Would you pay $5K for a Color Classic?

 In June, 2006 Maple Ridge Auctions sold a rare Macintosh Color Classic prototype with a translucent case on eBay. The winning bidder paid $4,999. Check out the beautiful pictures in this flickr set (photos are used by permission of Maple Ridge Auctions).

Back on track with uptime

Swapping out the router seems to have done the trick to get the Color Classic reliably back online. The downtime hasn't been the fault of the CC; the prior Netgear router would randomly "forget" it's port forwarding settings and instead of sending http requests to the web server on the Color Classic it would handle them with it's own internal web server that's used to configure the router settings.

Since I replaced it with the Linksys the server has been online nonstop for a week without issues, so hopefully we'll see another 100% month in the near future!

Router swapped to resolve network issue

The Netgear WGR614 that my local cable company gave me to enable wireless access with my internet service has an annoying habit of forgetting my directions to route incoming traffic on port 80 to the Color Classic Web Server. Instead, it sends incoming http connections to the admin page of the router, which is secured with a password, but isn't the destination that people are looking for.

As a result, uptime statistics for the CCWS for the month of January were almost below 90%. This evening I swapped out the Netgear with the Linksys WRT54G router I have used for a couple of years without this issue and hopefully uptime will become reliable again.

New York Times misidentifies Color Classic

The New York Times recently published a special multimedia article authored by Sam Grobart entitled While You Were Out: Apple’s Years With and Without Steve Jobs.

A timeline from 1976 through 2007 is accompanied with a slideshow illustrating Apple's products, links to NYT stories from the past about their introduction, and spoken narration by Mr. Grobart.

Aficionados of the Macintosh Color Classic will bristle, however, at the 1993 slide which identifies a Macintosh LC520 as a Color Classic. The caption also describes an LC III as a "Macintosh IIIc" (click photo above for full sized image and caption).

No 100% uptime in January ...

Started off the New Year out of town and the Color Classic web server decided to stop responding. Our neighbor who was kindly taking care of our cats, fish, and turtles in our absence restarted it for me, but it looks like my hopes for 100% uptime this month are already dashed.

Which version of Mac OS will my Macintosh run?

If you aren't sure which versions of the Mac OS are compatible with your Macintosh, here are some excellent resources to find out:

AppleCare's Knowledge Base includes several relevant articles on the topic:

• System Software: Version Matrix, System 6.0.x to 7.0.1
• System 7.1 through Mac OS 7.6: Compatibility With Macintosh Computers
• Mac OS 8 and 9 Compatibility with Macintosh Computers
• Mac OS: Versions, builds included with PowerPC Macs (since 1998)
• Mac OS X Versions (builds) included with Intel-based Macs

My favorite tool for finding a quick answer to this question is Ian Page's awesome MacTracker, a comprehensive collection of vital information about every model of Macintosh that is available as a free Mac OS X or Windows application, or via a web site that's optimized for viewing on an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Now, as for which version of the Mac OS is optimal for your model of Macintosh, well, that's beyond the scope of this article. The folks over at lowendmac.com have a number of helpful articles on this topic, though.

System Picker

Dan Knight wrote an article for lowendmac.com back in 2001 entitled System 6 or System 7? In the article he describes several ways to switch between using System versions on the same Macintosh, and recommends a utility called System Picker:

System picker is a freeware utility that lets you pick which one of two or more System Folders on your hard drive will be active at the next startup. Kevin Aitken's little utility does this by "blessing" the system you select. (Blessing is Apple's name for selecting one System Folder as the active one.)

Unfortunately, the link to download System Picker from Apple's Developer site no longer works. I was able to locate a copy after a good bit of hunting, and that experience led me to decide that I would begin to collect and archive legacy Mac tools to save myself and others the time and frustration in the future. Until that archive is established you can find System Picker here.

I do not yet have personal experience with System Picker but plan to test it soon. Be sure to read Dan's excellent article for tips on how to install two different operating system versions on the same drive. Not sure which versions of the OS your Mac supports? See this article to find out!