Vintage

I am finally getting dragged kicking and screaming into software build-dev. Last night I figured out a build issue that's been killing me for a year. Last year I built that museum kiosk to play that old 1985 Macintosh Ouija game. I was always kind of stuck with a very specific SDL binary build that the original author of Mini vMac had made in 2019 as an update to the one being shipped with RetroPie. I couldn't reproduce this version 36.04 build even using his stated exact command line for the arguments. My builds would run lots of Mac stuff and seemed fine, but they crashed when I would launch our Ouija board app. Last night I was alternating between his binary and mine and noticed his screen size was lower. So re-compiled at 512x342 and boom. Worked no problemo. He did not mention that in his build notes of course! And my application is so old, from like about a year after the first Mac launched, that they probably never conceived that it could be a res other than 512 across. Even in the build guide for Mini vMac they list "popular resolutions" of 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768.

640x480:

So NOW I can use the latest & greatest version of the software off of Github. I'm not reliant on running a 32-bit OS or availability of 32 bit SDL, and I don't have to worry about "what if they stop supporting some other XYZ in the future". I do understand that since this thing is basically a modestly locked down interactive signage machine with no internet access even should someone maliciously hand-hack a machine at a tourist museum. I shouldn't really need to worry about running the latest OS in a decade anyway. If it ain't broke and all.

Now I'm ripping into the Mini vMac code itself and disabling all the safeties such as "Are you sure you want to quit" type dialogs and probably will make "quit" be just "Q" if I can instead of "CTRL+Q" (this is a public kiosk, so there is not a full keyboard available to the public). I wonder if I could get the emulator to start at "all out" speed for like, 2-3 seconds and then drop down to Z speed so everything is accurate.

Next I need to try and write a program (Pascal?) to set the system time of the emulated Mac. When you run Gypsy it complains about the system clock being wrong and I want to try and make that dialog go away. The Mini vMac guy wrote a Mac OS plugin for that, to periodically sync his system clock to the clock of the host, but it only works on System 7 and Gypsy does not work on System 7. I don't care about accuracy, I just want to set the time to some arbitrary value in 1985 or 1986.

It took me like a half an hour to get all my ducks in a row and start shooting this 2 minute video. The longer it took me to set up, the more it's making my point for me.

Spoiler alert: After all this and another half hour of fucking around, the Windows 98SE version I grabbed cannot be used to upgrade Windows 95. It's at this point that I put a micro SD card in an SD-IDE.

Here is a full demo of Gypsy: The Computer Oracle, which released in 1985 for the Macintosh. This was very early in the Macintosh lifespan and not a lot of people have seen it.

Plus two brand new boards made by Natalie.

Links and sources:

• Get Gypsy from the Macintosh Garden archive
• Visit the Salem Witchboard Museum!
• Link to the DigiBarn page with information about their copy of Gypsy and the photos of the Mouse Mover that I yoinked
• Positive review from a 1985 New York Times Christmas shopping article

Screw app tethered Smart Home gabbage. This isn't an air conditioner review. We bought new $150 (?) Canadian AC. It's as loud as any I've ever used, the "fan only" mode seems to work better than my previous Frigidaires from the past. Like it might be a useful feature. Other than that, it's "the second cheapest AC unit". A white-label generic OEM AC with the "CA - Two Language" remote option & manual pack checked off.

But it came with a particularly aesthetic throwback remote. It fits in great with my '80s / '90s kid bedroom:

As far as I can tell the only way to make that LCD shut off is to pull out the batteries. The "LED/DEL" button at the bottom there turns off the dual 7-segment displays and various status lights on the main AC unit. I guess this must draw no power and it doesn't matter.

I have no idea what "Follow Me" does or what the night button and stuff do, maybe I'll look it up someday.

I would pay the MiSTer project money and jump in and help in any way I can to help with a "Lite Mode" UI that could be quickly picked up by say, a house guest with their only instruction being on-screen or physical info-graphics.

To that end, I'm making an arcade-cabinet-bezel inspired custom background overlay with basic "how to navigate" with QR code links to my Wiki for a little more detail if the user needs more specific info.

To give myself a visually consistent target I took two photos and crammed them together and have been meaning to share the result:

This effect really only works from very specific spots, but one of them happens to be "Standing at the controls".

The current running test is below. I've already got a list of things to change and yeah I promise the first thing is to remove my phone :