5 ms·

Programming environments were available of course, but none were built-in. The fact that the external floppy doesn't work is the main problem here. I think a

by lisper 2y ago

Programming environments were available of course, but none were built-in. The fact that the external floppy doesn't work is the main problem here. I think a better solution would have been to use the serial port rather than the modem port to send a fax. Serial-to-USB adapters are easy to find.

romwell 2y ago
>I think a better solution would have been to use the serial port rather than the modem port to send a fax. Serial-to-USB adapters are easy to find. With the file sizes involved, one could take a picture of the screen showing the hex dump with a smartphone, and then OCR that. No need to even bother with external hardware.
- remram 2y ago
  Given that the perfect image from the fax barely worked, a photograph would certainly not do.
  - wruza 2y ago
    Or they’d do with a similar accuracy, since the main factor here is font rendering resolution.
  - romwell 2y ago
    >Given that the perfect image from the fax barely worked, a photograph would certainly not do. Photo resolution is higher than a fax resolution, and one can increase the font size / decrease screen resolution. Plus, they can still apply the same approach they used for fax.
II2II 2y ago
> I think a better solution would have been to use the serial port rather than the modem port to send a fax. Serial-to-USB adapters are easy to find. Two potential problems. I have tried serial transfers on a similar vintage of Mac, and it seems to require a USB/Serial adapter that supports proper RS-232 logic levels. Many (perhaps most) don't. I ended up using the built-in serial port on an older PC. The second issue is that you require software on the Mac side to perform the data transfer. Something like the rather common ClarisWorks would do the job, but the presence of Word and PowerPoint suggests they didn't have ClarisWorks. (Even if it did have ClarisWorks, they would need to know that ClarisWorks includes built-in communications software. It isn't exactly a common component in office suites.) I suppose they could have explored AppleTalk, print drivers, or (depending on the version of MacOS) TCP/IP. Each option is limited though. AppleTalk requires another suitably equipped Mac or a PC with rare hardware and ancient software. (I think Sun systems would work too, but then we are really getting into the weeds.) I'm pretty sure the Mac print drivers rasterize the text, so you would still have to undo that. (Though it would probably transfer the data faster.) I think TCP/IP only shipped with MacOS 7.5 and later, would have required setup on another PC, and would still be convoluted (e.g. downloading FTP software to the Mac, so it could upload to a PC). It's going to be a tricky situation.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Rinzler89 2y ago
>I think a better solution would have been to use the serial port rather than the modem port to send a fax. From what I could Google, that laptop doesn't have a traditional RS-232 serial port but a DIN-8 RS-422 serial port. Still, it's serial, it's standard and very well documented, easy to acquire and easy to hook up. I'd definitely would have used that instead to transfer data, especially since I could find USB to RS-422 port converters online easy and cheap[1]. I'm not sure why the author didn't try this, or maybe he tried but had no app to serialize file transfers? Feels like a missing lead the article doesn't touch on. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Serial-Converter-Adapter-Supports-Windows/dp/B076WVFXN8/ https://www.amazon.com/Serial-Converter-Adapter-Supports-Win...
- NegativeLatency 2y ago
  I think if there was another "bridge" mac it would've been easier (setup LocalTalk over the serial port, could theoretically send the required TCP/IP libraries, to make it easier to go straight to a modern computer). I'd guess that the comment about "but no networking software installed." includes not having something like ZTerm installed already for direct serial communication, and also not having MacTCP or OpenTransport installed on the old mac (not to mention the missing hardware to set that up) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZTerm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZTerm https://lowendmac.com/1998/tcpip-over-localtalk/ https://lowendmac.com/1998/tcpip-over-localtalk/ I have a few old macs that I play with from time to time, and it's certainly possible to network them to modern computers, just becoming increasingly hard with the number of old software and hardware items you have to keep around to do it.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    >I think if there was another "bridge" mac it would've been easier (setup LocalTalk over the serial port But serial communication doesn't require another Mac to receive the data since it's just raw HEX/ASCII bytes over the standard serial protocol. You can pick up the data with an Arduino. Nor does serial mandate any handshake or a master-slave sync to work. You're free to shoot those bytes on the empty wire for all it cares. If someone picks them up good, if not, just as good.

by lisper 2y ago

romwell 2y ago

>I think a better solution would have been to use the serial port rather than the modem port to send a fax. Serial-to-USB adapters are easy to find. With the file sizes involved, one could take a picture of the screen showing the hex dump with a smartphone, and then OCR that. No need to even bother with external hardware.

remram 2y ago
Given that the perfect image from the fax barely worked, a photograph would certainly not do.
- wruza 2y ago
  Or they’d do with a similar accuracy, since the main factor here is font rendering resolution.
- romwell 2y ago
  >Given that the perfect image from the fax barely worked, a photograph would certainly not do. Photo resolution is higher than a fax resolution, and one can increase the font size / decrease screen resolution. Plus, they can still apply the same approach they used for fax.

II2II 2y ago

> I think a better solution would have been to use the serial port rather than the modem port to send a fax. Serial-to-USB adapters are easy to find. Two potential problems. I have tried serial transfers on a similar vintage of Mac, and it seems to require a USB/Serial adapter that supports proper RS-232 logic levels. Many (perhaps most) don't. I ended up using the built-in serial port on an older PC. The second issue is that you require software on the Mac side to perform the data transfer. Something like the rather common ClarisWorks would do the job, but the presence of Word and PowerPoint suggests they didn't have ClarisWorks. (Even if it did have ClarisWorks, they would need to know that ClarisWorks includes built-in communications software. It isn't exactly a common component in office suites.) I suppose they could have explored AppleTalk, print drivers, or (depending on the version of MacOS) TCP/IP. Each option is limited though. AppleTalk requires another suitably equipped Mac or a PC with rare hardware and ancient software. (I think Sun systems would work too, but then we are really getting into the weeds.) I'm pretty sure the Mac print drivers rasterize the text, so you would still have to undo that. (Though it would probably transfer the data faster.) I think TCP/IP only shipped with MacOS 7.5 and later, would have required setup on another PC, and would still be convoluted (e.g. downloading FTP software to the Mac, so it could upload to a PC). It's going to be a tricky situation.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Rinzler89 2y ago

>I think a better solution would have been to use the serial port rather than the modem port to send a fax. From what I could Google, that laptop doesn't have a traditional RS-232 serial port but a DIN-8 RS-422 serial port. Still, it's serial, it's standard and very well documented, easy to acquire and easy to hook up. I'd definitely would have used that instead to transfer data, especially since I could find USB to RS-422 port converters online easy and cheap[1]. I'm not sure why the author didn't try this, or maybe he tried but had no app to serialize file transfers? Feels like a missing lead the article doesn't touch on. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Serial-Converter-Adapter-Supports-Windows/dp/B076WVFXN8/ https://www.amazon.com/Serial-Converter-Adapter-Supports-Win...

NegativeLatency 2y ago
I think if there was another "bridge" mac it would've been easier (setup LocalTalk over the serial port, could theoretically send the required TCP/IP libraries, to make it easier to go straight to a modern computer). I'd guess that the comment about "but no networking software installed." includes not having something like ZTerm installed already for direct serial communication, and also not having MacTCP or OpenTransport installed on the old mac (not to mention the missing hardware to set that up) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZTerm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZTerm https://lowendmac.com/1998/tcpip-over-localtalk/ https://lowendmac.com/1998/tcpip-over-localtalk/ I have a few old macs that I play with from time to time, and it's certainly possible to network them to modern computers, just becoming increasingly hard with the number of old software and hardware items you have to keep around to do it.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  >I think if there was another "bridge" mac it would've been easier (setup LocalTalk over the serial port But serial communication doesn't require another Mac to receive the data since it's just raw HEX/ASCII bytes over the standard serial protocol. You can pick up the data with an Arduino. Nor does serial mandate any handshake or a master-slave sync to work. You're free to shoot those bytes on the empty wire for all it cares. If someone picks them up good, if not, just as good.