MARCHintosh is here again!

last year, i produced an EP entirely on Mac OS 9, joined GlobalTalk and started resurrecting a Macintosh IIci.

this year, i have a whole list of goals for the month :) i am not expecting to achieve them all, but lets see what happens! i will be updating this as i go, but for more real-time progress you can follow me on Mastodon.

• recap IIci
  • long overdue. while nothing seems to have leaked, the audio caps are clearly in bad condition as output is extremely quiet and noisy
  • 2026-02-28: done(ish)! i replaced all the surface-mount electrolytics with polymer caps. there are also four axial electrolytics, which i am told are much less likely to fail. but not sure i trust that, so i may come back to swap them too
  • it seems a trace for the right audio channel broke during the operation, so i soldered in a bodge wire and now have beautiful stereo sound
• recap PowerBook 160
  • the display is in very bad shape
• get IIci on the network
  • 2026-03-03: done! i was originally going to use an Asante ethernet card for this, but i found out that AppleTalk over wi-fi, despite being poorly supported by many routers, actually works fine on OpenWRT (which i have). the Asante card, on the other hand, is said to have problems connecting to gigabit ethernet switches. so i decided to try the BlueSCSI's WiFi DaynaPORT first, and this works great!
• get PowerBook 160 on wifi
• connect to IRC from IIci / PowerBook 160 (with some help from stunnel)
  • 2026-03-03: done (IIci)! it was the first thing i tried after getting networking up, and i am pleased to report a computer from 1989 has no problem chatting with contemporary ones :)
• access my Netatalk file share from IIci / PowerBook 160
  • 2026-03-04: done (IIci)! i already had Netatalk working with my OS9 machines, but to successfully log in from System 7, i had to additionally set up the uams_randnum.so authentication module and create an afppasswd file.
• bring GlobalTalk puluzone back up
  • i had to take it down when we moved last year
  • 2026-03-01: done!
• make something with Music Mouse
• develop music livecoding language for 68k Macs to the point where i can play a melody and/or beat
• make some progress on OpenGL demo for OS 9
• solder new switches into my two ADB mice
  • 2026-02-28: done! i used Kailh GM 4.0 Red switches with 70±10gf operation force, and they feel great
• install Radeon 9000 into G4 Digital Audio
  • this project has grown to slightly ridiculous proportions which you can read more about on Mastodon. currently blocked on the following tasks:
  • solder 128KB ROM chip onto the GPU
    • waiting for chips to arrive
  • flash Mac ROM with atiflash on DOS
    • waiting for secondary PCI GPU to arrive