Steven Downum
@devilaether.bsky.social
An old firmware engineer who occasionally plays bass and cello. May sometimes commit various synths.
I also managed to save the data on the original IDE drive that has Leopard installed. Lastly, I got all of my 68k and PPC Macs on wireless in some form and fashion with an AirPort Express station, AirPort cards, ethernet to wifi adapters and BlueSCSI.
April 1, 2025 at 2:21 AM
I also managed to save the data on the original IDE drive that has Leopard installed. Lastly, I got all of my 68k and PPC Macs on wireless in some form and fashion with an AirPort Express station, AirPort cards, ethernet to wifi adapters and BlueSCSI.
Meanwhile, I managed to get the original IDE from the Mini G4 readable again after much coaxing with fsck in single-user mode. The drive is still in bad shape and painfully slow, but I found my files. I'm attempting to image it, but I have doubts how well it will work out.
March 29, 2025 at 5:03 AM
Meanwhile, I managed to get the original IDE from the Mini G4 readable again after much coaxing with fsck in single-user mode. The drive is still in bad shape and painfully slow, but I found my files. I'm attempting to image it, but I have doubts how well it will work out.
I don't think I ever opened the boxes of discs included in the box when I brought the mini G4 home in 2005. They have been waiting for 20 years in the attic to be helpful. Today is their day.
March 25, 2025 at 12:31 AM
I don't think I ever opened the boxes of discs included in the box when I brought the mini G4 home in 2005. They have been waiting for 20 years in the attic to be helpful. Today is their day.
I just set up one of those this weekend. Now replacing the VESA mount I used for my Mini M1 to something that fits the new gear.
February 24, 2025 at 8:22 PM
I just set up one of those this weekend. Now replacing the VESA mount I used for my Mini M1 to something that fits the new gear.
The speed offered by IB and Objective-C in the past had a great workflow and ergonomic feel. That is completely gone with the current Xcode tooling. The declarative nature of SwiftUI is appears to be a step to reclaim that with a changing dev environment. I hope the other tools will evolve as well.
February 23, 2025 at 2:46 AM
The speed offered by IB and Objective-C in the past had a great workflow and ergonomic feel. That is completely gone with the current Xcode tooling. The declarative nature of SwiftUI is appears to be a step to reclaim that with a changing dev environment. I hope the other tools will evolve as well.
The UI options for macOS and iOS have become more expressive than what was available during the day of NeXTSTEP and OS X, The IB paradigm doesn't seem to fit as well now compared what it did deliver back then. Unfortunately, Xcode may suffer from the same mismatch today.
February 23, 2025 at 2:40 AM
The UI options for macOS and iOS have become more expressive than what was available during the day of NeXTSTEP and OS X, The IB paradigm doesn't seem to fit as well now compared what it did deliver back then. Unfortunately, Xcode may suffer from the same mismatch today.
However, it doesn't seem like XCode has aged well in the last couple of decades and using an IDE has not been a part of my daily workflow for about the same amount of time. A lot of time today was spent learning every possible way to do things to avoid it with a Neovide/xcodebuilder/lldb workflow.
February 23, 2025 at 2:27 AM
However, it doesn't seem like XCode has aged well in the last couple of decades and using an IDE has not been a part of my daily workflow for about the same amount of time. A lot of time today was spent learning every possible way to do things to avoid it with a Neovide/xcodebuilder/lldb workflow.
Swift itself has been less of a learning curve than moving from the Interface Builder paradigm to SwiftUI. XIB and Objective-C are still there to use, but starting something new with it and potentially sharing it seems shortsighted and maybe even inconsiderate.
February 23, 2025 at 2:24 AM
Swift itself has been less of a learning curve than moving from the Interface Builder paradigm to SwiftUI. XIB and Objective-C are still there to use, but starting something new with it and potentially sharing it seems shortsighted and maybe even inconsiderate.
I have a Sun workstation from my SPARC development days back in antiquity that needs a similar revival treatment as the Performa. I've been saying this for much longer than a decade. The state of personal Solaris nostalgia may be the prime factor here for the glacial pace towards that goal.
February 20, 2025 at 11:13 PM
I have a Sun workstation from my SPARC development days back in antiquity that needs a similar revival treatment as the Performa. I've been saying this for much longer than a decade. The state of personal Solaris nostalgia may be the prime factor here for the glacial pace towards that goal.
The system is now full of all of the games plus internet and software dev tools of the time that I can remember using. Next step is to find an old MIDI interface to see if I can remember how to use an ancient version of Pro Tools.
February 20, 2025 at 10:55 PM
The system is now full of all of the games plus internet and software dev tools of the time that I can remember using. Next step is to find an old MIDI interface to see if I can remember how to use an ancient version of Pro Tools.