. | A Rescued Fat MacJonathan WiseI found my first Mac in the garbage. It was a Mac
512k (Fat Mac) and had been the office computer at my
church for about 5 years. It had developed the vertical line
disease (for those of you who don't know old Macs, when they
get too hot, the insides start to melt a little bit, and the
first thing to go is always the screen). The church figured
it wasn't worth fixing, so they were going to throw it out.
I claimed it instead. At the time, I was 12, and the thing sat on my desk for
about six months while I saved up the $50 necessary to get
it repaired -- in the end my parents got it fixed for
me. I learned for about 4 years on that Mac: I learned word
processing (MS Word, MacWrite), spreadsheets (MS Multiplan),
databases (MS File) and even object oriented programming
(HyperCard). I pulled every one of those programs apart with
ResEdit. I loved it. I remember the first time I heard the happy boing and saw
the disk with the flashing question mark. I couldn't figure
it out. I couldn't understand a system where the graphics
were already there. We used 8086s at school, and I knew most
of DOS, but this was completely new to me. What perplexed me
even more how "an old piece of garbage computer" could be so
much more advanced than any PC I'd ever used. I used to sit
in class and imagine what things would look like in FatBits
(MacPaint). I managed to make my Mac run system 6.0.3, got a
hard drive for it, and a printer, and even a scanner. It got
the vertical line disease again from hours of running late
into the night, and this time I let it die. Right now I'm in college learning to program Wintel
machines. I run a loaded 466 MHz Intel Celeron, but I saved
up for a little while and I'm picking up the first Mac I've
owned in 5 years. My First Macintosh- Complete PC nut goes Mac, Fred Forney,
3/29/2000
- The compelling Mac, Sean C. Cunningham,
3/21/2000
- Under my skin, Katherine (BondiBlue2),
3/14/2000
- A rescued Fat Mac, Jonathan Wise,
3/6/2000
- A boy and his Mac, Glenn Dawes,
3/1/2000
- Absolutely essential, Hans
Echterbecker, 2/22/2000
- The long and winding road, Mike Butler,
2/15/2000
- A knowledgeable Mac bigot, Kevin
Thomas, 2/8/2000
- My First Mac index
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