TLOTD

Tech Lesson of the Day

The Sad Macintosh Gallery!

Clickford, Steven M.

Computers are like humans, they no longer are spring chickens.

Today’s subject is on the Mac, and it’s bootup process when it fails. The most ideal failure should result in a black screen, showing Susan Kare’s infamous “Sad Macintosh” icon, (known for it’s frown on it’s right hand side, an extra pixel or two), and an accommodating “Chimes of Death”, if all failure goes as planned per to the startup process on the vintage Macintoshes.  All Macs made before 1998 had the Sad Mac Icon, but any Mac made after 1987 (beginning with the SE and Macintosh II) had the “Chimes” to go along. (The original Macintosh, the Fat Mac, the XL, 512Ke, and the Plus did not have such ability.)

Any modern electronic equipment is vulnerable for failures as they age. While the subject is on the “Sad Macintosh” icon appearing at startup sequence in vintage (“Classic” Macs), failures shall not be limited to Macs, but PCs and even other computers like minis, etc. A PS/2 from the early 1990s could not boot properly only because it’s capacitors are failing as well.

The recommended directions by Apple was to bring your Mac to your Authorized Service Provider. Other than that the documentation wouldn’t say too much. Because I do not have access to historical Apple technical documents (since knowledge bases of this type predates the Web) it’s unsure if capacitors, etc was common. I think it’s safe to say because it’s more of an age than anything else.

(As a sidebar: In the early 1990s, Apple also produced a small number of Macintosh service handheld devices for the use of Authorized Service Providers. In models after 1990, the SCSI port would open up after the Sad Macintosh screen, and send additional information to this device, which would then backup on some flash device, which then was downloaded onto another Mac to figure out additional problems. There was also ROM cards that a serviceman would plug in depending on the type of Macintosh, one flash card was for LC line, one for the II line and another for like the Classic.)

Most of the electronics that are failing are due to blown up capacitors, and sometimes when it blows up, it’s like taking a bottle of Coke and throwing it into the circuit board. This doesn’t mean its totaled, you may need to replace them, (by the use of a soldering iron.)

Sometimes all attempts may not work and you may need to surrender reviving your Mac.

Classic Macs, the hardware sense, the ones with the all in ones like the 128K to Color Classics are most vulnerable because of the capacitors that hold power for the monitor. This part will need some expertise as dealing with display capacitors can be lethal.

The following YouTube videos feature Macs failing the usual failures of the startup process. (and yes I have vetted to ensure that they aren’t manipulated, etc.)

REALLY UNSUAL SAD MAC FAILS

The Macintosh Portable wants to Jam! Now these models had no “Power On Key” so the user would strike a key. But it goes right to the Sad Mac, so therefore something failed immediately.

Typically a Sad Mac should cut right in. Now I can’t tell if there’s an arm on the left of the picture trying to do an Interrupt, but it’s not normal for a screen to wipe down, stay black, then the Sad Mac to appear.

Yeah, things are peachy for this Classic II. Analog board must had been busted.

SINGLEHANDED CASES OF CHIMES OF DEATH WITH A BLACK OR GREY SCREEN

While this may or may not show the Sad Mac, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility you may run into any Vintage Macintosh that may have a grey screen and just hear the Chimes of Death and nothing coming on screen, not even the disk icons, Happy or Sad Macintoshes. This was never documented in any of the end user Macintosh guides, and any of the technical docs I own does not discuss just the singular Chimes of Death situation. Typically this is where you can rule out capacitor issues. This became a subject on the vintage boards on Apple Discussions  a few years ago, starting the awareness of the vulernabilities of aging PCs.

Here’s a better example

Another example of the Chimes without a Sad Mac

Fast or Slow and/or High or Low Pitched Chimes of Death?

Yup I’ve witnessed it!

That’s all!

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Virtualization – How Much is Too Much App-fiying?

Clickford, Steven M.

I’ve pondered myself how much time, resources, and hardware (and if you’re an enterprise the cost of licenses and software that goes along) and when should I say “when” to virtualizing?

Typically virtualizing should stop if

  • If you have no secondary domain controllers, directory services or anything that requires authentication, in case something happens to the “hypervisor”
  • If the vendor says you can’t use such
  • If licensing is too cost prohibitive (most often licensing for virtualization has a different cost structure – and don’t tell me to go FOSS)
  •  If the operating system or software is dependent on external devices. Assuming you have a 1U rack server, you only have up to two PCI cards, and assuming you have just 2 to 4 USB ports that can be mounted to a specific virtual appliance, and also factoring in other dependencies like audio cards, FireWire cards or ports, etc.
  • MANAGEMENT: This for me is the dealbreaker when to stop virtualizing. Management workstations are essentially boxes that connect to say the VMware machines, your networking gear, your legacy PBX, and may also be a catch all machine to be a TFTP server to do upgrades, etc. In my environment, it’s currently virtualized, but given instabilities of the network sudden changes to the baremetal and what is on and what is off and what’s on that machine vs another, it may not be a bad idea to have it on it’s own box.

If you are a small workgroup, high end notebooks or decommissioned laptops that can support current operating systems that works in your setup could be a solution. I’ve done this with my mothers old Toshiba and ran Windows Server 2003 to work as a domain controller, plus DNS and DHCP on a sub PIII, and 256meg RAM. All MacBooks (not going to recommend PowerBooks or iBooks given it’s age for actual production use) can run OS X Server, and the more newer ones can run it’s daemon equivalent (the $19 copies) as well. As I would recommend, the daemons released after Lion, use with caution, reliability is only as good as your specs and ensuring your Mac is not being used as a primary desktop.

Virtualization is all the rage, it’s best to play it safe and not go too crazy.

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