Re: I've just been given a Mac SE...

[at217@chebucto.ns.ca (Michael Hackett)]

Adrian Whichello (adrianw@cassius.ee.usyd.edu.au) wrote:

> I've just been given a Mac SE [...]
> It has 1Meg of ram, a 20Mbyte internal hard disk and an 800K floppy drive
> Can I run, say, PPP on the mac [...] ?

Yes, and it won't cost you too much (although I'm not aware of a
totally free solution, unless your ISP gives you MacTCP). You will
probably need to bump up the memory to at least 2.5MB (two 1MB SIMMs,
replacing two of the 256K SIMMs already in place), but for the price,
you might as well get 4MB and be done with it. You'll also need to
clip a resistor near the memory sockets (I can't tell you off-hand
which one, but I can get the info if you need it), unless you have
one of the machines with jumpers instead of resistors (in which case
you just pop off the jumper, of course).

Get yourself Mac System 7.0.1 (the last free version) from Apple's FTP
site, and the 7.0.1 Tuner (stability patches -- very important!),
unless you already have something more recent or are will to pay for
an old copy of 7.1 or 7.5. (There should be some cheap used 7.5 CDs
floating around out there now that 7.6 has been out for a while.)
Oh, of course you'll need something like DiskCopy (which should also 
be on the site) or ShrinkWrap to make disks from the disk images.
(Be sure to get the 800K versions of the disk images!)

Once you've got that installed and running, you'll need MacTCP. It
comes with 7.5, but had to be purchased separately before that (and
of course is no longer sold). The best way to get it is to pick up
an older copy of Adam Engst's _Internet Starters Kit_ for Mac. The
first or second edition is probably best as it will have the older
versions of the software that will probably run better on the SE.

The ISK will include a SLIP and/or PPP client, and your ISP may
provide one for you, but you may want to download the latest FreePPP
official release (2.5v3) off the Internet just to be sure you're
getting the most reliable client. I think it will work on the SE,
but in case I'm wrong, they still have v1.0.5 on the FreePPP site
(oh, that's www.rockstar.com), the previous version.

Also, just released is a port of Lynx to the Mac that runs over
PPP. As you might expect, it uses a lot less memory than Mosaic
or Netscape, and might be more suitable for use with the SE (since
you have no color anyway, having the graphics makes little
difference).

Hope that helps some. Let me know if I can help further.

-- Michael