This Macintosh Classic II wasn’t the best computer of its day, it wasn’t even the best Mac available at the time, but 30 years on and as its second owner it has unexpectedly become one of my favourite computers.
The Classic II sits on a desk in the corner of my living room, just beside my main front window. It takes up a small amount of space, is unassuming, and always looks happy, ready to serve me whenever I call on it.
There’s definitely something to be said about using an old, disconnected computer for certain tasks. Of course, this imposes a lot of limits that may end up frustrating and annoying, but it may also be calming.
503 error on the article…..
Internet Archive to the rescue again.
https://archive.ph/VIbMD
That’s hardly a new observation and, I suspect, more of a symptom of the author not being used to doing their own housecleaning than of any so-called advantages of the simplicity of older systems.
As the author stated they have no nostalgia for the old Macs, I wonder if they would be better served by a similarly distraction-free setup of OpenBSD, cwm, and a few packages like a Gopher browser and IRC client, running on an older Intel iMac. It would be just as unobtrusive, just as secure, just as minimalist, with the option to add a modern but basic browser like Surf if needed.
I *do* have nostalgia for classic Macs having used them in grade school, and I would quickly get frustrated trying to use one for serious tasks now (I know because I tried it a few years ago). Minimalism and simplicity are noble goals, but don’t hobble yourself unnecessarily unless you’re doing it for cachet and bragging rights.
Yes, from an absolute security perspective, I imagine an up to date OpenBSD install would be more secure. I think. If the Mac is network connected, its likely got several remotely exploitable holes in it. However, honestly, who on earth is scanning for Mac OS 7.5 connecting via gopher? Answer no one. So in practical terms, its probably safer.
I’d like to have an older dos machine with period correct software as well, I think. I very well might have buyers remorse once I got started and realized that certain creature comforts I don’t even consider were not there. Like no multitasking on dos. and limited file sizes, and easily corrupted data. But I liked those early word perfect versions, and borland.
Thanks to FreeDOS, you can do this if you want. You can get a SBC with a PIII era chip (AMD Geode or similar), an old rack server like an Advantech RS-100, or do like I did and grab a Dell Latitude CPx or IBM Thinkpad from around the year 2000. FreeDOS will be more stable than MS-DOS while still allowing you to run all the old DOS programs, though you may need to govern the CPU to avoid “too fast” speed issues on 80486 era games. My Latitude CPx has a swappable “hard drive” thanks to an IDE to CF adapter. I can quickly switch between Slackware, OpenBSD, Windows 95/98/2000, BeOS 5.0 Pro, and FreeDOS on that machine just as easily as one can change distros on a Raspberry Pi, by swapping out flash cards.