Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
I know I have enough Wing Commander projects to last ten lifetimes, but the recent news about Steve Jobs inspired me to finally get to work on something I've been meaning to do for myself for many years: build the ideal old Macintosh for playing Wing Commander. My aim is to go from some old surplus to a kickass machine for Super Wing Commander, Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV, tracking down all the cool extras they support in the process. I thought I'd start a thread so folks who are interested can follow my progress... and we can use it as a reference for anyone else wanting to do this.
First I should say that I have absolutely NO idea how old Macs work. As I mentioned in the other thread, I grew up with an Apple ][... but irony of ironies my father turned the skills he learned on that early Apple into a job for IBM and we never owned a Mac. I have a Macbook as my regular notebook and I use a Mini as my HTPC today... but beyond the occasional encounter in a middle school library, I've never touched anything before OSX. So this will be an adventure! Sort of.
(... and it goes without saying that I could use some helps from folks here who *didn't* skip the Macintosh...)
So, here's where we start. I picked this up five or six years back at a surplus sale for a few bucks. I suspect it belonged to a university:
It's a Power Mac 7300/180, which would have been top of the line a short time after Wing Commander IV came out. I'm not necessarily married to her, but that seems like a reasonable place to start. I also have no idea what the actual condition of the thing is. All I've ever done is listen to see if it boots up, which it does (I hear a startup chime, anyway.) I never picked up a monitor or keyboard/mouse or anything else...
Until yesterday! Amazon has Primed me one of these, which is sitting on my doorstep at home right now: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002J1JAE
That should let me plug a regular monitor in. Like all houses, mine is full of old CRTs so I can use one of those for now. It sounds like you can also get an LCD to work with an old Mac which I will want to do eventually (I don't have much space left, for you see my house is full of old CRTs...)
So, there's our cliffhanger--what will the monitor reveal? Stay tuned to find out.
(I also bought an ADB keyboard/mouse off of eBay, which should show up in a few days.)
If anyone wants to keep track of how much this project costs--and say yell at me when it outgrosses buying an old 3DO--we're at: $20 for the computer, $10 for the DB-15-to-VGA plug and $15 for keyboard/mouse.
Edit: THRILLING UPDATE -- the keyboard and mouse will be here on Tuesday.
First I should say that I have absolutely NO idea how old Macs work. As I mentioned in the other thread, I grew up with an Apple ][... but irony of ironies my father turned the skills he learned on that early Apple into a job for IBM and we never owned a Mac. I have a Macbook as my regular notebook and I use a Mini as my HTPC today... but beyond the occasional encounter in a middle school library, I've never touched anything before OSX. So this will be an adventure! Sort of.
(... and it goes without saying that I could use some helps from folks here who *didn't* skip the Macintosh...)
So, here's where we start. I picked this up five or six years back at a surplus sale for a few bucks. I suspect it belonged to a university:

It's a Power Mac 7300/180, which would have been top of the line a short time after Wing Commander IV came out. I'm not necessarily married to her, but that seems like a reasonable place to start. I also have no idea what the actual condition of the thing is. All I've ever done is listen to see if it boots up, which it does (I hear a startup chime, anyway.) I never picked up a monitor or keyboard/mouse or anything else...
Until yesterday! Amazon has Primed me one of these, which is sitting on my doorstep at home right now: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002J1JAE
That should let me plug a regular monitor in. Like all houses, mine is full of old CRTs so I can use one of those for now. It sounds like you can also get an LCD to work with an old Mac which I will want to do eventually (I don't have much space left, for you see my house is full of old CRTs...)
So, there's our cliffhanger--what will the monitor reveal? Stay tuned to find out.
(I also bought an ADB keyboard/mouse off of eBay, which should show up in a few days.)
If anyone wants to keep track of how much this project costs--and say yell at me when it outgrosses buying an old 3DO--we're at: $20 for the computer, $10 for the DB-15-to-VGA plug and $15 for keyboard/mouse.
Edit: THRILLING UPDATE -- the keyboard and mouse will be here on Tuesday.
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