The one biggest application that my mom wanted to have running on her shiny new Macbook was Concord. A program that the publisher has not updated in many years. And that, for Macintosh, assuming you already have a copy, will not run under the new OS X Intel version, since Apple really wants OS 9 (Classic) to die.

This is how I got it to run without installing Windows and the Windows version of Concord. Note that this may or may not work for you.

1. Download the latest version of Basilisk II (Universal Binary)
2. Download an old Macintosh ROM file. These can be tricky to find. I got the 1mbMacrom.zip one from here. You are looking for a Quadra or Performa ROM.
3. Download the free and legal 4.3MB Macintosh OS 7.5.3 Starter Disk from here
4. Use Stuffit Expander to expand it. It will then have a .hfv extension. Change the extension from .hfv to .dmg. You can then open this in the Finder.
5. Create a Mac OS Standard format disk image using Disk Utilities application. I made mine 200MB and called it Classic Drive. Save it into a location you’ll be able to find later.
6. Copy your copy of Concord into a folder in your new disk image.
7. Delete any old preferences and Notebooks from the copy of Concord that you will be running. (It was crashing for me before I did that).
8. Copy the Basilisk II into your Applications folder
9. Run the BasiliskIIGUI.app application to configure Basilisk.
10. Select the location of the ROM file under the Memory/Misc tab, select Quadra 900 in the drop down and give it a good amount of memory (I set it to 128MB). CPU Type was set to 68040.
11. Set Graphics/Sound Width to 800 and Height to 600
12. Click Add… on the Volumes tab and select the Starterdisk.dmg image. Also click Add… again to add the Classic Drive image.
13. Under JIT Compiler, click Enable JIT Compiler.
14. Click Start
15. You should see OS 7.5.5 start up (quickly) and the be presented with a VERY old-school Mac OS desktop. You really really want Concord, remember?
16. Navigate to Classic Drive > Concord, then double-click on it to open. Hopefully you should see it open.
17. Create an alias for Concord, then add it to the System Folder > Startup Items folder.
18. Create an alias for BasiliskII.app and give it the Concord icon. Drag this alias into the Dock.
19. Now, to run Concord, all you have to do is click once on the Dock icon for it.

This is somewhat of a “hack” in that you are emulating the old Motorola 68040 chip to run a really old program. I’m not sure how printing will work or if it will. That will have to be explored another time.

Incidentally, this loads much quicker than loading OS 9.2.2 does under Classic mode on a PowerPC Powerbook. Lots less that is being loaded, but it really feels snappy. Of course, going back to OS 7.5.5 style menus where you have to keep on clicking in order to scroll down in them is a bit of a pain.

References:

• Basilisk II - Motorola 68000 chip emulator - works like a champ once you figure out what all you need.
• Sheepshaver - PowerPC emulator. I wasn’t able to get this to work since I didn’t have the OS 8.6 installer disk.
• MacOSHints.com article about running Classic apps on Intel Macs
• Old Computer ROMS - where I finally found a working download for an old Macintosh ROM. I owned a Quadra, so I feel pretty OK about pulling the ROM down for this purpose.

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We’re out visiting my family and for Kristin’s association this week. I’ll still be mostly working though. Gotta love the Palm Treo 700p for providing a nice and speedy internet connection.

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Kristin and I have been married now for 8 years. w00t!

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Just ordered some neato business cards for Katanaa from OvernightPrints.com. I think their pricing is better than Vistaprint and they can also do rounded corners. The overall buying experience was nicer as well, making it just really easy.

Update: the cards arrived and they’re really really great. Nice and heavy with the free aqueous coating on both sides. Slick and glossy. We all like them quite a bit.

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The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments:

What happens when you combine 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos mints? It’s amazing and completely insane.

The first part of this video demonstrates a simple geyser, and the second part shows just how extreme it can get. Over one hundred jets of soda fly into the air in less than three minutes.

It’s a hysterical and spectacular mint-powered version of the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas, brought to you by the mad scientists at EepyBird.com.

EepyBird.com

Really neato!

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Harvest is a very nice looking Web 2.0 looking time-tracking app that seems like it would probably be very good for small web design shops.

HARVEST brings simplicity back to time tracking. Quick to set up and easy to use, it provides you with insights on how your organization is spending its time.
Take a quick tour �

HARVEST - Simple time tracking, powerful reporting.

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If you use Picture Mail or Versamail to email your pictures to Flickr (using the upload via email trick) then the EXIF tags are stripped out of the jpegs that you send.

If, however, you upload your pictures using a Flickr uploading tool from your computer after syncing your Treo 700p, then the proper EXIF tags will be preserved and will be displayed by Flickr. Neat huh.

Here are the pics I’ve taken so far with my new phone:

Pictures taken with a Treo 700p

By the way, if you are using Mac OS X, the pictures are stored in ~/Pictures/Palm Photos/username/Internal/album name. I just drop them into iPhoto (not using iSync… yet) then use the Flickr Export from iPhoto to send to my Flickr account.

I really like the convenience of having a camera in my pocket at all times. The fact that I can instantly publish pictures to both Flickr and my own blog is pretty fantastic.

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Hiya from my new Treo 700p by way of Flickr, originally uploaded by gserafini.

Yay, they finally released the Treo 700P! Posting this pic directly from my new phone.

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