While throwing out old storage boxes this weekend, I discovered my old Power Macintosh 6100, packed up in 1997. To use eBay terminology, it was in vintage condition. It had the mouse, keyboard, VGA monitor adapter, power cord, and a few floppy disks. There was no excuse not to plug it in and see what happened.
So that’s what I did. The chimes played and the smiling Mac appeared on the screen. The clock battery had died, but otherwise it was working like the day I’d last shut it off. My work was all there in Nisus Writer and ClarisWorks formats, patiently waiting 13 years for me to resume. On one of the unlabeled 3.5-inch floppy disks was a series of .DSK files. Those files were images of 5.25-inch Apple ][ diskettes. I downloaded an Apple ][ emulator and was soon running the Applesoft BASIC and 6502 assembly programs I’d written when I got my first computer at age 10.
I have a recurring dream where I’m in a house where I lived long ago. It’s just as if it had remained abandoned since the day I left; it’s dark and filled with cobwebs, but otherwise the furniture is still there. These dreams always have the effect of compressing time. I remember old situations so vividly and freshly that my mind thinks hardly any time has passed. Exploring this old Macintosh and Apple ][ was the same experience, but without the cobwebs, because digital files don’t age. My programs from decades ago ran just as well as they did back then.
The time-compression effect was as strong as the files were perfect. It transported me to the room where my family kept the Apple. I felt the pattern of the carpet and the texture of the walls. I smelled the slightly musty air. I felt the resistance of the door and the momentary change in air pressure as I opened it. I was ten years old again. Woz hadn’t yet crashed his plane, Steve Jobs hadn’t yet met John Sculley, and Microsoft wasn’t yet the enemy because they didn’t sell operating systems.
It’s tempting to dive deeper. There are “Classic” Mac websites. Apple ][ fan clubs are still going strong. eBay stands ready to help me complete my retro hardware collection. But I wouldn’t really be reliving old memories; I’d be replacing them with new ones. Today, if I close my eyes and think hard, I can still evoke the sensation of pure wonder I felt when, as a child, I first ran Bob Bishop’s magical “APPLE VISION” program. But I’m sure I could replace that memory with a jaded “my, how far we’ve come” chuckle if I loaded up the dancing man in the TV set today.
I chose to keep my memories, not make new ones. I copied my old personal files to a fileserver, then wiped the Macintosh’s hard drive and packaged it up to sell on eBay. The hardware is gone, and only the software remains.