I know this sounds like a joke, but I never did much tuning on Mac to get compatible games working yet did tuning for Photoshop and such. They tended to either run or not. I think it was because in that era (mid 90s) PC gaming was still heavily DOS based while the Mac was comparatively like a console: Limited hardware, the OS had some stuff for graphics, standard sound, etc.
On the other hand, Photoshop tuning was voodoo. Mac OS Classic offered a friendly-ish way to set the memory partition for an application, and hard-core Photoshop users would massage this by trying to have twice what they needed. You could also get in a weird situation alter on where Photoshop had a āscratch diskā that was basically internal virtual memory, then the OS might be running either OS or 3rd party virtual memory, which was a predictable mess. Oh, and if you wanted to be super-cool youād run Photoshop from a Ram Disk (so it was effectively all in memory already).
Photoshop was, and still is, one of the greatest achievements of [insert favourite Demon name here; I suggest Crowley, because damnit Crowley!]. Not only does it allow people to lie through image, it also literally drags them through Hell while they try to get the damn thing set up right, with the tools how and where they like them, and staying there ffs Adobe, and page memory, and reserve memory so you could still tell it to write the file if youād cocked up and ran out of memory, and oh heck when it learned to poach and open all your images because you forgot that damn checkbox hiding in the optionsā¦ GAH!.
I can send you a rescue package if you likeā¦ Jaffa Cakes and Iron Brew. After all that sugar Iām sure you could even teach the students a whole new code library let alone how to stop Adobe borking a whole computer and deleting the first folder in root.
Aaagh. Donāt even get me started on the crud I had to go through to get CC installed on systems. You canāt just install it when you have education licenses. First, you have to package it, then you can install it. Oh, when that doesnāt work, you have to open specific ports in your firewall and try again. When that fails, you have to run the cleaner tool to get rid of all the left behind fragments and try again. When that fails, you can spend a couple of hours with support to finally have them remote into your computer and manually clean up some files and try again.
So far as I can tell, the best way to run Adobe products in a macOS environment is to buy a PowerMac G5, running Tiger, and install Creative Suite 3ā¦
Quite interesting - the groundworks for the isometric layout of todayās RPG games was laid back then with Knight Lore on the Speccyā¦ so you can say that Knight Lore is actually the great-great and then some grandfather of todayās modern RPG games.
Left: Mac Classic 4/40. Factory original (except the capacitors that I replaced to fix the sound). Works beautifully (albeit very slowly).
Middle: My Dell 24" monitor that I bought when 24" monitors were redonkulously huge. Connected to a 1ist-gen i5-750 that I built about 7 years ago and use for photo editing, and sitting atop a Kenwood dual tape deck that I am using to relive my youth.
Right: My Amiga A1200, complete with CSA 12-gauge '030/50 accelerator loaded with 32MB RAM. Complemented by an uncommon Commodore 1942 bi-sync monitor.
I realised recently that almost all Amiga and 10+ year-old Mac hardware has at least some yellowing, but my equipment has absolutely noneā¦ making this system the cleanest A1200 and C= 1942 I have seen for many a year.
In the cupboard - amongst other things, there is a Mac LC630 + monitor and a Psion Series 5mx, plus a few handheld consoles.
This is ViewMAX, running on DR DOS 6, running in !PCEm, running on RISC OS 3.11, running in ArcEm, running in XQuartz, running on OS X El Capitan.
Soā¦ we have GEM running in DOS running in the IBM-PC emulator for RISC OS running inside RISC OS powered by ArcEm which is emulated via XQ, running on his MacBook Proā¦
And this was just because he was bored while I was at work today!
On a related note - a friend of mine was recently given a borked C64Cā¦ rather than fix it he replaced the guts with a Raspberry Pi and used an interface to connect the original keyboard to the Pi. From most angles it looks stock.
So itās a C64 pretending to be a Pi, pretending to be a C64.
So I picked up a Classic II. Says it booted but no screen, but for $45 took my chances.
It turned out to be a bit more than that.
The screen didnāt just not work, the flyback transformer is screaming and buzzing like a mofo
There is significant burn-in damage on the screen, so even if it did work it wouldnāt look great
The motherboard is not working. Lots of capacitor leakage. Tried cleaning it up but it didnāt do much.
I donāt know if the HDD or floppy work.
Late last night after all these tests, I was thinking that I spent $45 on a carcass. However, the motherboard can be recapped (itās a pain in the arse but it can be done). I thought I might be able to replace the original board with the faster one assuming the recap fixes it, but as it has an additional port (for a mic) Iād have to butcher my original case, and I am very reluctant to do that.
BUT!
Looking closer I found a cover plate that I hadnāt noticed before. Pulled it off and voila! a hole for the extra port, complete with mic icon! No butchering needed, and my Classic can keep its original case!
So Iāll go and buy some capacitors, and a new temp-controlled soldering iron when I have the cash (because butane is teh suck for detailed work like this).
