A (Mac) Classic Spookfest

Bong! . . . :-) . . . Welcome to Macintosh!

All Hallows Eve has crept up on us yet again, and for me it means getting my Classic Macs ready for the occasion.

What exactly do I do with them? Load them up with the After Dark screen saver, of course! Here's a little something to get you started in the right direction.

Get a Classic Mac - or a Few

First step, is to get a Classic Mac. I tend to favor the compact Macs for many things, but especially for Halloween. They're easier to tote and easier to place wherever you want in your house. I have five as of now, so that oughta be enough.

If you have a 128K, 512K, or Mac Plus, bring them in on the fun! Even the oldest compact Macs can join the party. The only potential downside is if you don't have an external hard drive for them. But even if they're only floppy-driven, you can load up the After Dark screen saver with at least one module.

You will almost certainly have to trim down the boot disk on a 128K or 512K due to the fact they use 400K disks. I know on the Plus I have (a 512K converted to a Plus), I had to trim down the System Folder (running System 6.0.8) somewhat to make After Dark 2.0 fit, and that's with only the default Starry Night module running.

After Dark

Next up, try to find After Dark. After Dark 2.0 works best for this spookification, as later versions tended to take on a more comical note with their modules and, as such, lost a lot of the "darkness" that drew people in. After Dark has many modules that work well with a Halloween theme: Warp, Zot, Nocturns, Starry Night, even those lovable Flying Toasters could strike fear in the hearts of many.

If you set up the compacts just right, you won't have to hook up keyboards to all of them, just mice (in order to shut them down safely). Set them up to blank to the creepy module of your choice in 1 minute. You can even set them up to run the Randomizer, creating even more dastardly Halloween fun to the mix!

If you can't find any version of After Dark, Dark Side of the Mac makes for a great second choice. It's setup is a lot like After Dark.

In the pictures accompanying this article, you'll see my Mac Plus running Starry Night, the Classic running Aquatic Realm, the Color Classic running Zot, and, last but not least, an uncooperative SE that refuses to blank with a Classic II running Starry Night.

If you want to see more ways to dress up your Mac for Halloween, check out my Halloween how to from last year, Prep Your Classic Mac for a Spooktacular Halloween - guaranteed to frighten the jeebies out of ya!

More Halloween Fun

Here's a cool story I ran across on TUAW of a guy who painted his Compact Macs orange for Halloween! Cool huh?

Do you get your Macs ready for Halloween or for any other holiday? Send your stories to thomas(at)lowendmac(dot)com.

Have a happy and safe Halloween! 

Recent Welcome to Macintosh articles

• Apple's eMate still a great tool in the classroom, 05.09. How one teacher equipped his classroom with eMates with his own money - and plans to keep using them as long as possible.
• The greatest comeback, 05.02. Apple's comeback 10 years ago pales in the face of surviving stage 4 cancer.
• Psystar and dreams of a Mac 'for the rest of us', 04.28. Whether Pystar's Open Computer is legitimate or a hoax, it brings issues of licensed Mac clones and a midrange Mac to the forefront.
• More in the Welcome to Macintosh index.

Recent Content on Low End Mac

• Mac Pro overclocking, Windependence with Darwine, Blu-ray for Macs, and more, Mac News Review, 07.04. Also more on running Leopard on non-Apple hardware, Ubuntu on a Mac mini, the first autofocus webcam with Zeiss optics for Macs, and more.
• Wouldn't life be great with an iSlate?, John Hatchett, Recycled Computing, 07.04. PDAs and smartphones are too small for some tasks, full-fledged Tablet PCs are overkill, and ebook readers are too limited. Apple has the tech to own this niche.
• Mac of the Day: Blue & White Power Mac G3, Jan. 1999 - The most colorful Power Mac introduced an innovative 'drawbridge' enclosure.
• List of the Day: SuperMacs is for those using Umax SuperMac clones.
  
• July 5 in LEM history: 98: The iMac: First of a family? - iMac Perfect for schools - 00: Apple is not your friend - 01: 75 Mac Advantages - Do you trust me? - 02: The joy of X with Classic - The good, the bad, and the intrusive - 05: No Quartz Extreme for Pismo - A brief history of NeXT - 06: Education iMac - iTunes and the French interoperability law - TopXNotes - Apple's secret battery reset utility - Misleading hard drive capacity
• The Macintosh Portable started a notebook revolution, Carl Nygren, Classic Macs in the Intel Age, 07.03. Before Apple introduced the Mac Portable, notebook computers were text-based and ran MS-DOS. Ever since, graphical interfaces have been the norm for laptops.
• More links in our archive.

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

This article copyright ©2007 by Tommy Thomas. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2008 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, PowerBook, MacBook, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.