Hello and welcome to our Mac OS news roundup #2. Christmas isn’t too far off and we’re all looking forward to the holidays, aren’t we? I’m especially curious about the new Mac OS related projects that are going to surface!
SCSI2Ethernet board
This is one exciting news! If you’re among the hordes lurking around ebay to find an affordable ethernet card for your Mac SE, this will get you excited too. Apparently Ronan Gaillard works on a SCSI2Ethernet board that could be the ultimate solution to all your retro Mac networking dreams. I’m looking forward to this project and hope we’ll see a commercially available version soon!
URL: https://ronangaillard.github.io
Jordan Mechner Book
If your Mac gaming experience was like mine – running Prince of Persia on a Macintosh LC, this might be interesting for you. Its programmer Jordan Mechner published a book that really reads like a diary about his days as a game developer for Katateka (Apple II) and Prince of Persia (1 & 2). The hard cover book makes a nice gift with many illustrations (albeit only in black & white).
Another new Mac OS game
In other news, when we talked about a new game release in our our news roundup #1 we had no idea we would soon again cheer another release. Tristam Island is a multi-platform Interactive Fiction game about a crashed plane and survival on an unknown island.
It’s released for a gazillion of systems and among them our beloved Mac OS as well. Price is 3.99$, a demo is available. Unfortunately, the game’s website is on itch.io, which only works on modern devices. Why no simple HTML download page?
URL: https://hlabrande.itch.io/tristam-island
Mac OS Cheat Emporium looking for help
The Cheat Emporium is looking for Mac OS gamers willing to help writing walkthroughs and hints for pre-OSX games in an effort to build the ultimate Mac OS cheats source. If you’re into retro Mac gaming, why not combine your passion and actually create something that’ll help others? Read more here. (Classilla compatible)
A modern CMS usable with OS9
So why don’t you use the holidays to set up a website on your old Power Mac? You could use SimpleCMS for your content management needs. The most recent build 3.3.16 still spares us today’s JavaScript overkill, thus remaining Classilla-compatible. So is their website. Yes – you can download – setup – and manage a whole CMS from your good ol’ Mac OS machine. I just tried! Just make sure to uncheck the (JavaScript-heavy) HTML-Editor in the settings.
URL: http://get-simple.info/ (Classilla compatible)
The rumor mill
Oh, you miss those rumors reported by LEM’s own Anne Onymous, do you? Good ‘ol Low End Mac rumor spreader! Well, how about these ones directly from Anne’s mouth: The long being on hiatus System 7 Today is supposedly making a comeback soon. Despite the 10 years in a vegetative state, it still is a respectable source for general info on System 7. Let’s cross fingers rumors are true!
What, you want more? Well, another rumor is that a talented developer is working on a new IRC-client for Mac OS. Wait, yes – we have plenty of them already. BUT – this one would not only be resource efficient and compatible enough to run from old 68k up to OS9 machines, it’d also support stuff like an IRC 2 Facebook bridge. Which would allow you to keep chatting with your Facebook friends while you’re on your SE/30. But, like I said, these are just rumors … :-)
Hope you all have a very nice Christmas and happy holidays and see you next year for the Mac OS news roundup #3!
