Recently I’d been investigating some retro computing resources; there was a retro computing swapmeet nearby a month or so ago that I went to check out, and (while not retro-computing per se) an amateur radio hamfest I explored. I’d also been reading some books on the development of the personal computer (The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal, iWoz, Shareware Heroes, and The Secret History of Mac Gaming). I’d also discovered Infinite Mac, but ultimately I fished my old iMac DV out of storage as well as an old Titanium PowerBook G4 I had once bought on eBay to see what I could do about updating and upgrading them to run old games that I used to enjoy playing ages ago.

The iMac was one that my family had bought around senior year of high school (it might have been a graduation present? I also got a digital video camera around that time because my sisters and friends and I would make videos of ourselves using our old analog video camera but now we could import and edit our films with iMovie), but I had bought this particular PowerBook model a few years ago because it was the most powerful Mac I could get used that was self-contained that could also boot directly into OS 9. Though the PowerBook was much faster than the iMac – 867 MHz G4 vs 400 MHz G3 – and had a more advanced video card than the iMac, I had more of a soft spot for the iMac being as it had belonged to me and it felt more enjoyable to use; the PowerBook’s battery no longer held a charge, the keyboard was all mushy compared to what I’ve grown used to, the only place for it on my desk meant its screen was further away than the iMac’s screen was in the same footprint, and the fan on the PowerBook would loudly spin up after a few minutes of use.

I had apparently already maxed out the PowerBook with as much RAM it could hold as well as an 240 GB SSD drive split between OS 9 and Mac OS X and had previously also bought an external SSD with both Firewire 800 and USB 3 connections so I could use it with both old and new computers, but I saw the iMac still could use some upgrades and ended up maxing out its RAM to 1 GB and popping in a 120 GB SSD and a new PRAM battery. Despite the iMac being fanless it sure made quite a racket with its spinning hard drive, so once I got it all upgraded I thought it was the perfect thing for my retro computing needs, despite the occasional “bzzt”s and “zzap”s of old capacitors not having power for years and one or two sudden unexplained shutdowns.

I had made notes while reading The Secret History of Mac Gaming of old games I had forgotten about or wanted to try, and just managed to go through my collection of MacAddict cover disc ISOs to save all the game installers as well as other odds-and-ends from its premier issue’s CD through 1 year after OS 9’s “funeral”, but no more than a day after I finished saving what I wanted for easy access I discovered the iMac no longer powers up. Alas. And just days after the original iMac’s 25th anniversary, too! I think my cat Freddie is a likely suspect, as he was Not Thrilled that the iMac had taken up residence in his napping spot on my desk and stared at it for several minutes the other day.

Anyway, now I’ve got my broken, upgraded iMac just sitting around. I’ve already removed the SSD I just recently put in, but otherwise it’s ready for electronic recycling. I had bought a new PRAM battery for my PowerBook as well but turns out I bought the wrong voltage, so that computer will keep forgetting things like the current day and time until I’m able to source a new one. I’m still not thrilled about the fan in the PowerBook, though; I may keep a lookout for an old Power Mac G4 cube and a 15″ Apple Studio Display for my end goal of having a quiet, fanless Mac that runs OS 9 that doesn’t need a giant CRT monitor. Emulation would be an option for some of my needs if only everything that I wanted to do worked in an emulator, but a few of the games that I tried didn’t work properly or at all.

Just using OS 9 again for the first time in a few years made me wish for something like OS 9 but with modern technologies. Give me an operating system with the design of OS 9 and the multithreaded capabilities and other modern affordances of current MacOS. Something about the whole retro experience just felt more fun.