Steven Downum
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devilaether.bsky.social
Steven Downum
@devilaether.bsky.social
An old firmware engineer who occasionally plays bass and cello. May sometimes commit various synths.
I finished my Mac mini G4 updates at the last minute for #MARCHintosh:

1. Replace the original Combo Drive with old new stock
2. Replace the original IDE drive with an SSD andi nstall the Tiger and Classic Environment from the restore discs.
3. Update the RAM to 1 GB
4. Replace the RTC battery
April 1, 2025 at 2:19 AM
The replacement Combo Drive and RAM upgrade for my Mac mini G4 will make it in time for #MARCHintosh, however the new SSDs and IDE enclosures I ordered for it and my TiBook did. After finally finding a Firewire cable, I'm restoring the mini to the new SSD with the DVD drive of the PowerBook in TDM.
March 29, 2025 at 4:50 AM
I have been looking for old dev and Reason projects only to learn my Mac mini G4 no can boot from the HD. Or consistently read discs in the SuperDrive. So, my unplanned last-minute #MARCHintosh project is to replace all of those and reinstall with the recovery CDs.
March 25, 2025 at 12:28 AM
Added a new old stock Apple Color Plus 14’ and a replacement Macman MIDI interface to the Performa 475. Then did some sequencing with Cubase into a Circuit Tracks. #MARCHintosh
March 21, 2025 at 9:05 PM
I planned to start #MARCHintosh with a little MIDI sequencing of some synth gear with my newly-revived Performa. However, I'm still waiting on some serial-based MIDI interfaces to arrive to replace my original interfaces, long since lost. Soon!
March 2, 2025 at 3:41 AM
Poor weather preempted my existing weekend plans, so I took the opportunity to step out of the world of firmware and embedded development and revisit a very old friend - the world of NeXTSTEP/Cocoa/Objective-C/AppKit development. In more exact terms, to begin the move from Objective-C to Swift.
February 23, 2025 at 2:19 AM
I finally found time to revive a Macintosh Performa 475 I found while thrifting about a decade ago. After giving it some quality of life updates (BlueSCSI, RAM upgrade, CPU upgrade), I used Basilisk II to create a System 7.5.3 image, filled it with mid-90's software and booted the Performa with it.
February 20, 2025 at 10:53 PM
Greetings!
November 25, 2024 at 8:27 PM