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Buddy, can you spare a mouse for a Mac Plus?

Well, I've tried to make the topic as descriptive as possible. I've got a Mac Plus and need to get an old document from its innards, but I have lost the mouse. Does anyone know where I can find one for sale in the UK, so that I can get my hands on it as soon as possible? Or maybe maybe maybe someone can lend me one for a day?

Thanks very much for your advice and assistance.

Best wishes to all, George

PowerBook 15" Mac OS X (10.4.8) Mac Plus

PowerBook 15", Mac OS X (10.4.8), Mac Plus

Posted on Oct 6, 2006 5:43 AM

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Posted on Oct 6, 2006 8:00 AM

ferzoco,

Change the question and you may get more responses. My brain cells are very rusty on this but I recall setting up my Plus to use the keypad as a subtitute for a mouse. There was a keyboard command to turn that feature on. You may need the mouse to turn on the feature that allows you to not need a mouse.

So, the new question is "Does anyone out there remember the 21 year-old option for using the numeric keypad as a mouse and how to activate that feature?" Second question, does your keyboard have a ten key numeric keypad?

Explore your options and good luck.

Jim
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Oct 6, 2006 8:00 AM in response to ferzoco

ferzoco,

Change the question and you may get more responses. My brain cells are very rusty on this but I recall setting up my Plus to use the keypad as a subtitute for a mouse. There was a keyboard command to turn that feature on. You may need the mouse to turn on the feature that allows you to not need a mouse.

So, the new question is "Does anyone out there remember the 21 year-old option for using the numeric keypad as a mouse and how to activate that feature?" Second question, does your keyboard have a ten key numeric keypad?

Explore your options and good luck.

Jim

Oct 6, 2006 8:06 AM in response to Appaloosa mac man

Jim,

Your answer is extremely thoughtful and helpful. It makes me realize that I ought to have mentioned in my original message that there is one other part of the Mac Plus that has gone AWOL, and that is the keyboard! If I'd had the keyboard, I think I could possibly have figured things out, but that's not the case.

Given that it ought to be easier (?!) to find a mouse that a keyboard for the Mac Plus, I have aksed for the mouse in my plea for help.

But that being said: if any of you are willing to part with a Mac Plus keyboard, by all means please let me know!

All good wishes, and thanks again,
George

Oct 6, 2006 8:59 AM in response to ferzoco

George,

Thanx for a good laugh! The devil is in the details. : )

You are right about a mouse being the easier option. Too bad schools are throwing out all their old stuff. I have saved a shed full of old equipment and it has spilled out into the field. Shipping and handling old stuff is usually more than more than people want to pay for a one time use. Do you have a newer mac and an CD-ROM drive that could be pirated for an external hard drive bay? Pulling the drive out of the Plus might be another option.

Jim

Oct 6, 2006 9:48 AM in response to Appaloosa mac man

Dear Jim

Great to hear back from you.

My Mac Plus is hooked up via SCSI cable to an external hard drive; it is this hard drive that contains the document(s) I desperately need.

It is my understanding that such hard drives are configured to work with a Mac Plus alone; their configuration is such that their contents couldn't be accessed by a more recent Mac.

With that in mind, I confess to being unable to understand what you are suggesting regarding 'a newer mac and an CD-ROM drive that could be pirated for an external hard drive bay'. As I am not very swift in such matters, would you have the time and patience to spell out more carefully what you mean by this, and how I would actually put your suggestion into effect?

All the best, George

Oct 6, 2006 12:39 PM in response to ferzoco

George,

I need to dust off some more brain cells. Of course you have an external hard drive! It is a Plus. The CD-ROM pirating is just one way of creating what you already have. The goal is to have portable devices that will transfer from machine to machine.

Unless you are fortunate/unfortunate enough to have what was called the hockey puck hard drive, it should work with other Macs.

I thought this website ( http://www.vintagemacworld.com/drives.html ) had the 20 meg HDD photo as well. If you have the slow HD 20, your options are limited.

If you post back with the details on your drive, we can determine if your drive will plug into any Mac up to the G3 beige.

Jim

Oct 6, 2006 7:51 PM in response to Appaloosa mac man

Jim-

there is a reference to the HD20 on that site, here:

http://www.vintagemacworld.com/hd20.html

but alas, no pictures.

Based on the torturous Startup sequence described in that article, I don't think George has an HD20.

>"It is my understanding that such hard drives are configured to work with a Mac Plus alone; their configuration is such that their contents couldn't be accessed by a more recent Mac."
The Mac Plus required that you use a special format that put the next-numbered sector staggered every third sector around the disk. If you did not, the Plus was so slow it would miss the next-numbered sector if they were sequentially numbered, and still miss if they were every-other. The drive would have to endure an entire revolution of the disk to read the next sector.

If you missed the data at 3600 RPM = 60 spins/sec, or .016+ seconds, or 16.7 milliseconds additional per sector.

But the point is that that format is compatible and can be read just fine by SCSI-equipped Macs.

Oct 6, 2006 7:55 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanx, Grant.

George, the link Grant graciously generated gives the gospel true guidance to this site:

"http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=4423"

It provides a list of compatible Macs, including one of my all time favorites, the IIci. I concur with Grant in assuming that you have a SCSI drive and not the HD 20 plugged into the floppy port. Either way, there are multiple models that will read your drive and help you out.

Jim

Oct 7, 2006 11:48 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Dear Grant,

This is exciting news! It seems all I need to do now is find a SCSI cable that will connect my external hard drive to a Classic that I have; I don't think the cable I'm using to connect my hard drive to the Mac Plus would fit into the sockets at the back of the Classic, but I'll dig the Classic out of mothballs and see.

All good wishes, George

Oct 7, 2006 12:27 PM in response to ferzoco

You two are very kind, generous and patient -- without you, I'd never have been able to figure out what to do.

When I bought my hard drive, I remember being told that the Mac Plus could only read drives configured differently from drives that were configured for Classics; what I was NOT told was that the Classic could read drives configured for the Mac Plus.

I am going to open a bottle of wine and dig out my floppy disks and copy my documents from the hard drive, then load them onto my PowerBook. Then I am going to back up the Power Book!

Thanks again -- people can be very good to each other, eh? (I'm from Canada...)

George

Oct 7, 2006 2:17 PM in response to ferzoco

Ferzoco
Don't worry, the SCSI-connector is the same 25-pin on both Plus and Classic-but be careful if you use a PM(has got two 25-Pin connectors on back,one SCSI,one video.
Good luck.
IF you like to get more info about SCSI-HD from PLus you may search for "Denis Eddy" here(Plus can't read more modern/faster HD because of the interleave ratio Grant has explained in detail-but the Classic can do the job).

Buddy, can you spare a mouse for a Mac Plus?

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