It’s almost that time again, time to fire up those old Macs and spend a week trying to use it as much as possible.
This year we’re expanding the challenge to include 68K Macs as well.
THE GOAL
Use the 68K or PPC Mac as much as you can for your day to day computing. Everything you usually do on your Intel or M1 Mac, use the old Mac for it instead. Or at least try 🙂 We’ll show the nay-sayers that these machines still have plenty of usable power left in them and of course it’s a ton of fun!
THE RULES
Every year there are questions, so many questions, sigh… So here they are, the “rules”:
- 68K or PPC, it has to be an Apple Mac / Macintosh, or Macintosh Clone (no Hackintosh)… or if you’re really a glutton for punishment Apple II, /// and Lisa systems are allowed.
- Any OS goes, if you want to run Mac OS, have at it. If you want to run Linux, have at it. As long as it runs on a 68K or PPC Mac.
- Using multiple eligible Macs is fine! One to run iTunes, one to run a browser and one to run Netscape? No problem.
- No vintage Mac emulators running on modern hardware allowed (e.g. SheepShaver, Basilisk, Mini vMac etc.)
Unlike previous years, there will not be a daily log kept on this website. It took too much time and got messy quickly with people submitting their stuff late etc. Instead, we ask participants to log their experiences and send us a little write-up at the end of the challenge. You can also link us to your YouTube or bit chute videos and we’ll embed those into the site here. getting the write ups and video links to us can be done on Discord or via email.
Of course feel free to drop comments under this post about your Challenge experiences as much as you want!
BE PREPARED
January will come quick and if you want to participate in the challenge along with everyone else, get your stuff in order before the challenge begins. Inspect your hardware of choice, get the OS up and running, install the software you need, configure your email etc etc. For tips on this you can check out the pages from previous years:
These pages will link to posts about the Challenge experiences which contain tips, issues participants ran into etc. This may help you be better prepared.
The Mac Yak Discord server will host a brand new channel called #2021-68K-PPC-Challenge where you can help each other out, share tips, stories and more. (Forget a smooth Discord experience on a PPC Mac, you’ll have to use your phone for that 😛 )
You can find a lovely selection of period appropriate Macintosh software on the wonderful MacintoshGarden.org.
CHALLENGE START AND END DATES
The first week of the new year always seems to be a little chaotic for most, so the challenge will kick off at the end of our January 7th Mac Yak episode and wrap up on January 14th 21st when Mac Yak goes live. (The challenge was extended by a week!)
Looking forward to hearing all about your experiences! We’ll pick some and talk about them on the January 14th show.