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!

Unscheduled downtime

Looks like when I installed the Ooma last night my DHCP supplied IP address was changed and dyndns.org didn't catch the update, so colorclassic.dyndns.org is not able to connect to the Color Classic web server until I get home to fix that.

And I was hoping that this would be a 100% uptime month! Maybe January ...

Changes for early December 2008

I haven't found a way to get the hard drive to spin down on the Color Classic even when all of the applications are running off a RAM disk, so I've given up on that option. When this hard drive calls it quits I may decide to seek silence by installing a solid state drive like the clever fellow over at junkstation did for his Performa 450! I have an 8G compact flash sitting in a drawer from an old Canon digital camera that would increase drive space on the Color Classic by a factor of 100 and reduce heat and noise inside the case dramatically.

The web pages have been updated to include a new banner (see previous blog posting) as well as a little sound easter egg you can hunt for yourself.

The Belkin wireless gateway arrived but I've not had a chance to test it yet. Right now I need to get my new Ooma Hub online to quit paying for phone service!

Banner for legacy Mac servers

Apple entered the internet server market on April 10, 1995 when they introduced their Apple Internet Server Solution at Internet World in San Jose, CA. The press announcement described it as "an affordable and easy way to establish a presence on the Information Superhighway."

Included in the software bundled with the servers was a graphic logo for placement on web pages to tell the world they were hosted on a web server powered by an Apple Macintosh:

I've spotted this logo on a couple of web sites served up by legacy Macs and thought it rather clever, but decided to change it up a bit to send a more accurate message. You are welcome to add it to your web site if you like: