In the summer of 1979, my life changed forever. My Dad, head of computer science at a high-school in a Toronto suburb, was given a free Apple ][+ to bring home for the summer. Up until then, all my computer interaction had been via a teletype VAX terminal. The Apple’s graphics capabilities (remember the “Hopalong Cassidy” demo?) and easy BASIC programmability made me into a nerd-for-life.
Then, in 1984, my Mom (an early childhood educator) brought home a MacPlus with an external floppy drive, an ImageWriter and a copy of MacPaint. My pals and I spent days hunkered down in front of the little Banana Junior, printing out hundreds of weird-ass texture-drawings we made with MacPaint and the mouse (!) (another memory, of my Dad coming back from a syposium in the 70s, having just seen hypertext, mouses and light-pens demoed, and trying to communicate what all these things would mean some day).
Which brings me to today’s blog entry, the Virtual MacPlus. Running this application on your Mac, *nix, or Wintel box will emulate a full-fleged MacPlus, with up to THREE virtual floppy drives. It kicks all kinds of ass.
Download vMac here. Link
Then, download a MacPlus ROM here Link
This site also has downloadable OS disk-images (ranging from OS 1 to OS 6), and downloadable MacPaint and MacDraw images. Anyone have access to other vintage Mac apps?