@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

onegeekarmy

@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social

Former rock god.

I've been riding bicycles for the mind since 1982. I still haven't fallen off.

I make Disk Jockey, the disk image creator and analyzer for your retro stuff.
https://diskjockey.onegeekarmy.eu

Do you live in Europe and want to check out the magical BlueSCSI?
https://shop.onegeekarmy.eu

He/Him

🇧🇪 Belgium

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

onegeekarmy, to random
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

Going through the stuff I got along a few machines over the weekend, I gasped (audibly, as witnesses can attest) when a wild boxed Hypercard appeared.

Not only is it in French (even the screenshot on the box is localized - those were the days!), everything is still shrink-wrapped and under seals.

It's a beautiful piece of memorabilia that I think @ericsedge will approve of :)

The contents of the French version of Hypercard: 2 books and a set of floppies, still shrink-wrapped.

billgoats, to random
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

Is there anything the dude bros won't stick 'tactical' in front of? Snood? Tactical snood? Really?

onegeekarmy,
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

@billgoats As a big picture man, I prefer a strategic snood.

onegeekarmy, to random
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

The iMac G4 rescued from the recycling plant a couple of days ago turned out to be a very interesting machine.
This particular model (M8812LLA) is the very last iMac that could boot Mac OS 9 (and it requires a custom 9.2.2 to do so). And it does so extremely snappily.

Its previous owner used it as a sad and boring e-mail + web gadget.

It's now a wonderful Carbon development and testing machine, capable of cranking out binaries spanning OS generations.

Welcome, new buddy. Life's just begun.

A screenshot from an iMac G4 running Mac OS X with a simple Carbon app displaying the caption "Hello Mastodon!".
A screenshot from an iMac G4 running Mac OS 9.2.2 with a simple Carbon app displaying the caption "Hello Mastodon!".

onegeekarmy,
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

I know Carbon is often remembered as old and busted compared to Cocoa's new and shiny, but it remains to this day a stunning achievement.

To offer the possibility to compile an app that runs seamlessly on both OS 9 and Mac OS X was the cornerstone of the successful transition to Mac OS X.

Without Carbon, Mac OS X would have withered and died. And without OS X, no iOS. No iPhone.

Here's to Carbon, the unloved unappealing workhorse that got the job done.

onegeekarmy, to random
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

In the Belgian recycling parks, you're forbidden to take things. Once they've been dropped off, they cannot be claimed.

Somehow, my sister just managed to rescue a 17" iMac G4 from a tragic fate. She spotted its owner dropping off this (OMG SO PRETTY) machine and got it off him just before he put it down.

Then she called me to let me know of her deed, to ask if I wanted it (is the pope Catholic?) and to apologise because there were no cables with it 😚 .

Another one saved from oblivion!

A Belgian recypark where old computers horribly go to die.

onegeekarmy,
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

Well hello beautiful

onegeekarmy,
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

@nivrig I think we should have retro nerd cards that we can flash and go "Let me handle this, I know what I'm doing. This belongs in a museum!". And people would tolerate our weird dumpster diving habit.

onegeekarmy, to random
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

It's a miracle! Disk Jockey v3 for macOS is out!

It can now create disk images for many old machines! Atari ST! Amiga! Apple II! Akai samplers!

And its image analyzer is much smarter and knows a bunch of new image formats too! It can even export files and directories.

Grab it here:
https://diskjockey.onegeekarmy.eu

A screenshot of the Disk Jockey image analyzer

vga256, (edited ) to random
@vga256@dialup.cafe avatar

alriiiiight! @paulrickards just wrote up this fantastic tutorial on setting up your classic mac to connect to the global Appletalk network (do we have a name for this franken-net yet?)

once you're online, PM me your public IP so you can be added to our network. my Zone is "dialup.cafe" - feel free to add it to your zone list.

Important: dialup.cafe is using Network Range 20-29.

https://biosrhythm.com/?p=2767

onegeekarmy,
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

@vga256 @paulrickards Why does this have to happen the ONE WEEK of the year when I'm away from my vintage Macs?

A global AppleTalk network has been a fever dream of mine for years. I'm giddy.

This is incredible. And the fact that the amazing @billgoats is involved makes it even sweeter.

paulrickards, (edited ) to retrocomputing
@paulrickards@mastodon.social avatar

We're Zoning out! We've now got three different sites connected via Apple Internet Router!

onegeekarmy,
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

@paulrickards I'm hoping you will all still be around next week when I join the fun (hopefully).

In the meantime, I have just purchased tractor feed paper for my ImageWriter. Like a normal 2024 person.

tonyarnold, to random
@tonyarnold@mastodon.social avatar

My current 14" M3 Max MacBook Pro is the best computer I've owned. The form factor is perfect, the performance is phenomenal, and the battery life is good enough that I just don't think about it during my day.

I'm so happy that I found a way to buy this thing last year!

onegeekarmy,
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

@tonyarnold this is absolutely my experience too. I upgraded from a 2019 13" and the new machine is everything the old one was not.
It's a brilliant, brilliant machine.

onegeekarmy, to swift
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

and people, I have a puzzling issue in Sonoma.

I have an NSTextView inside an NSScrollview. I load about 800 KB of text data in the text view.

Scolling is slow and choppy.

I click the "Debug View Hierarchy" button in Xcode. I then press the "Continue Program Execution" button (without doing anything else).

My text now scrolls smoothly in its scroll view.

Any idea what is going on? What does the view hierarchy debugger turn on that makes my view useable?

onegeekarmy,
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

@Cykelero OMG Thank you that was it!

As you pointed out, for some reason, invoking the view debugger secretly switches the rendering to TextKit 1.

Forcing the use of TextKit 1 (by simply doing a let _ = myTextView.layoutManager during view configuration) was my solution. I do not need the fancy stuff in TextKit 2 so that's perfectly acceptable to me.

<huge sigh of relief>

onegeekarmy, to random
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

I just bought a copy of Dungeon Master for the Atari ST, 36 years after its release.

I remember feverishly reading every article that would mention it. Poring over the screenshots and trying to wrap my head around the sheer awesomeness of it all.

I got a pirated copy for my ST months later and it was everything I had hoped for. It's one of those games that changed everything.

I'm sorry I stole your incredible game, FTL. I now have purchased my own copy. For karma.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Master_(video_game)

onegeekarmy,
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

@tartley what a lovely memory. I did the same, though probably a lot more messily than you.

We were the last analog people. Entertained by computers and losing ourselves in them, but still documenting it on paper. Or typing in code from magazines.

onegeekarmy,
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

@tartley oh wow!
That's so cool! Looks like the apple didn't fall far from the tree :)
Such a cool way to play!

I've played Subnautica and its sequel and looking at your map brings back memories :)

jcs, to random
@jcs@jcs.org avatar

My BlueSCSI Wi-Fi Desk Accessory for System 6+ is now available:

https://jcs.org/bluescsi

It lets you view your current network name and signal strength, and change networks on the fly without having to edit your BlueSCSI configuration

Perfect for taking your 68k PowerBook to the coffee shop (but who would do such a thing?)

onegeekarmy,
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

Certified genius @jcs has released a desk accessory for your BlueSCSI with WiFi.

A System 6 desk accessory that sets up your WiFi. In 2023. For machines that are 30 years old.

I need to sit down.

billgoats, to retrocomputing
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

There’s an eBay listing for 52 old Macs as one job lot in Illinois. It’s kind of intense. I hope it all finds a good home! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/276078935767

onegeekarmy,
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

@billgoats That last shot with a battery expiring in 93 still on the board is just cruel.

"Come and get them quick or she's gonna blow!"

onegeekarmy, to random
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

The A/UX "About Box" is very sweet (A/UX is Apple's other Unix, released a decade before Mac OS X, and it ran on select 68K Macs).

To anyone who worked on it: you made something amazing that's still incredible to behold to this day.

A movie showing the animated About Box of A/UX with the signatures of its designers flashing by.

onegeekarmy, to random
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

I'm taking some time off for the first time in forever.

While wandering the Brittany coast, I was struck by the amazing variety of colours the pebbles came in.

So what does my brain do when encountering what is essentially a random set of colour pixels?

Organise them, of course.

onegeekarmy,
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

@gsuberland hahahaha I should have thought of doing something like that :)

onegeekarmy, to random
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

It's a miserable rainy day of August so what's a good way to cheer one up?

Fire up the PowerBook 1400 and play 34 years old MODs through the still-amazing Player Pro by Antoine Rosset, of course!

This, as the kids say, slaps.

A movie of a PowerBook playing a MOD file called Freefall on the Player Pro MOD tracker.

jcs, to random
@jcs@jcs.org avatar

video/mp4

onegeekarmy,
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

@jcs I want the Fetch dog, Cyberdog and Clarus to be friends.

I miss whimsy in computers.

onegeekarmy, to random
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

The brilliant @jcs took the time to write a post about his adventures in adding Wi-Fi to @BlueSCSI

If you're wondering how he did it and the challenges he encountered, it's a must-read.

It's not every day that old machines (and we're talking 35+ years old here) suddenly get new capabilities they never could have imagined back then!

https://jcs.org/2023/08/23/scsiwifi

billgoats, to random
@billgoats@bitbang.social avatar

A game that I would absolutely love for it to exist would be all the Sim* games integrated together. So like playing SimEarth, then you could zoom in to a city and play that in SimCity, then you could zoom into a house and play its residents in The Sims, then jump to its back yard and try to drive them out in SimAnt, and so on. 🐜

onegeekarmy,
@onegeekarmy@mastodon.social avatar

@billgoats @repeattofade When I was younger, I took a look at SimEarth and got very confused and humbled by its complexity. I said to myself "I'll try it again when I grow up".

I guess I'm grown up now.

Time to face an old nemesis.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • thenastyranch
  • magazineikmin
  • khanakhh
  • InstantRegret
  • Youngstown
  • ngwrru68w68
  • slotface
  • rosin
  • tacticalgear
  • mdbf
  • Durango
  • JUstTest
  • modclub
  • osvaldo12
  • ethstaker
  • cubers
  • normalnudes
  • everett
  • tester
  • GTA5RPClips
  • Leos
  • cisconetworking
  • provamag3
  • anitta
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •