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Build Log: Macintosh Classic

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/build-log-macintosh-classic
29•speckx•6h ago

Comments

steeleyespan•3h ago
I identify myself as still living in the 1990s.
biggestfan•2h ago
Are these old computers viable to use daily? Is there any advantage over using an emulator on more modern hardware? (Obviously not the point of this project.)
tonyedgecombe•2h ago
People bought them to do real work when they were new. I can't see why they can't continue to do that as long as you don't want to connect it to the internet.
geerlingguy•2h ago
Infinite Mac (https://infinitemac.org) is honestly incredible and gets you 99% of the way there for running old software for the nostalgia.

But there's definitely something fun about running the old hardware with an old spinning hard drive, clacking away while it boots up for 2-3 minutes.

And then launching Microsoft Word 5.1 and wondering if it locked up, while each toolbar loads in one by one!

Honestly though, if you just wanted to do word processing, it's fine for that, and with modern tools like FloppyEmu, BlueSCSI, and some of the networking hacks with modern cheap hardware, you can get one of these things to transfer files to and from a network share very easily.

I'm using a netatalk server on my Raspberry Pi to serve up Samba shares over AppleTalk. Very simple to do nowadays! https://github.com/geerlingguy/apple-pi

cosmic_cheese•1h ago
The (lack of) latency is probably the most difficult part to reproduce not just emulation, but with a modern hardware+software stack period. It’s not necessary to go back as far as the Mac Classic to get that though, anything that can boot Mac OS 9 (including a few that can hacked to run it, like the G4 Mini) will get you that too. When I boot up my PowerBook G3 the sheer responsiveness when typing immediately stands out.
fotbr•1h ago
I have a relatively ancient 8086 I still use from time to time with plain text files and a simple editor.

It provides a distraction-free environment for writing.

Save it to a 720kb floppy that my linux box can still read, and move it to a "modern" system for editing and such.

tom_•21m ago
If you used them when they were current, the emulator experience is never quite the same. The input latency is always detectably worse, especially without a CRT (and even now you're no longer 15-25 years old), and there's always at least a bit of sound latency. Also, you're using a modern keyboard and mouse.

On the flip side, all the original hardware is now ancient and at least somewhat broken (or going that way), and it's a pain to keep it running as an ongoing prospect. CRTs, floppy disk drives, floppy disks, hard disk drives, key switches, mice with balls, aging capacitors, batteries, little plastic bits inside the keyboard that you didn't even realise were there until they crumbled into dust - they all go bad in the long run, and the repair always eats up at least a bit of time. (Even assuming it's actually repairable! Battery damage can be literally unfixable. Parts supply generally can be an issue. Mouldy floppy disks are time-consuming to rescue, and can damage the drives as you attempt it. Those little plastic keyboard bits are theoretically 3d printable, but you'll need to figure out what shape they were originally and how to glue them into place. And so on.)

The long-term prognosis for modern computers is uncertain too - but the nice thing about them is that you can always just buy another one. Turns out they're always making more of them!

relium•56m ago
His aunt obviously had good taste. -Eric "The Grouch" Shapiro

Nitro: A tiny but flexible init system and process supervisor

https://git.vuxu.org/nitro/about/
45•todsacerdoti•1h ago•7 comments

The First Media over QUIC CDN: Cloudflare

https://moq.dev/blog/first-cdn/
60•kixelated•2h ago•41 comments

FFmpeg 8.0

https://ffmpeg.org/index.html#pr8.0
560•gyan•5h ago•146 comments

Should the web platform adopt XSLT 3.0?

https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11578
27•protomolecool•3h ago•10 comments

Scientists just found a protein that reverses brain aging

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/08/250820000808.htm
91•stevenjgarner•2h ago•42 comments

Sprinkling self-doubt on ChatGPT

https://justin.searls.co/posts/sprinkling-self-doubt-on-chatgpt/
102•ingve•3h ago•56 comments

Launch HN: BlankBio (YC S25) - Making RNA Programmable

25•antichronology•4h ago•12 comments

Show HN: Clyp – Clipboard Manager for Linux

https://github.com/murat-cileli/clyp
49•timeoperator•4h ago•29 comments

Io_uring, kTLS and Rust for zero syscall HTTPS server

https://blog.habets.se/2025/04/io-uring-ktls-and-rust-for-zero-syscall-https-server.html
432•guntars•17h ago•129 comments

LabPlot: Free, open source and cross-platform Data Visualization and Analysis

https://labplot.org/
169•turrini•11h ago•31 comments

Show HN: Pinch – macOS voice translation for real-time conversations

https://www.startpinch.com/
42•christiansafka•2d ago•14 comments

The issue of anti-cheat on Linux

https://tulach.cc/the-issue-of-anti-cheat-on-linux/
39•todsacerdoti•19h ago•60 comments

Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/22/waymo-permit-new-york-city-nyc-rides.html
387•achristmascarl•3h ago•358 comments

DeepSeek-v3.1

https://api-docs.deepseek.com/news/news250821
729•wertyk•1d ago•252 comments

Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

https://giuliomagnifico.blog/post/2025-08-18-leaving-gmail/
56•giuliomagnifico•3h ago•82 comments

DeepSeek v3.1 is not having a moment

https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2025/08/22/deepseek-v3-1-is-not-having-a-moment/
8•speckx•4h ago•0 comments

Does MHz Still Matter?

https://www.ubicloud.com/blog/does-mhz-still-matter
52•furkansahin•6h ago•34 comments

Harper Evolves

https://elijahpotter.dev/articles/harper_evolves
21•chilipepperhott•1h ago•4 comments

Closing the Nix Gap: From Environments to Packaged Applications for Rust

https://devenv.sh/blog/2025/08/22/closing-the-nix-gap-from-environments-to-packaged-applications-for-rust/
27•domenkozar•4h ago•4 comments

Ejabberd 25.08 / ProcessOne – Erlang Jabber/XMPP/Matrix Server – Communication

https://www.process-one.net/blog/ejabberd-25-08/
9•neustradamus•39m ago•0 comments

What about using rel="share-url" to expose sharing intents?

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/08/what-about-using-relshare-url-to-expose-sharing-intents/
69•edent•9h ago•30 comments

Build Log: Macintosh Classic

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/build-log-macintosh-classic
29•speckx•6h ago•8 comments

Launch HN: Inconvo (YC S23) – AI agents for customer-facing analytics

30•ogham•8h ago•19 comments

Making LLMs Cheaper and Better via Performance-Efficiency Optimized Routing

https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12631
87•omarsar•6h ago•18 comments

A guide to Gen AI / LLM vibecoding for expert programmers

https://www.stochasticlifestyle.com/a-guide-to-gen-ai-llm-vibecoding-for-expert-programmers/
105•ChrisRackauckas•6h ago•91 comments

Control shopping cart wheels with your phone (2021)

https://www.begaydocrime.com/
255•mystraline•20h ago•119 comments

Everything is correlated (2014–23)

https://gwern.net/everything
224•gmays•18h ago•103 comments

It’s not wrong that "\u{1F926}\u{1F3FC}\u200D\u2642\uFE0F".length == 7 (2019)

https://hsivonen.fi/string-length/
133•program•14h ago•183 comments

VHS-C: When a lazy idea stumbles towards perfection [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFYWHeBhYbM
169•surprisetalk•4d ago•96 comments

The Minecraft Code (2024) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz2LeXwJOyI
46•zichy•13h ago•61 comments