II Something
by Clark Hugh Stiles
February 20, 2002 

I've got some stuff on my mind, and so I'm going to go off on a tangent as I revive an old frequent feature from the purportedly classic period of II Something. 
Do It In Hardware 
I've been helping my dad upgrade his system. Back in 1996 or 1997 he bought a Mac Performa 6360 (a "pizza box" Mac) at Circuit City and retired his Apple IIgs. The GS was a ROM 01 machine without a Woz sig, and over time he upgraded it to 4 MB of RAM. His hard drive was a Q Labs model that was probably an 80 megger, I can't remember offhand. Perhaps it was larger, but it was definitely smaller than 100 MB. I'd gone out and got a Zip drive (100 original, click of death model), liked it, and got one for him too. We used it to totally back up his Q drive in two formats -- first I partitioned a Zip floppy to match the sizes of his Q drive partitions, then pulled the volumes over one by one. That went fast. 

The second backup had to be file by file because I set up the second Zip floppy to have three volumes of maximum size (32 MB each) and the remaining 4 MB or so in a fourth volume. Or somethin'. Anyway, that backup took a while, but my goal was to give him more space on his boot volume, space he desperately needed. And we also got the whole group of files backed up two different ways. 

The third step was to repartition his Q drive to match the second Zip backup, format the volumes, and pull the data back over volume by volume. After that he could keep backups to his heart's content, and he was blinding me with the glare from his dentures. 

During the first year of his computing he had a problem with frustration. He'd occasionally cuss, rip the mouse out of the connection, and hurl it somewhere. I never did find out what his problem was. Anyway, I gave him the old "that's like changing your spark plugs with the engine running" analogy from one of the Beagle Bros (Weishaar or Kersey) but it didn't sink in. He lucked out in that the computer stopped running altogether and the warranty covered it because it turned out to be a short in the connector cable for the 3.5 drive. It fried something, dunno what, and he got a new logic board. And Barry the computer retailer gave him a good talking to about pulling the mouse out while the machine's on. 

At that time pops was using ProSel 8 and AppleWorks, and the occasional Beagle Bros add-on (SuperFonts was a favorite; check out his trials and tribulations in one or more of the classic issues), and writing AppleSoft programs to convert statute to metric and back, that kind of thing. 
Shaking Hands 
I think the old man misses pulling out the plugs with the power on. His eyes gleamed when I first told him about USB. USB (Universal Serial Bus) is a system for connecting computers and peripherals, it's everywhere, and is hot-swappable. USB is designed to accept plugs and unplugs with the power on. It's as if someone in some design lab somewhere knows my dad. 

He's been having trouble with his mouse. He's got an ADB mouse of his own, two of mine, plus at least one GS mouse (also ADB) that is in a plastic bag hanging up on the garage wall (inside, thank god). He's also using my MacPro keyboard, which I used on my GS before moving it to the PowerMac 7600. And I loaned him a $1 ADB Apple extended keyboard my friend the Dizzy Wizard picked up at a ham radio show. That one has a sticky key now, so he's gone back to the MacPro. 

We can find ADB mice, but they all have a ball. I told him we should look for an optical mouse in ADB, and he seems to not care about this. He wants a USB mouse. This is where the trouble starts. 

The Performa 6360 has one expansion slot which comes with a 90 angle adapter already installed to make the back of the card hit the horizontal hole in the back of the CPU. A couple of weeks ago I wrenched out that POS GeoPort modem and installed my old Motorola 28.8 external. That works like a champ, and the speed is the same as the GeoPort. 

In order to upgrade to USB we need to install MacOS 8.5 or higher. I've got the 8.6 upgrade for 8.5. Apple's website has a download page featuring multiple versions of the OS which goes from 6.something I think, to revs of OS X. A friend with broadband, a wintel box (now working, don't ask; "wint-hell" is more like it), and a CD-RW burner was gracious one afternoon and I have an 9660 cd (lingo alert) with a bunch of OS revision installers up to 9.2 as well as some GeoPort stuff. 
Non-ProDOS Tip 
If you're in a similar need, don't bother to download the GeoPort stuff -- get Apple Telecom from the same page. It's more recent than the GeoPort stuff. Better yet, get a 56K external modem (not USB) and pull the GeoPort modem. It's heinous. There's a small black dot on a small white square gizmo mounted on the logic board, right behind the memory slots. Whenever you make a change to the hardware, such as pulling the modem or adding memory on some Macs, push that black dot to reset stuff. On reboot you'll have to set the clock, but all the hardware should be recognized. 
Anyway, version 8.5 isn't on there. It's nowhere to be found. It's also not available for sale from Apple. This is easily the most stupid thing Apple has done that I've noticed in the past year or so. It's not the stupidest thing they've ever done (I'd write about that, but it could be actionable). There are copies (including apparent bootlegs) floating around on eBay, and in the mailorder ads in MacAddict magazine, but no official channel source. It's stone cold stupid. 
ProDOS and GS/OS Tip 
I would like to emphasize that the same page of download links has all the Apple II stuff still available from Apple. 
Orange Micro, which has been making Apple add-ons for, uh, probably decades, has a nice PCI slot card ($109 at Circuit City, $119 at OtherWorld Computing) which adds two Firewire ports and three USB 2.0 / 1.1 ports. This is the most flexible card I've found. It claims to work on any PCI Mac with 8.5 or newer (maybe it said 8.6, no biggie), whereas quite a number of USB adapter cards I've seen require G3 or G4 processors (the 6360 has a PPC 603e running at 160 MHz) and don't offer Firewire at all. Firewire adapter cards in stock around here don't say anything about Mac compatibility, unless it says "G3 or G4 required". 

Father had an Apple Multiscan 15 which of course after years of use lost the red gun. That was a known design issue, and Apple very graciously offered a replacement policy for a while, but it's never-ending pursuit of alienating its customers in order to destroy its market share, didn't inform those who took the time to mail in the warranty card. And eventually pulled the plug on the program. Thanks for nothing. That's one of the top fifty stupid t ...[Message truncated]