While watching the Love Notes to Newton documentary, I saw a Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM) prominently featured in the backdrop of one interviewee’s house. Immediately I was like “I need to put my TAM in my backdrop too!”
This was the straw that broke the camel’s back; a lot of other factors recently have made me think about getting it out:
- Blogging about Growing Up Mac and wishing I had a photo of my own TAM for it
- Going to VCF East and planning to go to this Saturday’s Atlanta Historical Computing Society and wanting to show and tell about my TAM.
- Some random mentions of TAMs on BitBang.social
- Watching Action Retro’s videos about restoring and modding a TAM. Not that I’m going to do anywhere near that level of modding, but it gives me the confidence “if he can do that, I can at least install some RAM.” Plus, it’s helped me get the vision for incrementally improving a machine, even if some steps don’t work out right away.
- Also from Action Retro, realizing that the fact that I’m the original owner means it’s in really good shape. It’s a waste to just leave a machine in such good state in a box, especially if it risks its condition deteriorating without me knowing it.
- The sense from Love Notes to Newton of a community of people using an old technology they love. It’s not a coincidence that one of the Newton fans is a TAM fan too. I’d like to participate in a community like that.
So here it is! For all to see in my Zoom backdrop. I’ll share more about the state of it soon.
