Copyright stuff?

[carlsson]

Is that genuine Mac terminology, to "bless" a folder like setting a file attribute on it or placing a magic file inside it in order to get a particular behavior?

[Opry99er]

Just a few old Mac tips:

 

You need to "bless" the System Folder from which you want to boot. Some Macs only boot certain software versions, as you're seeing. So you probably don't want to mess with that aspect of it.

 

Copying the old HD to the new one isn't "best practice" but we all did it. Multiple Utilities folders are harmless and they're probably all a little different inside.

 

Emulation of old Macs is easy and probably more effective than coaxing the old Mac to run older incompatible software. Look for Mini Vmac.

 

OSX is not "stupid," but that comment was. :shock:

 

Good luck getting to the end of the mystery. Tucows never struck me as particularly principled but it would be nice if they did the right thing.

 

Thanks for your reply. I use mini vMac for emulating my MacPlus, but since the system ROM I use and all my software emulates my MacPlus directly, its all B&W system 6 stuff.

 

I have a burning distaste for OSX. Around the turn of the century, when Macintoshes stopped supporting OS9, I switched to PC and never went back. I absolutely despised OSX and I never got over my bitterness. All the releases since then have taken the Macintosh farther and farther away from my wheelhouse, and now sitting in front of a newer Mac is like trying to use proprietary software in a different language. I still dont like it, and I never will.

 

But my Classic Macs.... I will forever love them, and contend to this day that Mac OS9.2 is the greatest operating system of all time.

[Flojomojo]

I liked Classic Mac OS too. Unix is better. Windows is OK. They're all just computers to me.

 

Classic Mac OS ain't coming back, but iOS feels similar to me in the ways it's simplified the front end and doesn't try to do everything.

[Ed in SoDak]

I grabbed a second copy to try on another Mac. I don't think tucows is charging. The $18.95 appears to be what the user might send to the author, though I don't know where that amount came from, since the program itself nor the brief manual mention any payment. There is an address and email for contacts.

 

I don't know what difference there is between the demo and the full version, if any. Though the filename says it's a demo, it seems to have all the functions mentioned in the manual.

 

When first run, no password is needed. You may continue to use it this way.

 

If you click the password button, you are asked to enter the old password to reset it and enter a new one. It seemed to take anything (or nothing) as the "old" password. Once you set a "new" password, then you must enter it each time it is run. This is covered in the manual.

 

-Ed

[Opry99er]

Journaling offers you the opportunity to capture your thoughts in writing.

SoftDock Journal provides a unique and creative program for recording and

storing those thoughts on your computer.

 

This personal journal has four graphic background options all included in the

program. Designed for elegance and simplicity. Includes, password option,

export text, search feature for key words or date.

 

Demo limitations--2 background options and a five day journal entry limit.

 

System Requirements:

Macintosh Computer, System 7.1 or higher

2.5 MB of free RAM

4 MB of free disk space

 

Color monitor capable of thousands of colors (16 bit color)

(demo only requires 2MB of free disk space)

To learn more about this journal or to order the full version, visit my

website.

http://members.aol.com/SoftDock/

Thank you,

Tina Brand

SoftDock

[Ed in SoDak]

The Demo limitations aren't mentioned in the manual from the Tucows d/l.

 

To be honest, I didn't enter my thoughts to try it out. What was I thinking?

 

So I tried entering something, a few characters. I got 4 days of entries and on the fifth day it said it was limited to 5 days, but prevented entry of day 5. Setting my own password did not change this limit.

 

Unless your mom remembers or someone discovers the unlock password (or perhaps the full version was sent by your mom to purchasers), only the limited demo seems available for d/l.

 

Here's wayback's capture of her website: https://web.archive.org/web/20030907185117/http://members.aol.com:80/SoftDock/

-Ed

Edited April 8, 2018 by Ed in SoDak

[Opry99er]

Well, I have a Mac OS9 machine up and running and I am going to try to get that old file out of dad's OSX Mac to try it out on my OS9 computer. Ed in Sodak was kind enough to find a password using ResEdit, but I can't seem to get it to go past the 5 day demo or the 2 background limitation.

 

Hopefully the one contained on the hard drive is the full version. I will be over the moon if it is.

[Opry99er]

Okay everyone... I have an awesome announcement. (Well, awesome for me anyway).

 

After years of searching (2009, 2010 actively searching, then from 2016 through today) I have finally found the software!!! It has been quite an adventure, let me tell you! I finally found it inside dad's Mac OSX hard drive. See, every time dad got a new computer, he would take the hard drive contents from his previous computer and just dump them into a file folder on the new drive. He did this from about 1996 on through today... Probably 6 hard drives deep. See, I had asked mom and dad both repeatedly over the years if they had the software on the computer-- I was always told "No, it's not there... we don't have a copy." Or--- "I looked and didn't find it." I accepted that and focused my search elsewhere.

 

This software was 4 layers deep on a hard drive from an OS8.1 Macintosh Performa we had until about 1999 when he upgraded to a PowerMac G4. Took me an hour of digging through the drive to get to it, since it was not intuitively labeled. (It was labeled "SDJ.HQX). If you searched for "Soft Dock," you wouldn't have found it... and they didn't.

 

 

In any case, I wanted to share this software here for posterity. I have a zip file here, and inside that zip are 3 things. First is a copy of the Users Reference Manual for the journal (which I have modified slightly), the second is a snapshot of mom's old website, and the third is a .SIT file (which you will need Stuffit Expander to open). Inside that SIT file is the unmodified original manual---and the actual SoftDock Journal 1.0 program itself. It will unstuff as an HQX file which will then need to be decompressed with Stuffit Expander as well.

 

This is the full version, not the demo. Please read the manual before you use the program.

 

It is my hope that at least one person uses this software for regular journaling. It is quite nice, as far as late 90s Macintosh desktop applications go.

 

You'll need a Classic OS at System 7.1 or higher to run this software... or you can emulate it in Sheepshaver with the operating system of your choice.

 

A big thanks to Ed in Sodak and a few others for their encouragement and help in this adventure. Bringing this thing back into the fray so many years after it seemingly disappeared forever. Until this exact moment, I believe the copy on dad's hodge-podge hard drive was the only one in existence... since there have been numerous efforts to locate a copy somewhere online and in old FTP servers, etc. None have been found. This is now free for anyone and everyone to use... which is cheaper than the $19.00 mom used to charge for it.

 

Please give it a try... see how you like it... and report back if you don't mind. I'm sure my mom would love to hear how you like it!

 

Enjoy!

SoftDock.zip

Edited March 10, 2019 by Opry99er

[Ed in SoDak]

Hey, that's great you finally found it! Obtuse filenames always make finding things much more of a challenge. I'm not much of a journaler, my old weather log was the closest I ever came to making daily entries. I did grab a copy of the full version to check it out, thanks for sharing!

 

Acquiring an os9 machine that would run Hypercard and your mom's program must've been a similar quest.

 

I do a similar thing as your dad when I upgrade, moving folders from the old machine to the new. After a few iterations over the years, I find I have 6 or more copies of old files floating around when I don't really need to keep any of them so many years later. But rather than hunt them down for deletion, it's just easier to leave them be. Then I create even more copies of copies when I do a backup. Not to mention I save the old hard drives, then there's floppy and CD backups as well.

 

I'm another die-hard os9 fanboy. I'm pretty much upgraded to the "newest" 2007 Macs that will still run Classic or boot into os9 native. I'm comfy with 10.4.11 as my daily driver, but darn-near anything other than email or browsing is still done with an os9 app. Too bad that keeps me behind the curve with essentially all of the newer & better TI99 emulators like Classic99 or JS99er.

 

The wife likes her Macbook Pro with whatever version of OSX she's using. She would cringe at going back to anything pre-Intel. She makes far more use of the modern browsers and video players, games and etc. than I do.

 

-Ed

[Opry99er]

Anyone had the opportunity to try it out?  25 downloads... surely one or two of you are journaling up a storm on it.