B&W Compact Macs?

[the_antithesis]

So, I've been thinking about the old B&W Macs lately. Don't ask me why. I never had one back in the day. I have been messing with an emulator, Mini vMac which emulated a Macintosh Plus. Finally managed to get it working in RetroPie on a Raspberry Pi. I typoed adding it to the menu. I'm a fat-fingered fool.

So, anyone ever have one of these or remembers using them?

[Unbeliever]

'Don't ask me why.

Why? 🤠

My first computer was a Timex-Sinclair ZX81, back in the early '80s. I had a lot of fun with it, and learned how to program in BASIC. I do wish I'd learned more and had kept learning, but alas, shit happened and I didn't.
Oh well.
🤓

[Dark Lightning]

No Macs for me. I had a bad experience with one in my work environment in '90 and have only used PCs that use Windows, since. Before people accuse me of whatever, I've also used the following equipment-

DEC VAX750, 780, 8800, others
FPS 260(?)
CRAY X and Y/MP
IBM360
IBM PCs. It used to take some real computing power to do what the above machines did, but some PCs are now capable of it. What I used to program on a DEC VAX I could do on a PC, 6 years later. Crazy. I'm talking electromagnetics code.

None of these gave me the trouble that that Mac did.

[the_antithesis]

None of these gave me the trouble that that Mac did.

This is interesting. What did it do?

[Dark Lightning]

This is interesting. What did it do?

I was writing FORTRAN code (written elsewhere and run with no issue on several other platforms), and that piece of shit crashed with astonishing (non)regularity. It got to the point where I saved after every line of code. When I finally got that completed, it wouldn't compile, giving all kinds of random errors having nothing to do with the code, which, as mentioned, compiled and ran on other computers. It may well be that that computer was TEMPESTed, which may have contributed to the problem in some strange way.

[the_antithesis]

Oh, you were trying to program a mac. Yeah, Apple made the Mac to be a closed box. I remember talking to someone about programming them and he said they were difficult. If the one you were working on was also compromised by that Tempest thing, it would make for a bad time.

But Tempest is fun.

[Dark Lightning]

Oh, you were trying to program a mac. Yeah, Apple made the Mac to be a closed box. I remember talking to someone about programming them and he said they were difficult. If the one you were working on was also compromised by that Tempest thing, it would make for a bad time.

But Tempest is fun.

If Tempest is an arcade game, I've never heard of it. But that's just my ignorance. After I got out of the Navy, I worked for awhile as a mechanic and a parts store counterman, intermittently. I played no video games back then ('76- '78). Once I got a job as a mechanic at a gas station, which I worked from '78-'84, when I graduated uni, I played no video games then, either. Video games in arcades, both when I was in the Navy and later, I considered a complete waste of my money. Just know that I was poor as piss on a plate growing up. I got married in '81, and my bride mooched a black and white TV from her parent's attic, because I didn't even watch TV in those days; believe it or not, I didn't even have a TV. I still despise the medium, in general.