So I was surfing on E-Bay the other day, just looking at old blueberry iMacs to see what they tend to sell for, and I found one advertised as brand new, never even taken out of the box.
Now, I don't need to be throwing money around right now, but I figured that I do have this inheritance, and I can justify getting just one thing that I really want. So I bought it! Cost lots less than I would have had to spend to fix my old one.
Yes, it was factory sealed! But somebody had used it, because it had payroll software on it, and it was upgraded to OS 8.6, when the box had 8.5.1 included. There were weird things in the extensions.
I decided, because all the old games I have are really, really old--most running System 7, actually, that I could go ahead with the 8.5 OS, because the stuff already loaded was giving me fits. At one point my cursor froze and I had to consult the google on this machine to figure out how to get out of it. Yeah, I know 8.6 is kinda the cutoff point for later software, but the stuff I want to play is older software. If I need 8.6 or 9.0 (I know I have a 9.0 disc somewhere), it's easy enough to find on the internet, and the download is free.
So I did a clean install of the 8.5.1, which went well. But I still couldn't get Shivers to install--it kept saying it hadn't loaded one file. Yet, I knew it should run. 7th Guest wouldn't load either--said it needed Quictime 3.0, or Obsidian.
But ha! I learned by loading stuff onto that IBM Thinkpad I bought that plenty of games will install the software you need. So I installed some more stuff. I got a copy of Quicktime 4.1 from my Alice CD--just loaded that. That made 7th Guest happy, although it still needed something else. So I kept loading games, and most worked just fine. I think I must have gotten some good software from my Zork Nemesis CD--which ran just fine.
Tried 7th Guest again, and voila! It runs perfectly now! Tried my beloved Obsidian again, and that worked too! (Oh man, I thought I'd never be able to play that again.) 11th Hour runs too, and Day of the Tentacle, and The Dig. Haven't tried much else.
And . . . finally Shivers loaded and runs! Ha ha! However, it still won't go full screen. Doesn't matter in this case though, because the window it runs in on the iMac is three times the size of the Thinkpad window. Perhaps it never did go full screen--but this window is plenty big enough to play just fine.
There are still a couple of games I've tried that won't load, but later on I can load newer software, or perhaps transfer some stuff from my old machine to this one.
Anyway, I'm only going to use this new machine for my old, much loved games. A few are being reproduced on the GOG site, but they don't go for adventures much. Most likely it will take years, if ever, for them to get most of my old stuff. I'll try to transfer some screen shots, but I might have to hook it up to the internet to get shots onto this blog.
Of course, the Thinkpad is for PC games. But I have dozens of old Mac games that I'd never be able to play again, without this new machine. So I'm pretty well thrilled!
So! Back to Shivers! I've solved the gazebo puzzle again, although it took three tries this time. I didn't remember everything on the Stonehenge puzzle, but I'll go back and scope out the clues. Then it'll be easy to get back to where I left off on the Thinkpad.
Woo Hoo!
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