Friday, May 11, 2012

Plenty of space left

No further progress on the Lisa front (it's turning out to be pretty hard to create a 400k floppy, but also I'm suspecting that the Lisa's disk drive itself needs a bit of troubleshooting too). So, here's the current spatial arrangement in my office.

Office early may 2012 a labeled

I think I will rotate the older Apple IIs left so that the platinum is more accessible and the Bell & Howell is on the edge leaving the backpack actually visible. The Monitor /// and stand fit better with a pre-platinum //e than they do with this ][+, and I might prefer to set that ][+ up with one of the //c monitors to leave the plexiglass cover a bit more open and visible. I'm pretty dubious that there's going to be a place for the older //e upstairs, though, so maybe the Monitor /// will eventually move back downstairs, even though I like the look of it. Anyway.

Office early may 2012 b labeled

There are also a couple of iMac G3s and an Apple //c on the floor at the moment. I'm trying to spread the machines sensibly across this space and the lab space downstairs (though prioritizing the upstairs space for the more unique things), but I still have a great many machines to place. Something like six iMac G3s, three //cs, an Epson QX-10, and about six towers of varying types, three NuBus Macs (one pizza box, two beige boxes), and four Apple II-factor machines. Hmm.

I will need to start looking at KVM solutions for the Macs at least, maybe some of the Apples. I still have four composite monitors (one color, two amber, one green) left to distribute among the Apples, but that's not nearly enough to serve them all if I get them all running. It's also near-certain that, although I want to ensure that all of the machines are actually working, several that are duplicates with be mothballed on a shelf (or even possibly passed on), and I'm seriously considering gutting at least one of the G4 towers and turning it into an Apple //e, since I have something like three spare //e motherboards.

I do intend to try to give the various machines their own specialty, their own job to do, which will partly be accomplished by how the expansion cards are distributed. It's funny/strange how much of this phase of the project has been involved in just cleaning up and troubleshooting the machines to make them bootable, with almost no time devoted to actually making use of them. That phase is coming, though. I don't have much left on my list of things I'd want to acquire, so for the most part once the machines that I already have work, I can turn my attention to software and usage. Oh, and finishing up the imaging of my floppies, which, after all, is how all of this lunacy got started in the first place.

By the way, in case you were worried that I haven't left any actual work space on my desk, there is a third arm, which is to be left clear (for my laptop and paper work, and so I can actually see students that I'm meeting with).

Office early may 2012 c

My goal is for this in the end to not look ridiculous. I'm only partially optimistic.

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