If you have an old compact Mac that you would like to revive, say for a child or for a casual computer user who just wants a machine for email and word processing, check out Adam Robert Guha's latest article on Low End Mac, "What Can You Squeeze Into a Compact Mac?"

The post-Mac 512 k compacts -- the Macintosh Plus, SE, SE/30, Classic, Classic II, and Colour Classic Macintosh, are still usable computers for light duty tasks. You can find them at flea markets and yard sales for $10 or $15. Kids can have a lot of fun and learn a lot with a compact Mac, and these Macs also make a good email appliance.

Adam recommends bumping the RAM up to the max., which is 4 MB for the older units, 10 MB for the Classic II and Color Classic, and 128 MB for the SE 30.

OS 7.0 is the latest system I would choose to run on the slower machines, and there is a case to be made for stiicking with OS 6.0.8. The SE 30 and Clasic II will support up to OS 7.6.1.

Adam recommends Microsoft Word 5.1a for word processing, and I agree. ClarisWorks 3 will work, but Word 5.1 is superior. Hypercard, especially the older version, is a nice app. for these machines. You can even run PhotoShop 1.0 on a Compact Mac, if you can find a copy. Excel 4 will work as well.

To set up your compact mac for the Internet, first click on over to Bill Jagitsch's jagshouse.com for a tutorial on connecting older Macs.

Jag's House recommends Mac System 6.08 and provides links to places where you can get other stuff you need, including MacPPP, Eudora Lite (1.3.1 or before) and NCSA Telnet 2.6 for browsing under Lynx. My browser choice would be WannaBe for the '030 machines, but it won't run on the 68000 models.

Jag's House offers Jag's Web Kit For System 6 with download links from the tutorial page. It includes:
• Tutorials - ignore the system 7 stuff
• MacPPP - dial up software
• Fetch 2.1.2 - for FTP
• Inter News - news reader
• Eudora Lite 1.3.1 - email
• Telnet 2.6 - Use Unix commands to surf the web, Pine for email
• ZTerm .09 - Terminal emulation program

Other useful items:
ZTerm - From Polarnet's web site, popular terminal emulation program for Macs. Works on the 512 or up.
Anarchie 1.6.0 (ftp-client; v2.0.1 & 3.0 crash)
Fetch 2.06 -03.03
Kermit 0.93 (terminal emulator)
MacWWW 1.03 (Samba; crash-prone web browser
MacWeb 1.00A3.2 (web browser; v1.1.1 E crashes when saving prefs)^
MacWeb 2.0 (more features than in v1.00A3.2 but also slower and buggier)

Step by step instructions are provided for setup.

Charles W. Moore

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July 25, 2008