreme nostalgia hit. And as a side-effect, I just remembered everything I once knew about ISDN lines in a flash, then forgot it again.
posted by jack_mo at 4:16 AM on June 12, 2006