[brachiator]

I recently acquired a Macintosh Classic II (someone left it in the lobby of my apartment...).

Great, I haven't even laid eyes on one of these for 10 years or so.

What can I do with this thing? No mouse was with it, so I don't know what it has on board until I can go to the shop tomorrow, but I know it has MS Word.

Can I use it as a server, web, mail, a print server, anything? Can I connect it to my Lombard somehow? Will it print through my epson 740?

Or is it just a cool objet d' technologie?

[bradoesch]

Both the Mac Classic II and the Epson Stylus 740 have a serial port, so printing to that printer *should* work. You'll most likely need to update the system software on it though. It can handle 7.6.1. I'm not sure if the Epson driver is supported or not.

I've used old Macs mostly as word processors. If you're creative, you could finds lots of uses for it.

As for hooking it up to your Lombard, the Classic II's only networking options are it's serial ports and floppy disks. It has a 1.44 MB "SuperDrive". The way I access older Macs is by stuffing an Ethernet card into them. But with the Classic II, there are no expansion cababilities. If you have a Mac with serial ports (and that connects to your Lombard), you can hook them together and then transfer the files from the Lombard connectable Mac to your Lombard.

Brad

[Justin W. Williams]

Didn't Macworld turn one of those into a jukebox?

[bluedog]

A classicII isn't powerful enough to play MP3s. If anyone set it up as a jukebox, perhaps it was simply controlling another machine as a player.

Anyhow, you *could* purchase an appletalk<->ethernet bridge, but that's pricey (around $100) for such a simple task as sharing files. If you're really interested in it, thats the best way to network them.

I set my MacSEs (2 of em) as old 'design workstations' to show people how early computer designers used them in production of printed materials. They are networked with their own appletalk (and can share to ethernet macs I have via a bridge. But their OS is older and can't connect themselves although the newer machines can connect to these old ones!

The two are also set up with fun old network games (for just a little fun and showing how networking was so much better on macs back then). Remember Armor Alley, Spaceward Ho!, Strategic Conquest or Bolo. Ah, great games...

It makes a fun little recipe box in your kitchen if you have room and set it up right. You could do it without a keyboard if you set it up and then simply use the mouse to browse what you've got.

Have fun!

[ 04-25-2002: Message edited by: bluedog ]

[brachiator]

thanks, everyone. I guess that I have a nice little conversation piece for the apartment, but not much else. Oh, well, I can't argue with the price...

[residentEvil]

i turned a dozen plus' into a virtual fish tank...wrote it all in hypercard...don't need anything on the mac cept power. create the hypercard stack on another machine (or that one if you get the mouse/keyboard) and put it on a floppy with system of your choice that fits on a floppy (6.8 is what i use, ran hypercard real well). replace the finder with some fancy resedit work so that it starts hypercard instead.
turn on the machine and it boots into your fish tank...nothing else to do.