10 items from downtowndougbrown-com
Apple's Macintosh Classic II contained an invalid 68030 instruction in its ROM that should have prevented booting. However, the Motorola MC68030 CPU accidentally prevented a crash by executing this undefined instruction, allowing the computer to successfully start up.
A gooey rubber material used in 1990s Apple-branded SCSI hard drives is deteriorating and causing drive failures. This degradation issue is well-known in the vintage computing community as it affects data preservation efforts.
A long-lost hidden recovery partition from Apple's 1994 software has been discovered on an old 160 MB Conner hard drive. The recovery system was found after rescuing data from a drive with a stuck head.
The author describes fixing the Basilisk II Windows "Black Screen" bug in 2013, referencing similar stories about old software bugs appearing in newer Windows versions like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on Windows 11 24H2.
The author's research into Macintosh Performa 550 computers revealed that large CRT-based vintage Macs are frequently damaged during shipping when purchased on eBay. This confirms suspicions that heavy, fragile vintage computers often get destroyed in transit.
The author describes modifying an HDMI dummy plug's EDID data using a Raspberry Pi to change the monitor it emulates. The dummy plug originally acted as a 4K monitor but needed to be changed to a simpler resolution.
A developer discovered a previously undocumented 27-year-old easter egg in the Power Mac G3 ROM while examining the system's resources using Hex Fiend and ROM analysis tools. The hidden content was found during casual exploration of the vintage computer's firmware.
The author previously rescued a special recovery partition from a dead Macintosh Performa 550 hard drive. This update provides new information about that recovery effort and the preservation of this historical data.
The article details debugging USB boot issues on the original 2008 OMAP3530 BeagleBoard using a sniffer. It describes fixing the omap_loader tool to work with modern PCs by addressing compatibility problems encountered during kernel development.
The author attempted to power on a Macintosh Performa 450 after a year, but it failed to boot. The computer played the startup sound followed by the "Chimes of Death" error tone, then remained with a black screen.