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Mac Musings

Panther, Low End Macs, and Separation

Dan Knight - 2003.12.10 - Tip Jar

"The more things change, the more they remain the same" - or not.

The past few weeks have been a period of great change, as were the past several months. I was devastated when my wife said she no longer loved me and considered our marriage to be dead. I was broken when she said we would have to separate before we could work on the marriage, to determine if it could be salvaged.

These have been stressful times, and I have not handled them very well. We have gone back and forth on a lot of things, and we finally agreed that I would be the one to move out. I moved into an apartment on December 1. We had our first joint therapy session this past Monday - and I've been in individual therapy for over a month. We've got a lot to deal with; I've got a lot to deal with.

Under the terms of our separation, I am maintaining my office in the family home, working on the eMac in the basement to update Low End Mac. The 700 MHz computer is a joy with its 1280 x 960 display and our networked cable modem. (I have a four-mile, ten-minute commute to my home office - kinda ironic.)

My iBook

iBookSo I could have a computer in the apartment, my business swapped a 333 MHz iMac and an AirPort card for a 366 MHz iBook that my wife's business no longer used. I ordered a pair of 512 MB memory upgrades - one for my new iBook and another for my wife's 256 MB 14" iBook 600 - and was all ready to put OS X on the old clamshell iBook.

Alas, when I tried to install Panther on it, I discovered that not only does the CD-ROM drive not work, but it also scratched my installer disc. Ouch. (We're going to get one of those CD repair kits and try to fix it.)

However, necessity is the mother of invention, and I found a way to work around the dead CD-ROM problem. I shut down the iBook, connected it to my eMac with a FireWire cable, and booted the iBook in FireWire Disk Mode. That would make it possible to install Panther - except that the install CD was scratched.

No problem. I don't use the internal hard drive on the eMac, since I have a much faster FireWire drive, and all that's on the internal drive is the stock software and a copy of the Mac OS. I updated that to 10.3.1 and then ran Carbon Copy Cloner to copy almost everything from the eMac to the iBook.

Then I deleted the stuff I didn't need on the iBook, things like iMovie, shut it down, disconnected the FireWire cable, and booted. It worked, and now I have Panther running on a 366 MHz iBook with 584 MB of RAM. The 800 x 600 display is less than ideal for OS X, but other than that it works nicely.

My TiBook

PowerBook G4Then I remembered the old 400 MHz PowerBook G4 that I'd tried to sell last summer. I had some solid leads, but contact with the party I had agreed to sell it to fell through, so the TiBook just sat there. With a 1152 x 768 display, this would be a much better home computer than the clamshell iBook.

I already had Jaguar on the TiBook, and since I couldn't install Panther at the time, I updated to OS X 10.2.8, brought the PB G4 to the apartment, and have been using it as my home computer since my phone line was activated last week. But I'm really looking forward to getting Panther on the titanium 'Book - in a lot of ways, it's a real improvement over Panther.

The biggest drawback is living with dial-up access from the apartment, but cable modems are not an option and DSL is quite prohibitive if you don't sign a one-year contract. (I have a six month lease and do no intend to remain in my one-bedroom apartment beyond that point.)

Low End Mac

Because of my work schedule (I usually work three days per week at a local camera shop, and four days during December) and because of the separation, I'm cutting back on site updates. Now that I'm fully settled in my apartment, the plan is to have site updates for Low End Mac on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday are my normal workdays at Arden's Photo, so the two schedules will dovetail nicely. With the extra holiday hours at Arden's, not having to squeeze in an hour or two on LEM in the morning will be a big help.

And just a reminder - Low End Mac will not be posting new content from Christmas through New Years Day. Site updates will resume on January 2, 2004.

Marriage and Family

The past months have been a real emotional roller coaster. Antidepressants help. Therapy helps. Moving out is helping. I have a lifetime of issues and 22 years of marriage to deal with, to work through, to turn into something better. It really hurts sometimes, but I love my wife, and I'm doing what I can to make it possible for us to come together again.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the separation and not living with the kids - four boys ranging in age from 14 to 20. We're still working on the details of visitation, nights out, and the like. It looks promising.

I've been invited to dinner at home tonight, and after that we're going to decorate the Christmas tree. It's good to have family at this time of year, and I hope that next year I'll be living at home again.

Dan Knight has been using Macs since 1986, sold Macs for several years, supported them for many more years, and has been publishing Low End Mac since April 1997. If you find Dan's articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

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