info-mac@uw-beaver (01/28/85)
From: Dick Kalagher <kalagher@mitre> If the press reports are correct it appears that a Macintosh XL with built in floppy AND 10 Mb hard disk is only $700 more than a 512K Mac with and external hard disk. And you get a 12 inch screen. But does anyone know just how compatible the Macintosh XL is with the smaller Macs. In particular, does it now have the sound capabilities of the Mac and will it run all software including heavily protected stuff like Macpascal? Can it boot as a Mac off the hard disk?
info-mac@uw-beaver (02/08/85)
From: RGG%CORNELLC.BITNET@Berkeley
Just for laughs, I decided to make my LISA 2/10 into a Mac XL. To do
this, I booted from the new MACWORKS PRERELEASE 12/10/84 disk which I
got with the December update. I then ran HARD DISK INSTALL. When it
asked if I wanted to clobber the hard disk, I said sure. I did so, and
now when I power up it comes up as a MACINTOSH with NO floppies needed.
Yes, Virginia, it really does boot off the hard disk. Problems? The
pixel size needs to be fixed, and I don't think diddling the pots is the
right solution. That is like showing a wide screen epic on a narrow
screen -- lots of dead space above and below the image. I would reall
like to see the pixel size CHANGED. The speed is a mixed bag. Some
things are faster, some slower. Alice is much easier(i.e. slower),
booting applications is much faster. All of the wires to my desk
(Omninet LAN, SYTEK campus network, Imagewriter) have MAC plugs, not MAC
XL. The things that the LISA had software "knobs" for, like screen
brightness, time until the screen goes dark, etc., now seem to have no
knobs at all. Clearly a new control panel is needed. A new, high
capacity finder will be required to really make use of the bottomless
disk.
Most products seem to use the extra space on the screen; MacPaint does not.
The ImageWriter 15 (the newest one) works fine, once you get the cable problem
worked out. The application switcher does not work on the XL, which is a majo
r disappointment - I've really gotten addicted to it. (As an aside, setting cu
stom rulers in MacDraw does not work under the switcher) The boot time is a li
ttlt long - 1 min 37 sec from power on until happy mac, another 13 sec until yo
u can do anything. Well, that about covers what I have found so far.....
Tom Dimockinfo-mac@uw-beaver (02/11/85)
From: winkler@harvard.ARPA (Dan Winkler) Here's another fun problem I've had with a Mac XL. I copied the C source of a program from a floppy onto the hard disk, edited one of the C files, and typed make (from the Manx shell). Make didn't realize the C file had changed and didn't recompile it. The problem turned out to be that when you copy files from a floppy their creation date remains unchanged but when you boot the Mac XL the current date gets set to something random (or at least wrong). So the .o file that got copied kept its February creation date, but he modified .c file had been given the current date, sometime in April. Note: you have to set the date every time you boot the Mac XL or else make won't work. But to set the time you need the control panel DA. But if you have the Manx shell as the startup application, you can't run DA's from it. So you have to run some program like the finder that does offer DA's. But you'd better not run the finder or else it will try to build a DeskTop file and that would take hours if you have enough files around. So you end up running some arbitrary application just to get to the control panel so you can set the date.