I made a few Mastodon posts about it already, but I figured I might as
well phlog about it too! I recently got my Macintosh SE online! :D

I've had this Macintosh SE since all the way back in May of 2012, back
when I was just finishing seventh grade. I was super interested in
vintage Macs and all kinds of vintage computers back in middle school,
and I remember wanting and wanting one and constantly looking on eBay
for them until at one point my Mom finally let me get this one. It was
$159.99 USD and came with the machine itself, an Apple HD20 20mb hard
drive, an Anchor 2400e modem, the keyboard and mouse, and all the
cables. Back at the time, I didn't know anything about transferring
files over serial or dialup BBSes or anything else, so I really had no
way of getting files onto it or off of it, but I played with it every so
often and just enjoyed browsing through the stuff on the hard drive or
writing up a WordPerfect document or trying out some random Mac floppy I
had bought. At some point I became aware of Big Mess O' Wires' mac
floppy emu (I think either right before or right after it was first
released), but I couldn't afford it, and I didn't want it to be my sole
present for my birthday or Christmas, so I never bothered asking lol.
Instead my Mac's basically just sat and kept time for roughly eight
years.

Based on some files and registrations I found on the hard drive, it
appears the Macintosh was originally in use at the National Institute of
Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD (specifically, NIMH, the National Institute
of Mental Health), and was connected to a DEC VAX system that they had
there serving files, e-mail, and more. The hard drive came loaded down
with VersaTerm, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Wordperfect,
ThinkPascal, Image 1.29p (an image processing program/slide viewer that
was internally developed at NIMH it seems), Microsoft Mail, SAM
Intercept (an antivirus!), Superclock, and Afterdark, all running under
Mac OS 6.0.5. There was also some hypercard stack with a random mix of
NIH employees' names and phone numbers, and a stimulus response test
program written in ThinkPascal (which doesn't work since I don't have
the appropriate file with patient data -- I might edit the program at
some point to see exactly what it does). There were also a bunch of
sounds added to the System file (which I sadly lost, but managed to
recover some), and in combination with SuperClock, my Mac says "I'm
sorry, Dave; I'm afraid I can't do that" every hour, which I love.

Thankfully, it appears (at least, without having opened the Mac), that
the clock battery was replaced before I received it, as it still works
even after months upon months of being unplugged. I'm happy that the
hard drive still works too (and hope that I don't jinx it with this
phlog eheh).

Anyway, fast forward on to this past month, I asked my mom to get my a
Mac Floppy Emu for my birthday. She wasn't able to afford it, which I
figured might happen, but she gave me what she could and I paid for the
rest. Since I was finally getting a floppy emulator, I decided to pack
up my Mac and bring it over here to my house and set it up here so I
could mess with it. In waiting for the floppy emu, I decided to mess
around a bit, and it wasn't long before I realized that I very well
*could* transfer files to the Mac using VersaTerm. BUT, the version of
VersaTerm that was on here didn't do binary transfers over Xmodem, only
MacBinary transfers (which aren't the same thing). Turns out, though,
you can use SheepShaver with an actual serial port, so using my Windows
computer emulating Mac OS 9 and the modem port over a USB->Serial
adapter, I managed to for the FIRST time transfer a file over to the
Mac. In eight long years. It was like a *miracle* -- one that, if I had
just known how to do it when I was younger, could have been done all
along. (And could have been done BEFORE I accidentally blew up that
Anchor modem with a bad power supply... eheh... oh well. I have a Hayes
2400 baud Smartmodem that works).

After painstakingly going back and forth with xmodem transfers at a
blazing 19,200 baud, I finally decided that that wasn't enough and that
I was going to *try* and get the 3COM EtherLink/SE card that's installed
in this thing working. This is an *old* ethernet card, and honestly I
assumed it simply wouldn't work with anything I had. It doesn't have a
now-standard RJ45 jack for Ethernet; instead, it has a BNC (coax)
connector and an AUI (DB15) connector. I had bought an adapter for it
YEARS ago on a whim to convert RJ45 ethernet to DB15 AUI, but I never
got it working, so I just figured either the adapter was dead or the
machine just didn't know what to do with it. Either way, I gave up. (In
retrospect, it probably actually *did* work, but I didn't have any
TCP/IP-capable software on the Mac to actually test it out. Who knows).

After meddling around a bit more and having issues where I was unable to
switch over to the Etherlink adapter for AppleTalk, I finally figured
maybe the drivers just weren't installed right or something else and
decided I'd take and try to get it working. I had a few Mac OS 6.0.8
install disks that I got at some point from somewhere (neither of which
I remember -- probably eBay?), so I attempted to upgrade to Mac OS
6.0.8. WELL, that broke my installation completely and I couldn't boot
from the hard drive, so I decided to just move the old system folder out
of the way and start fresh. (To my chagrin, the system sounds are stored
in the system file, which I deleted to disable (unbless) the old System
Folder... fair warning to anyone out there with old Macs and lotsa
sounds). I got System 6.0.8 up and running, but of course with the
caveat that I did not have drivers for the 3COM card and did not trust
the ones from the original system folder to work. So, I got to work
digging on the web trying to find the things with absolutely zero luck
except for a dead link from 2004 (that also was not stored on the
internet archive). I even dug through the AppleFritter BBS through
directory upon directory of classic Mac software and drivers to no luck
(which I had to do on my Powerbook, as it was with some weird but very
cool and very 90s client they used). After some more digging and
filename searching, I *finally* found a zip file with a DiskCopy image
of the drivers on some obscure, relocated website for Mac Drivers. I
transferred it over, wrote it out to a disk, and managed to get it
installed. I then also had to install MacTCP, as apparently TCP/IP is
not a given with Mac OS 6 (heh). I configured MacTCP with a static IP
address and AppleTalk with my Ethertalk card and started up my Mac.

At the same time, I had found a program (actually, pre-configured VM of
programs) called A2SERVER, which is designed to host an
AppleTalk/AppleShare network either from a machine with VirtualBox or
directly off of a Raspberry Pi. It's supposed to work right out of the
box and is primarily geared at getting files onto an Apple II system
(but should work for Macs as well), so I figured I'd try it.

The Mac came on, and I opened up the chooser and turned on AppleTalk. I
clicked on AppleShare and much to my surprise and outright JOY the
server A2SERVER POPPED UP and I YELLED out of absolute happiness. Holy
COW I was amazed and literally as soon as I clicked on it and pressed
okay the file servers showed up on my Mac OS 6 desktop. I was in AWE. No
more slow xmodem transfers AND AppleTalk was working!! I finally was
able to get a telnet client over to test TCP/IP and that was working
too! I was just SO happy I had it online and everything worked. It was
like magic.

After several hours of messing with stuff, I got all my extensions set
back up that I wanted (thankfully being RID of that awful SAM antivirus)
and even got some of my sounds back. I'm actually typing this phlog
using NSCA Telnet right now (although, I have to go through the computer
club server first, as for whatever reason SDF's login doesn't like NSCA
telnet and I can't get past the password prompt). And now I have a fully
set up Mac! Once my floppy disk emu gets here I am going to try running
Mac OS 7 off of it and seeing if I can connect to the broader web! Or at
least, what's still compatible ;) (I know that my own websites aren't
because of https, but oh well lol)

Also! I had a bit of a virus fiasco, since either SAM Intercept was
never doing its job or my Sheepshaver VM was already infected! I ended
up getting nVIR.A on this Mac, my Powerbook G3, and my Sheepshaver VM,
and actually found out about it because Windows Defender (of all things)
actually can search inside stuffit files and found it on the Image 1.29p
program that I mentioned before. After a few hours and various
antiviruses that I hate (ahem, Norton), I finally managed to get
everything disinfected, but it was pretty cool to just see a random
virus in the wild! nVIR.A is pretty benign, but still annoying, so it
was definitely my desire to get rid of it (after bottling it in that
stuffit file eheh).

Anyway, that's all for now! If you're into classic Macs and enjoyed
this, shoot me an e-mail at [email protected] or [email protected]!
I'd love to hear from you :p

Byeee~! (For now!)