Booting a Macintosh Classic from the Boot ROM

[Deliciousfruit233]

Man, that boot speed makes my 2009 laptop look like such a piece of crap.

[Baboonaiih]

MAC's are used in movies to show an old room with old equipment. PC's are used in movies to show a new room with new equipment. Thats silly. MACs should be in every Movie regardless. But i must say that a lot of programs aren't availible for the MAC, usally user built programs.

[lilleborik]

It's alive, IT'S ALIVE!

[computertechdude1234]

How do people get these things???

[heffeque]

ARGH! If I had known this I wouldn't have given it away! AAAAARGH!

[MichelleRocksOut]

I want one!!!!!

[1967norway]

I used one of these for desktop publishing, graphic design and writing back in 1992-94. Mac OS Classic was even more user friendly than OS X. It would crash sometimes, but so did MS-DOS with Windows 3.x.. I still have one, and it's working perfectly.

[iAnton4ik]

This very old, but this is 100000000000%

faster than my newest Windows XP!

[DjXT3]

that mac is so crap, I mean it's huge

[tourbeu24]

the keyboard is almost bigger than the computer lol ....

[HippyBunny]

I have a mac classic ii and i hear the fan running but i get a black screen and it does nothing else. What should i do

[theMacintoshFiles]

send me a message ill make a vid tellin u wat to do

[KellySaunders5]

I have a Mac Plus, which is close to this model, and it works better than the PC I bought new two years ago.

[DeanGuitarsOwn]

No it doesn't?

And you're calling me a retard?

I Lol @ your life.

[DeanGuitarsOwn]

Mac classic is still better than my shitty dell.

[Bendyournoodle]

Microsoft loving fanboy!

[rwagoner]

Cool!, my friend has one Mac Classic and his has System 6.0.7 on the hard drive and 6.0.3 on the ROM and I gave him a copy of "Disk Tools" that has 7.0.1 on it. I gave him a game for it.

[rwagoner]

I mean a game on the disk.

[FelisCatusLover]

lol, boot off the boot disk.

[aaroninclub]

naa, booting off the ROM is almost like booting from a SDD today coz both the ROM and SDD are faster thn ur typical HDD. ...

[TheJerico246]

wow u seen these poor thing on the side of the streets cold and hungry and unloved and it still works wow i'm just impressed

[TriUser0001]

My first grade teacher use to manage our grades on one of these. boy o boy, this brings back memories

[kargaroc386]

i belive the reason they put this in here is because the Mac classic didn't sell with a hard drive at first. if the user didn't have the boot floppy, the computer would be rendered useless.

[retromaccast]

Actually, the Classic did ship standard with a hard drive. However, if that hard drive were to fail or the System Folder become corrupted *and* you didn't have a boot floppy, the ROM-boot would be a great backup.

[kargaroc386]

the $999 one didnt, as i heard. from low end mac "the basic Classic came with 1 MB of RAM, a SuperDrive, and space to mount an internal SCSI hard drive". so the BASIC classic didn't come with a HD. if you didn't have a boot disk, the ROM disk would be a good reliable start up disk.

[yuhong2]

@retromaccast Actually, there was two configs, one with a HD and 2MB of RAM, and another cheaper one without HD and only 1MB of RAM.

[VaderNES]

@retromaccast Actually, a hard drive was an option, as well as a RAM extender. Higher-end Mac Classics had the hard drive and RAM extender installed, while the lower-end ones just had a floppy drive, and neither a hard drive nor a RAM extender.

[iSquishy89]

@retromaccast Why did Apple remove it on later Macs?

[retromaccast]

@iSquishy89 I don't know - perhaps it was too expensive to implement and seldom used. 

[danixdefcon5]

@iSquishy89 OS X. They basically dumped the entire Classic OS (Mac OS 9 and earlier) and one of the casualties was the on-board ROM-boot Classic.

In fact, that's why Mac OS X doesn't load as fast as the Pre-OSX brethren, as now the OS has to load the same way as the rest of the OSen.

[smbhacker32]

Does this work on Mac Classic II?

[MyNameIsBucket]

Not that I can see.

[joewillgo]

Can it run Windows Vista with Boot Camp?

[htfkid2000]

NO it is too old to even have boot camp!

[samurphy]

Yeah, about 20 years too old.

[1967norway]

@joewillgo

I think you are being sarcastic, but the most expensive Classic had 1 MB of RAM and a 40 MB harddrive. Vista requires about 500 of those drives and 1000 times the memory.

[macnerd93]

yes but I'm sure even if you were born back then, everyone would of expected, that in 20 years time computers would just switch instantly on and be ready to use, software has advanced more quickly than the hardware

[macnerd93]

lol boots faster than a crap vista machine, macs rule

[pnnorton]

Oh yeah thats a fair comparison. My Gameboy boots faster than all of these, my commodore 64 boots faster than that and all windows and mac computers, and to top it off almost every calculator I have boots faster than every computer I've had with a keyboard and to top it off my digital watch doesn't even need to be turned off and runs months on a single set of batteries much better than any laptop. I guess everything has been going down since the invention of the digital watch and calculator.

[macnerd93]

thats because at that time when the macintosh classic was introduced software was hardly anything, Software in my opinion has developed way quicker than the hardware can cope with, i'm sure you must of thought 10-12 years ago, we'd have computers what would boot in micro-seconds it never happened, too bad for windows users I mean when it came out, vista couldn't run on computers as old as 18 months. Mac OS X tiger the current version at the time could run on systems from 1998.

[macnerd93]

plus Microsoft is crap they have done nothing for the computer industry, accept copy off Apple & Google. I mean Apple had the first commercial computer with the desktop GUI, called the LISA, Microsoft copied that, then Xbox is just a rip off of the Play station and ms online apps, google do stuff similar

[appleinfl]

Actually GUI was invented by xerox.

[macnerd93]

thats why i said the first commercial computer, Xerox Alto computer was never released

[macnerd93]

i have a commodore as well its instantly on,

[arsenakfreakguy]

want a cookie?

[sawmaster2]

yeah! MACS WILL TAKE OVER THE WORLD! PCS will sit there pooping on your desk.

[aaroninclub]

i hope so.....

[Milesprower1]

I have the same mac *except it was a classic II*

[xxtronikxxhbx]

you want a cookie too..=]

[themaritimeman]

Cool. I think the Classic was the only Mac that could boot from ROM. Does the ROM have any programs in it or just the System Software and the Finder?

[Crozonexz]

It's just system software and Finder.

[Crozonexz]

LOL I love how you say "Thats nearly 20 years old and still works. You cant say that about most pc's.".

I have a 286, and it still works fine. I have seen 3 MACs, 2 of those Curved colour ones, and one of those dome + screen ones that have broken. Their not even that old!

Even so, the Mac classics were built tough, I found one on a junk heap, wet. I took it home, cleaned it up, and it still worked fine.

[RABBIDGamfan]

I found one on the side of the road in 20 degree weather, and the HD still managed to boot!

[Kapusky]

LOL, my Macintosh SE still works, and it even has a virus!

Since I know every one wants to know what the virus does...

The virus is a modified hidden file called desktop to the floppy disk and when you put the infected floppy in another computer the virus is transmited to the other computer and the process repeats.

Since it was so old I never let norton delete it. (Yes, Norton was around back then too.)

[Kapusky]

oops that came out garbled let me try again....

The virus is a hidden file called desktop that replicates it self on all of your computer's floppy disks.

When ever you put an infected floppy disk into another computer it infects the other computer and the process repeats

[DrClawman4]

same here! i have a mac se that had a virus, but so long ago i don't remember what the virus did.

[shafty1968]

Do you like 'Kon"?

[retromaccast]

What is that?

[pcorf]

I used to use them in school in the 1990s. Such a clever and compact 1980's design.

[sammyboi93123abc]

wow old computer

[beestonbash]

that belongs with dinosaurs IN HELL lol

[DawVideos]

Thats nearly 20 years old and still works. You cant say that about most pc's.

[rmueller11]

Yeah actually you can...all of my PCs run like they were new. The components run fine but why would you want to use it when you have a better computer?

[MKUltraProject]

@DawVideos Yes you can

[HaloSpartanG13]

@DawVideos Depends on the PC.

[1994fatalerror]

@DawVideos

How come the original IBM PC's still work?

[Crashbndcoot121]

@DawVideos My 23 year old PC still works.

[Deokishisu]

I'll be so sad the day my Classic dies. If it does I'll turn it into a terrarium, and put a couple lizards inside.

[coondogtheman1234]

id modify one of these into a monitor, since the monitor on this thing is a 10 inch B&W CRT ill aput a 10 inch LCD monitor with sound behind it

[starkist1480]

If yours died, you can emulate it by vmac. as long as you have macintosh 7.6 & windows 95 or later.

[HaniiPuppy]

o.o it booted up in around 15 seconds o.o

Mac OS X to Vista: "My great grandad can boot up faster than you" X3

[MacintoshDan]

Ha ha ha. That was good.

[chazum0]

haha dude thats unique right there

[PfizerDealer]

Mac Classic were bombproof. You had to blast that thing with a 12-gague before it would even think of complaining.

[o0PinKFisH0o]

PfizerDealer : LOL so true.

[Centurey]

LOL!

[ClassicGarth]

I used to use a Color Classic that would sometimes lose the red gun in the monitor. You had to give it a good thump on the side to get it working again.

[HumanTurkey]

The apperance is pleasant, although this was very long ago

[HTPtheSecond]

@HumanTurkey Although old is better.

[colinstu]

Doesn't like holding the shift key load it with out the extensions? god, haven't used a mac in a long time...

heh, option+command+x+o ... people thought windows' key commands were hard.

[ieeeeeeeeeeeee]

pressing the shift key before the system starts up will turn the extensions off.

[TacoSoft]

Well, I'll be darned

[LancerEvoX811]

My God....

[jasonisroxursox]

neat!!

[Brutice]

Yeah that's quick but I reckon my Mac Classic II boots OS 6.0.8L even faster straight of the old 20Mb scsi HD

[booq]

Give proof much?

[PowerExpress]

"Yeah that's quick but I reckon my Mac Classic II boots OS 6.0.8L even faster straight of the old 20Mb scsi HD "

Well the Macintosh Classic II was a lot faster than the first Macintosh Classic. And by "a lot" i mean "very much".

[cfredrics]

That is the fastest boot that I have ever seen. And I have a dual G5 tower and a MacBook. And a Mac classic.

[imthehappymedium]

sweet