A Perfect Mac OS 7.6.1 Computer

About BasiliskII, a 68k Mac emulator for Windows, MacOSX, and Linux that can run System 7.x through MacOS 8.1.

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ebann
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A Perfect Mac OS 7.6.1 Computer

Post by ebann »

I am trying to create a Chromebook/Mac OS 7.6.1 machine (Basilisk II) for casual generic work and was wondering if these are the best choices:

ROM: Macintosh Quadra 800 ROM (1MB)
RAM: 136MB
CPU: 68040
HDD: 800MB

word processor: Word 6.0.1 (from Office 4.2.1) <Word 5.1a doesn't install, and v6 should be fast on the emulator anyways>
spreadsheet: Excel 5.0a (from Office 4.2.1)
presentation: PowerPoint 4 (from Office 4.2.1)
project management: Project 4.0
image editor: Photoshop 4, Graphic Converter 4.1
pdf viewer: Adobe Reader 3 or Acrobat 3, PrintToPDF
vector art: Illustrator 5.5
publishing: QuarkXpress 4.1
text editor: BBEdit 5.1
music: Finale 3.7.2
STEM: Mathematica 3, MacAstronomica 1.5.1, ChemOfficePro 4.0
programming: Chipmunk Basic 3.6.3, REALbasic 3.5.2, Symantec CPP 8.6 (includes Pascal 4/4.5, ResEdit 2.1)

Need input on these:

email: <what works well?>
browser: <what works well?> <an idea would be to port NetSurf>

Feel free to add other categories!
Last edited by ebann on Thu Jan 21, 2021 4:19 am, edited 2 times in total.
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adespoton
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Re: A Perfect Mac OS 7.6.1 Computer

Post by adespoton »

ebann wrote: Wed Jan 20, 2021 4:50 pm I am trying to create a Chromebook/Mac OS 7.6.1 machine (Basilisk II) for casual generic work and was wondering if these are the best choices:

ROM: Macintosh LC III ROM (1MB)
RAM: 128MB
CPU: 68030 with FPU
HDD: 800MB

word processor: Word 6.0.1 (from Office 4.2.1) <Word 5.1a doesn't install, and v6 should be fast on the emulator anyways>
spreadsheet: Excel 5.0a (from Office 4.2.1)
presentation: PowerPoint 4 (from Office 4.2.1)
project management: Project 4.0
image editor: Photoshop 4, Graphic Converter 4.1
pdf viewer: Adobe Reader 3, PrintToPDF
vector art: Illustrator 5.5
publishing: QuarkXpress 4.1
text editor: BBEdit 5.1
music: Finale 3.7.2
STEM: Mathematica 3, MacAstronomica 1.5.1, ChemOfficePro 4.0
programming: Chipmunk Basic 3.6.3, Symantec CPP 8.6 (C, CPP, Pascal)

Need input on these:

email: <what works well?>
browser: <what works well?> <an idea would be to port NetSurf>

Feel free to add other categories!
I'd recommend some changes. Basilisk II actually emulates a Quadra 900 for the most part. So if you set it to use the Quadra 800 ROM and the 68040 CPU, you'll be in better shape. ROM info here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... -Dk7QDyKPY

Everything else looks good, although I might recommend adding MPW and CodeWarrior Pro 5, and probably Resorcerer (or at least ResEdit) as well. Also, RealBASIC (not sure what version) was a real workhorse in the late 90s for 68k Macs.
ebann
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Re: A Perfect Mac OS 7.6.1 Computer

Post by ebann »

adespoton wrote: Wed Jan 20, 2021 11:35 pm I'd recommend some changes. Basilisk II actually emulates a Quadra 900 for the most part. So if you set it to use the Quadra 800 ROM and the 68040 CPU, you'll be in better shape. ROM info here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... -Dk7QDyKPY

Everything else looks good, although I might recommend adding MPW and CodeWarrior Pro 5, and probably Resorcerer (or at least ResEdit) as well. Also, RealBASIC (not sure what version) was a real workhorse in the late 90s for 68k Macs.
Updated for Quadra 800 ROM.

RealBASIC was a neat addition! I found out that version 3.5.2 (FAT) works.

As per your suggestion for MPW and CW, I had given a long and hard look at it. In the end, I thought that in the 68k world, sticking with THINK Pascal would be appropriate because Inside Macintosh books and the Macintosh Toolbox are pretty much Pascal-friendly. Symantec CPP 8.6 has the bonus of including THINK Pascal 4 and 4.5 (last version) and a bunch of tools and references in a single CD. On a PPC platform, I'd migrate to CW easily. While MPW is a neat concept much akin to GCC-style development, I'd prefer a much more polished IDE. I didn't mention the miscellaneous development tools like RedEdit, MacsBug, etc. but definitely included.
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Re: A Perfect Mac OS 7.6.1 Computer

Post by adespoton »

ebann wrote: Thu Jan 21, 2021 3:12 am
adespoton wrote: Wed Jan 20, 2021 11:35 pm I'd recommend some changes. Basilisk II actually emulates a Quadra 900 for the most part. So if you set it to use the Quadra 800 ROM and the 68040 CPU, you'll be in better shape. ROM info here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... -Dk7QDyKPY

Everything else looks good, although I might recommend adding MPW and CodeWarrior Pro 5, and probably Resorcerer (or at least ResEdit) as well. Also, RealBASIC (not sure what version) was a real workhorse in the late 90s for 68k Macs.
Updated for Quadra 800 ROM.

RealBASIC was a neat addition! I found out that version 3.5.2 (FAT) works.

As per your suggestion for MPW and CW, I had given a long and hard look at it. In the end, I thought that in the 68k world, sticking with THINK Pascal would be appropriate because Inside Macintosh books and the Macintosh Toolbox are pretty much Pascal-friendly. Symantec CPP 8.6 has the bonus of including THINK Pascal 4 and 4.5 (last version) and a bunch of tools and references in a single CD. On a PPC platform, I'd migrate to CW easily. While MPW is a neat concept much akin to GCC-style development, I'd prefer a much more polished IDE. I didn't mention the miscellaneous development tools like RedEdit, MacsBug, etc. but definitely included.
The neat thing about including MPW is that you can then compile all of Apple's sample code, and you can run ToolServer, which lets you script and interact with Mac OS in a very UNIX-y way. There's even a third party app written that turns it into a telnet server so you can log in remotely and control your 68k computer.

Likewise, the reason for CWP5 is the sample code out there. That said, if you're only planning to write your own stuff, Symantec is the way to go (even though I was a Borland guy back then).
ebann
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Re: A Perfect Mac OS 7.6.1 Computer

Post by ebann »

adespoton wrote: Thu Jan 21, 2021 4:47 pm The neat thing about including MPW is that you can then compile all of Apple's sample code, and you can run ToolServer, which lets you script and interact with Mac OS in a very UNIX-y way. There's even a third party app written that turns it into a telnet server so you can log in remotely and control your 68k computer.

Likewise, the reason for CWP5 is the sample code out there. That said, if you're only planning to write your own stuff, Symantec is the way to go (even though I was a Borland guy back then).
Gotcha! Piping little apps one after the other is pretty cool but at this moment is beyond the scope of my little project.

I want to build a simple (but complete) system for middle-school students to fool around with and teach them Pascal. I am currently teaching Applesoft BASIC (from 8-bit Apple ][) to the elementary kids (8-10) just like I experienced in grade school during the 70's. I decided to skip the IIgs platform and go to Mac 68000 programming (16-bit). Then I'm thinking about traditional 32/64-bit C programming in a GNU environment.

Granted, these are all obsolete languages (except C but is used mostly for system and firmware) but pretty easy to teach. I wanted to see if I can fit in some Python. I also wanted to introduce these kids to assembly language programming, and for simplicity sake, use 6502 assembly so that they can see how machine thinks.

P.S. What is the most active forum for discussing 68k Macs in general? Here or Macintosh Garden or other? Thanks!
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Re: A Perfect Mac OS 7.6.1 Computer

Post by adespoton »

ebann wrote: Fri Jan 22, 2021 3:40 pm
adespoton wrote: Thu Jan 21, 2021 4:47 pm The neat thing about including MPW is that you can then compile all of Apple's sample code, and you can run ToolServer, which lets you script and interact with Mac OS in a very UNIX-y way. There's even a third party app written that turns it into a telnet server so you can log in remotely and control your 68k computer.

Likewise, the reason for CWP5 is the sample code out there. That said, if you're only planning to write your own stuff, Symantec is the way to go (even though I was a Borland guy back then).
Gotcha! Piping little apps one after the other is pretty cool but at this moment is beyond the scope of my little project.

I want to build a simple (but complete) system for middle-school students to fool around with and teach them Pascal. I am currently teaching Applesoft BASIC (from 8-bit Apple ][) to the elementary kids (8-10) just like I experienced in grade school during the 70's. I decided to skip the IIgs platform and go to Mac 68000 programming (16-bit). Then I'm thinking about traditional 32/64-bit C programming in a GNU environment.

Granted, these are all obsolete languages (except C but is used mostly for system and firmware) but pretty easy to teach. I wanted to see if I can fit in some Python. I also wanted to introduce these kids to assembly language programming, and for simplicity sake, use 6502 assembly so that they can see how machine thinks.

P.S. What is the most active forum for discussing 68k Macs in general? Here or Macintosh Garden or other? Thanks!
Depends on what you're asking: I'd add https://wiki.68kmla.org/ for sure. If you're going the Pascal route, I'd recommend looking at https://freepascal.org/ as well -- it learned from Delphi, is pretty modernized, but still hearkens back to the LightSpeed/Borland/Apple Pascal beginnings.

Personally, I'd recommend Python over Pascal for teaching middle school kids; when I learned Borland Turbo Pascal back in school, it was frustrating that you couldn't easily write a real application with it that could do stuff and interact with the rest of the operating system. Doing so required learning the entire toolbox (which I did grudgingly) and ResEdit. I quickly switched to HyperCard for creating functional software when it came out, and then REALBasic for writing my own quick tools. From there, I moved on to Perl and Python for quick stuff. Knowing about PStrings is useful, especially when debugging old Delphi software, but Python 3 is a much better teaching language in my opinion than Pascal, even modern objective Pascal. Also, IDLE is a great interactive environment where you can modify the environment itself using the rules of the language you're writing in, allowing infinite expansion and great iterative design of function blocks.

Applesoft BASIC is what I first learned to program on, and it's what I taught my kids as their first language too -- being able to get instant results but also write more complex programs to manipulate the hardware was a great win for me.

For my kids, AppleSoft BASIC -> Python -> Lua -> JavaScript was the progression they took, and it lets them look at source code in pretty much any language now and figure out what's going on.
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