Steve came over today and we spent a pretty productive day churning out code. We did it tag-team style with one of us writing and debugging while the other fiddled with the database, then when one of us came across code witten by the other, we’d switch jobs and continue.
Mobile’s still not working though.
I’m stopping my Orange contract and have just received a PAYG SIM and topup card from them. Amusingly the topup card expires in 2029 so I’m going to make it my aim to keep it until then 
When ringing the activation number I first managed to confuse the voice recognition system, and then the human I got through to explained he couldn’t help me because his computer wasn’t working. I laughed, lots and will phone back later.
Well they’ve made this a bit easy! I’ve spent the day following the beginner’s tutorial and have a rudimentary spaceship shooting game working. It shouldn’t have taken all day, but the tutorial videos are aimed at someone who’s never used Visual Studio or C# before. I know what an “if” loop is now, at least 
MS appear to have made it quite straight forward to get things moving around the screen, which is good.
In other news, my Internet connection is having problems and is currently grinding along at 3MBits after spending the past half-hour having a fit and disconnecting every two minutes.
Apple Macintosh Classic running System 7.5.3
You know, to the uninitiated, installing an operating system in your computer is a daunting and complex task, full of the great unknown and the fear you may cause permanent damage to your beloved and expensive computer. To those of us who remember two floppy Linux installs and alpha-quality partitioning tools, installing an OS is easy; bung in the CD, press ‘Agree’ then ‘Next’ until it starts installing.
Are you feeling bored? Is the challenge of reinstalling Ubuntu or XP not hitting your tech g-spot any more? Then try a new one – get a Mac Classic running System 7.0.0 and attempt to install System 7.5.3 on it using nothing more than two floppy disks and another computer with a USB floppy drive and the Internet.
Those of you who owned a Mac back in the 90s will probably look at Apple’s site and go “ahh sea.bin files, righto I’ll just put Stuffit Expander on my Mac and away we go”. Then you’ll realise you need a system 7.0.1 or higher boot disk in order to mount the install image. Those of us who were messing around with Atari STs and low spec PCs at the time (being fascinated by Windows 3.0 on our 286s, even though all it did was play Solitaire) will take several hours to even work out what a sea.bin file is, and even longer to work out how to get the sodding thing into our old Mac. Thank you Google, you made the job only take a day.
I’ll write up the process later, along with a separate doc explaining how to diagnose and fix RAM faults since one of those cropped up too. Old hardware is ace stuff, it’s so knackered and liable to stop working at any moment. You want to see the corrosion on my Mac’s motherboard. In fact the whole inside of a Mac Classic is verging on a work of art.
I am attempting to upgrade the system software on my Macintosh Classic. Currently it runs System 7.0 and I want it to run System 7.5. I have the System 7.5 images from Apple, and a Macbook with an external USB floppy drive. I also have a set of high density floppy disks.
Not that getting data from one to the other is easy. I’m lost in a world of sea.bin files and not a lot of idea what to do with them. I didn’t own a Mac when this stuff was current, and it appears nobody ever thought “aha in 18 years time people will be downloading System 7 images from the Internet onto their new Macs and then want to install them on their old Macs”
I’ve been at this too long, I’m giving up for the night.