Sooner or later the floppies on these old macs are going to need a refurb, a cleaning or have the eject gear replaced. There are two really good videos about teardown, clean, fix and re-lube avaiable they are listed below. If you are going to do this have some proper lube ready to ensure the…
About: dillera
Author Archives: dillera
BBS and Echomail with fsxNet
Having a BBS is fun, but traffic is what a BBS is about- exchanging information and discussions between people. And I suppose some gaming. Starting a BBS is one thing but getting people/users to connect is a whole other thing- it demands time, marketing and getting the word out. There are many other options today…
MacTCP System 6 Error Codes
With my new project (running a BBS on my Macintosh SE in System 6) using SubText an amazing modern BBS software server from JCS (Joshua Stein) I’ve encountered some System Errors- and like most things on the Internet today they are hard to google for (it seems like the world just searches for OSX info)…
OBS and App Audio Recording
Capturing this here because it’s so bizarre to do this in 2022. OSX Monterey, OBS running to record a running Altirra session (run via Crossover) and audio sounds like mud. It sounds that way because it’s the mic on the display that is picking up the audio from the speakers… How can OBS pick up…
SE/30 and HD20
Dammit The (non-SCSI) Hard Disk 20 does not work with the Macintosh SE/30. The Macintosh SE/30 has the same logic board and ROM as the Macintosh IIx, which does not support the Hard Disk 20. Therefore, the code to support the drive is not included in the ROM of the Macintosh SE/30. So much for…
Macintosh SE Fun
Working on the SE in System 6.0.8 with Ethernet via Asante SCSI…
The Best Windows or Linux Laptop
For a few years I’ve been looking for the best small light laptop for Windows or Linux. I love the mac trackpad and keyboard. I finally realized that I loved the Mac Hardware…
Apple IIGS and OBS
I’ve been using a IIGS lately for FujiNet testing. I wanted to connect the video to OBS. This scart converter was recommended and was a very nice solution to go from the RBG of the IIGS to HDMI…
FujiNet for AppleII
The very first Rev0 boards for the AppleII SmartPort platform have arrived back from build overseas and are being tested. What is learned from these will allow the Rev1 boards to be ordered and available for anyone to purchase and use on their Apple2. At this point the FN imitates a SmartPort disk drive- so…
Disk Jockey – manage disk images
An amazing utility for the Mac just popped up on my twitter feed and its looks like exactly what I need. Disk Jockey will Disk Jockey is a macOS application that lets you create disk images and analyze existing ones. It can create images that work in devices like BlueSCSI, FloppyEmu and RaSCSI, as well…
FujiNet available for ADAM
There is an official FujiNet device available for ADAM computers. fujinet.online is the official web space for the FujiNet project. From there you will always be able to find hardware available, links to other vendors selling the hardware, the lastest firmware and support pages. The FujiNet GitHub space is the official place for development and…
Using Barrier
Using Barrier for OSX and IRIX. What is Barrier? it’s the open port of Synergy – one of the best apps for sharing mouse and keyboard events across systems. Synergy was great until it went down the hole of commercialization and subscriptions. But luckily for us Barrier does it all with much less fuss. Goal…
Display Port on TB3 MacBookPro
I have a MBP 14,3 and wanted to connect it to some external displays via DP. I have the apple TB2 to TB3 adapter (the one that goes to USBC connector) and I noticed that while it will work with the Apple Thunderbolt Display, connecting a LCD panel to this using a DP to mini-DP…
Photos and BigSur
Update: This issue has been solved. I had to completely repartition and format the external disks and ensure they contained at least one APFS Container. I’m guessing there is permission metadata contained in this that isn’t available with the partitions created in Catalina. Once they were partitioned and formatted in BigSur, and contained a container…
Model 100 – M100 Web
I recently re-discovered my Model 100 Web site I had worked on from 1995-1997. Looking back now it was a reaction to the closed membership-only dialup resource Club100. I realize the owners there were trying to make a business about the systems, but it always rubbed me a bit the wrong way, especially with web…
MacPro NVMe Update
So a few things have been learned regarding the MacPro and NVMe. Booting is fine. Multiple drives on a carrier is not. My MacPro refused to recognize the 4x Hyper 2x carrier with more than one NVMe drive in it. Even in the x16 PCI slot- and I tried both Slot 1 and 2 (there…
MacPro 5,1 – NVME Turbo Charging the Disks
Putting SSD drives into the MacPro was a total change in experiencing OSX. The increases in speed and responsiveness gave new life to this aging platform (mine is a Mid 2010). Â The next step in performance is using NVMe drives on the PCI buss. And this is surprisingly easy to do. Asus has an…
NAS Near Death Experience – PX4-300r
 I have a few different NAS in my home network, each used for different things. Having multiple ones also ensures when I have a problem I won’t lose all my files in one go. Recently I was bit by a issue updating the firmware in my EMC NAS. I was able to recover and not…
SGI Land
So I’ve been very busy this year working, collecting and playing with my growing collection of SGI systems. My most interesting one to date is the Power ChallengeL that I obtained from an associate who found it destined for the trash at an NYC University. Â Picking up the Challenge from NYC. It was suprising…
Setting the date in ULTRIX
Ultrix 4.5 has a Y2k problem- the date command cannot set any date with 00 as the year. However, ULTRIX itself has no problem using dates past 2000, you just have to trick it to set the date by jumping to the last second of each year, letting it roll over the year then doing…
USB 3 for your MacPro 5,1
Now that my Mac is back I wanted to address another issue- lack of USB 3.1 and also general lack of USB. I’ve found that i’m using most of the available USB ports (many for multiple serial interfaces I use to connect to my SGI consoles). I also have a external drive that is USB…
MacPro 5,1 Firmware Problems
Recently my MacPro 5,1 (still running High Sierra) starting crashing on an OSX Update of some kind. It started mid-April and I’m not sure which one it was, but the Mac wouldn’t boot as it ended up in the crash screen for the installer with some sort of error on finding a file that wasn’t…
Dive into IRIX
I’ve been diving into IRIX lately, setting up both 5.3 on my Personal Iris and 6.5.22 on my Indigo. It’s been interesting unlearning 20 years of Linuxisms and embracing the IRIX. There is an interesting project going on called irisware which aims to resurrect a modern pool of open-source software for IRIX. Which is not…
Sparcbook 3
The Tadpole Sparcbook3 was dug up out of storage in time to submit it for the Reddit Portable Battlestation contest. Â This one came from a Craigslist buy at least a decade ago, and I promptly just stuck the whole box in storage. It came with a couple of CDROMS, batteries and accessories (scsi cable, 2…
SGI Indigo Elan
I’m in the middle of this one, but it’s booting from the SCSI2SD v6 and a totally minimal install of Irix is installed. More to come.  It’s a eBay surprise as it was listed as a R3K Indigo, but turned out to be a R4k with Elan Graphics installed. Not bad.    …