Software Archeology and the Puzzling Puzzle

By Brian J. DePardo

In a world where dictators and nuclear weapons threaten our safety, new planets are being discovered outside of our solar system, and the President has more girlfriends than the Fonz; you would think that I would have some important things to write about. Especially in the Apple arena.

The month of May has brought the most promising news from Apple in years. Steve Jobs' May 6th gala introduced the exciting new iMac and the sleek, sexy PowerBook G3 (wasn't there already a PowerBook model by that name?). A week later, at the WorldWide Developer's conference, Apple finally revealed its future plans for the MacOS: The Carbon programming interface. With Carbon, developers will be able to retain MacOS 8 compatibility while moving their applications to the more modern foundation that MacOS X will be built upon. In other words, Carbon will allow applications written for MacOS 8 to run under MacOS X with minimal effort on the part of the software's developers. This is good news for both developers and Apple's customer base. To support Rhapsody, applications would require a complete rewrite. Carbon versions will require only minor changes -- if any -- to support MacOS X.

Software Archeology

Last week I found myself doing a bit of "Software Archeology" in a desk drawer full of floppy disks dating back to the reign of King 512k, my first Mac. For those not familiar with the term "Software Archeology" let me explain. Software Archeology is the science of unearthing ancient floppy disks and dissecting the contents. Here's a good example: have you ever found an old disk lying around and decided to check to see what was on it? Have you ever popped it into the drive of your late model Mac running the latest system software and then tried to boot an old application with a compilation date from the 80's? If you have answered yes, then you have dabbled in the very basic foundations of Software Archeology.

I brought the motley mixture of decaying 400k and 800k disks out of earth and anxiously began arranging them on my desk. Most of the disks were without labels and the ones that did have them were written on in hieroglyphic chicken scratch from the early Macsimus Plusus period. One 800k disk in particular caught my eye. After deciphering the encrypted title, my excitement grew. The disk label simply read: System 3.2 (Startup).

System 3. I began to reminisce. After all, it was the first substantial upgrade to the Mac System software since the Macintosh was introduced. Bundled with the Macintosh Plus in January 1986, System 3 was the first version that used HFS (Hierarchical Files System) instead of MFS (Macintosh File System).

System 3 also introduced the RAM Cache, an ancestor of today's Disk Cache option in the memory control panel, and was the first version of the Mac's operating system to contain an installer.

I inserted the disk into the drive of my PowerMac running MacOS 8.1. When the disk was mounted, I opened it and found two folders. The System Folder and a Utilities folder. The System Folder contained the usual gang of icons. The Utilities folder contained the installer application as well as a Font suitcase and a Desk Accessories suitcase. Aha! The disk contained applications! Just what a serious Software Archeologist is hoping to find. Cue up the Indiana Jones theme song.

Double-Clicking into the Past

The Installer application was the first to be invaded by the sharp tipped tool of the Software Archeologist. The mouse pointer. After launching it, the screen flashed and the word Installer appeared in the menu bar. For a split second a window popped up and then disappeared leaving me with a dialog box that any Software Archeologist considers defeat. The Application "Installer" has unexpectedly quit, because an error of type 1 occurred. Damn!

Next in line were the Desk Accessories. You know, those tiny applications that sit in your Apple menu. In Pre-System 7 days, Desk Accessories were stored in a suitcase and required a nifty utility call the "Font D/A Mover" that allowed the user to install the application right into the System file. Not very user friendly.

In order to use the DA's as regular applications, you must first remove them from the suitcase they are in. I just dragged them onto my desktop and they were ready to go. In this case, their were two, Note Pad and Puzzle. I opted for the Note Pad first. After all, the Note Pad DA is still included with current versions of the MacOS and if either application ran, I was willing to bet it would be Note Pad. Wrong. Note Pad launches and then comes crashing down. No error message. It just quit as soon as it was launched. After thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it found a corresponding Note Pad data file in the MacOS 8.1 system folder. That Note Pad File obviously wasn't compatible with the older version, so the application gracefully quit.

The next and final contender was the long forgotten Puzzle. A rather pathetic application by today's standards. I kind of felt bad for it as I moved the mouse over its icon and double clicked. It'll never work, I told myself. From the icon came the familiar animated zooming rectangle. I held my breath as I watched a tiny window draw on the screen. It booted successfully. Time to celebrate? Not yet.

A highly trained Software Archeologist must press on by conducting more in depth testing. Here are the results:

Q. Can the window be moved?

A. Yes

Q. Can the window be collapsed via WindowShade?

A. Yes

Q. Do the menus function properly?

A. Yes

Q. Do the menus produced the desired result?

A. Yes

Q. Can this Software Archeologist solve the Puzzle?

A. No. Due to his lack of regular brain exercise and wasting his time with useless activities like Software Archeology, his brain has shriveled like a prune making him unable to perform the function of the Puzzle application.

Which brings us back to Carbon...

What I find so amazing about the Puzzle application is that it is still running on modern hardware -- on a completely different processor than it was intended to. Apple performed an engineering triple axle when making the move to PowerPC. The Puzzle application is proof of that. Will this be the situation with Carbon? Can Apple really maintain that level of compatibility? I hope so. Because in the year 2010, I would love to double click on that Puzzle icon and watch it boot up. And I just might need that long to figure out how to solve it!

Brian DePardo is a freelance writer and Mac lunatic living in East Greenwich, RI. His fiction has appeared in over a dozen magazines throughout the United States and he has just completed his first novel.

Do you know of any old Mac apps that can do the MacOS 8 boogie? Tell me about it bdepardo@edgenet.net and I will include it on a Web page dedicated to the topic.

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July 05, 2009