68kmla MIA

[Trash80toG4]

The reason I effectively abandoned this forum is that the members of TD by and large seem to gravitate towards the discord channel and leave the forum to stagnate. Discord IMO is a very transient platform, and unless you are an active participant in a conversation that conversation is effectively lost to the sands of time as soon as the focus shifts. It's a great social platform, but a very poor information platform.

Bingo! Discord appears to be almost or even more ephemeral than texting:

- First: mail correspondence was the thing, with letters from folks like the letters of correspondence here in the U.S. available for centuries alongside letters from the Renaissance and back to the "letters" to the Ephesians and before. Oral tradition -> print there.

- Email has relegated such communication to folks of note who think to gift such to posterity. Very rarely heard of.

- Texting has all but eliminated email but for official business and longer "conversations."

- Don't wanna think about what social media has done.

- There's no Internet Archive for the likes of Discord from what I've heard?

So get the heck off Discord! Maybe use it as texting and the like. Post information on forums swept by the Archive or all is lost, no?

IMO of course.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Sadly, it's now defunct. Laurie Duncan (aka MacSamurai Consulting) gave it life and ran it. That is, until the day she decided to suddenly end it.

Nekochan ended the same way. Big loss.

 

[Concorde1993]

Yeah sorry for the manual approval, we had too many spam bots signing up en-masse. Wanted to make sure joiners were real people!

Np

 

[Kai Robinson]

I know that one barrier for a lot of people has been that there were too many subcategories and it was potentially confusing where to post. Lately, i've been tidying and consolidating the options - hopefully it'll be simpler to people now!

 

[Paralel]

It will be back. It always does.

Reminds me of fungus... (IRL my field is Medicine)

 

[JDW]

I signed up to TD I think quite early and posted here a bit at the time, but I gradually returned to 68mla and rarely visit this forum anymore. The reason I effectively abandoned this forum is that the members of TD by and large seem to gravitate towards the discord channel and leave the forum to stagnate.

I’m terribly sorry to hear that. And you can know I feel that from the heart based upon what I wrote earlier in this thread.

I’m going be repeating myself yet again, but I don’t want my previous words to be overlooked…

Our board is comprised of people “elected“ from the community, who also need to be active on this forum for the past six months, and in good standing, simply so we don’t get trolls elected to the board or people who otherwise hate this forum. But the barrier entry is not high.

Past board members decided to create the Discord. That doesn’t mean a future board would decide to keep it, especially if that future Board is comprised to people who dislike it because it detracts from the main forum.

Realistically, it’s unlikely the Discord would be done away with for the following two reasons:

1) Discord is shockingly popular among people younger than myself.

2) Future Board members will be comprised of our younger people, not older people.

But at the same time, the facts that I presented in my earlier post in this thread or true:

1) Posts on Discord aren’t picked up by Google and therefore your posts there are basically sent to into a black hole.

2) Discord takes activity away from the main forum, and the main forum is indexed by Google.

In other words, it’s not simply a matter of me, being 55 years old and therefore an old guy I guess, disliking Discord. There’s more to it than just that. I want the main forum to thrive. That’s why I do my darndest to reply people whenever I have the opportunity and I also manually approve people at times when it comes to new registrations.

Unlike other forums run by a perpetual king, this forum elects its Board and therefore has the potential to change.

You also have the right to contact Admins or mods or board members to express your opinion, and you will not be punished or harassed for expressing that opinion.

I would encourage people to consider being elected to the board and expressing their opinions, rather than write our forum off as a lost cause. You really do have the power to change things. And without change, things stagnate.

Yeah, it’s gonna be an uphill battle to fight against something as popular as Discord, but Mac clones were popular back in the day too, even though they weren’t best for Apple.

 

[PPC_505]

There's like two annoying people there and the rest are some of the best and most knowledgeable people I've met. I wish they'd just deal with the couple pretentious sarcastic people so we'd all have less trouble. I've reported the one worst offender's posts probably half a dozen times over the past two years but nothing ever happens.

As for the site being down again, they've posted about it on their Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/68kmla.bsky.social

Heh. I love that I know exactly who you're referring to.

 

[Oelmuvun]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't MLA have an IRC server as well? Haven't been on it for about a decade but I'm seeing references to it as late as 2025. Of course IRC being plain text VS. Discord's pictures, video, voice chat, screen sharing/etc. The latter being a more common platform for people to casually use these days does end up being a very significant factor in the points being made. I'm not disagreeing with you here, perhaps just going on a rambling tangent.

Having said that, I think regardless of the era some people lurking in chat more than the forum has sort of always been a thing to some degree or another. I have vague memories from the past that this topic was always around so long as forums and IRC co-existed. Certainly Discord servers will have higher numbers of online users than IRC, as it's even less common to shut off computers now than it was in the past and many people carry their chat app with them on their phone... Which is a level of connected mobility that we could only dream of in the heyday of IRC. I think for the average person Discord is also easier to get started with than IRC. We also added two billion people to the planet since the year 2000, so naturally some of them realized that our old junk computers are actually pretty neat.

Getting back on topic I think 68kMLA is mostly just the more established and recognized name in the vintage Mac space. It takes a lot to overshadow the brand recognition they have established over the years. If someone is into old Macs they likely had a 68kMLA account at some point or another. For people posting new material, why would they deliberately go to the smaller community unless they have a specific reason to. Once established on the popular spot why would they leave unless all their friends are also leaving? Same deal as trying to get people away from Discord, Facebook, and other popular social media platforms. A little mention here... the company behind Discord is actually properly evil just like other social media platforms, but that is beyond the scope of this thread. Anyway, JDW can rest easy knowing that he is morally correct by not living on Discord. and I'm not being sarcastic or joking, it's the truth.


As far as opinions on signal to noise ratios go, my impression and/or feeling(or just fantasy thoughts?) is that the TD forum has some pretty smart people and a pretty good ratio. How much signal is lost within the noise of the chat and not getting a forum post? Not sure, but I think the notable things do tend to get forum posts.
How many of the cool posts are cross-posted between the two sites? Not a clue, this is a feeling rather than a scientific assessment and is biased heavily by my own uses/interpretations/etc.
How many more cool forum posts could we get if the dross was skimmed off the chat and remainder cast into forum posts? Also not sure, though having said that, some of the chattering in the chat has spawned projects and forum posts. I don't really think there is a clean way to migrate all of the chat activity into forum posts. Live chat is sort of it's own thing. Some things can be nice to communicate about but aren't really worthy of a forum post imo.

Should I have made a forum post when recently I did the completely uneventful re-cap of recently purchased LC II and LC 475 w/ PSU recap and BlueSCSI assembly and everything went fine? IDK, I don't feel like it's very interesting, but I suppose that might have been some amount of inspirational to people just starting into the hobby? I don't do the video thing though, and a bunch of other people already do. Perhaps I should collect up whatever pictures and information and post it? Thinking back I probably should have posted my M396F-Replika assembly, since that's a little more unique. I'm not really one to start my own posts, and tend to only participate after the fact. However I also think people would get upset with how I remove caps and clean my boards... I might get push-back when someone tries to do something risky I've been doing when it doesn't work out for them.

Going off-topic again, I really struggle trying to browse forums on phones with mobile browsers and small screens. Trying to do any significant text entry with phone keyboards is also not a good experience for me. Instant messaging programs are more tolerable to interact with on-the-go, but I still need to sit down with a 'real computer' to get things done.

Dunno. That's enough rambling from me, the Canadian dollar isn't all that strong but I guess that's my two cents.

 

[adespoton]

I’m going be repeating myself yet again, but I don’t want my previous words to be overlooked…

Our board is comprised of people “elected“ from the community, who also need to be active on this forum for the past six months, and in good standing, simply so we don’t get trolls elected to the board or people who otherwise hate this forum. But the barrier entry is not high.

Past board members decided to create the Discord. That doesn’t mean a future board would decide to keep it, especially if that future Board is comprised to people who dislike it because it detracts from the main forum.

Realistically, it’s unlikely the Discord would be done away with for the following two reasons:

1) Discord is shockingly popular among people younger than myself.

2) Future Board members will be comprised of our younger people, not older people.

But at the same time, the facts that I presented in my earlier post in this thread or true:

1) Posts on Discord aren’t picked up by Google and therefore your posts there are basically sent to into a black hole.

2) Discord takes activity away from the main forum, and the main forum is indexed by Google.

In other words, it’s not simply a matter of me, being 55 years old and therefore an old guy I guess, disliking Discord. There’s more to it than just that. I want the main forum to thrive. That’s why I do my darndest to reply people whenever I have the opportunityand I also manually approve people at times when it comes to new registrations.

Unlike other forums run by a perpetual king, this forum elects its Board and therefore has the potential to change.

You also have the right to contact Admins or mods or board members to express your opinion, and you will not be punished or harassed for expressing that opinion.

I would encourage people to consider being elected to the board and expressing their opinions, rather than write our form off as a lost cause. You really do have the power to change things. And without change, things stagnate.

Yeah, it’s gonna be an uphill battle to fight against something as popular as Discord, but Mac clones were popular back in the day too, even though they weren’t best for Apple.

Well, the latest actions at Discord regarding age verification (and the ensuing data leak) might make a small dent in its popularity.

Personally, I participate in a few Discord forums, but it feels like it takes the worst features of IRC and Facebook Messenger and combines them.

Then again, it also seems to be treated like the spiritual successor of SnapChat, so that tracks.

Oh, and hi everyone I finally got around to creating an account!

 

[sunvalleylaw]

Should I have made a forum post when recently I did the completely uneventful re-cap of recently purchased LC II and LC 475 w/ PSU recap and BlueSCSI assembly and everything went fine? IDK, I don't feel like it's very interesting, but I suppose that might have been some amount of inspirational to people just starting into the hobby? I don't do the video thing though, and a bunch of other people already do. Perhaps I should collect up whatever pictures and information and post it? Thinking back I probably should have posted my M396F-Replika assembly, since that's a little more unique. I'm not really one to start my own posts, and tend to only participate after the fact. However I also think people would get upset with how I remove caps and clean my boards... I might get push-back when someone tries to do something risky I've been doing when it doesn't work out for them.

I think anything I do right now and might report on would seem uneventful and mundane to the more experienced here. I am that guy who never really opened his computer before other than to may be install some extra RAM once or twice. So re-capping, replacing CPU'S, installing IDE or SCSI emulator drives is all new to me and seems adventurous.

I guess I am going to err on the side of posting too much on the basis that other NOOBs might be inspired or learn from my mistakes and successes, and the more experienced will hopefully be at worst mildly bored and annoyed and potentially be amused.

 

[Trash80toG4]

I guess I am going to err on the side of posting too much on the basis that other NOOBs might be inspired or learn from my mistakes and successes, and the more experienced will hopefully be at worst mildly bored and annoyed and potentially be amused.

That's exactly the spirit, not an error. Share it all where it'll be searchable and remain available well into the future.

 

[mac27]

So the other place has been down for what, 3 days now? Or something like that. :/

 

[JDW]

How many of the cool posts are cross-posted between the two sites? Not a clue, this is a feeling rather than a scientific assessment and is biased heavily by my own uses/interpretations/etc.

It would come down to how one defines COOL, but I know cool when I see it, and even though I ceased all public posting at the MLA starting in July 2021 and while I don't sneak around in the forum over there either, when I become aware of a significant post about a new product announcement by a creator over there, I always check here and when I don't find it here, I am rather flabbergasted. To rectify that, I always send a PM to the thread starter (who is almost always the product creator), and I encourage them to cross post it here. In almost every case, they do just that, for which I am grateful. Would they had I not sent them a PM? Probably not. And that's why I must encourage all of you to please be proactive about these things. I don't care about cross posting of threads which have little significance. I am talking about new products that are ground-breaking. Consider the color LCD kit from ZZJ. Monumental stuff like that needs to be talked about everywhere, and that includes Discord too, and yes, the various FaceBook groups out there too.

And no, I am not saying that EBAY finds or personal mods are not important — they are important and need to be cross-posted too.

How many more cool forum posts could we get if the dross was skimmed off the chat and remainder cast into forum posts?

If you mean how many more cool forum posts could we get here on TD if more people would post in the forum first and on Discord last, I assure you, it would be many, many more posts. I don't mean to piss off those who like Discord, but I've never hidden my dislike of it. And that NAME! What thinker out there can honestly say that name is best for a harmonious place to gather? Trust me, I've been on other Discord servers because I was forced to in order to contact someone, and I ended up getting a lot of flack (long story).

And for the record, I was never on the MLA IRC either.

To borrow from In Living Color...
HOMEY DON'T PLAY DAT!

Should I have made a forum post when recently I did the completely uneventful re-cap of recently purchased LC II and LC 475 w/ PSU recap and BlueSCSI assembly and everything went fine?

Yes, because it's not boring. Posting what you had for breakfast in the Lounge (on the MLA) or the Soap Box (here) is a waste of time, in my view. People do it. But even back when I was on the MLA, I almost never visited the Lounge. I don't often post in the Soap Box here UNLESS there is an important thread like this one.

But there's a second reason why you should post such topics here... More posts breed even more posts. It's true. The more content we have, the better we are perceived. And because the posts I am talking about are FORUM POSTS, not Discord posts, they will be picked up by Google. That's huge! Discord chats are buried in that black hole.

Going off-topic again...

It's hard to go off-topic in the Soap Box because it's basically off topic in general relative to vintage computing topics. And yet, what we are talking about here pertains to the vintage community, so it's truly an atypical Soap Box kind of thread, and again, that's why I am active in it.

...I still need to sit down with a 'real computer' to get things done.

Oh yes! Absolutely positively yes!
I was had an iPad. Bought it in 2012. Haven't had one since.
I have iPhones, but my Macs are where I get real work done.

We can all wish iOS was better, but it's out of our control. macOS is where it's at. Can you even conceive of posting a monolithic thread on an iPhone filled with dozens of links and photos and maybe 10 paragraphs of well thought out text? I can't. Yet, I like such posts. I create such posts.

Lastly, I appreciated all your words and did not consider them rambling at all. It's productive conversation in my book. So THANK YOU!

 

[Trash80toG4]

Amen to all of that, JDW! I tend to post my somewhat less than sane projects over here because of the editing flexibility. Haven't completed one (it's the research, procurement of parts and the process, not the end product that appeals most to me***) far enough along to post it over there. Once in a while I'll link to a work in progress.

One of the "product developers" over there complained about me posting "idea projects that never went anywhere" and it REALLY pissed me off.

*** I can only hope some of my meanderings and suggestions for other's projects entice some to delve the development depths.

 

[JDW]

One of the "product developers" over there complained about me posting "idea projects that never went anywhere"...

Such "complaining" (especially by a developer) is heartbreaking to hear about.

We need great projects and ideas, even if a large number never pan out. It's the talk about those matters that is important because it can encourage others to pick up the torch and see such a project through to completion, even though the original poster of the project never did.

If I see a very important project that needs to be completed but never did, I may try to gently encourage ongoing development the best I can. For example, the totally outstanding WarpSE accelerator project by Zane Kamenski. He took it far beyond the concept stage though and even graciously sent me a working sample for evaluation, which I did evaluate and provided heaps of feedback in his thread too. That project ended without having gone to mass production. But even on the MLA, similar things happen. The CF card drive solution by ZZJ, for example, offering drive speed that would light your pants afire! My goodness that's a device I'd love to have! But alas, I have spoken to him about it and tariffs and other things are holding it up.

Even if you are talking about a private repair project not a sellable product for the masses, that too needs to be shared because that's what this hobby is all about, even if you start the project but don't finish it.

Some of you will recall I had a giveaway in the past. I only did the one for various reasons, but basically I gave away the world's single most complete SE RELOADED kit. Another person even donated a battery bombed SE board to the winner as well. The winner simply needed a plastic case, PSU and chassis to make a complete machine. I did the giveaway for the lone purpose of promoting the SE RELOADED project and the amazing work of @Kai Robinson . I still want everyone to give it a try. It's making your own motherboard! And the SE build is much easier than the SE/30 board build, in my opinion. Anyway, I followed-up with the winner several times over the last couple years, but he has not been able to start the project. Sometimes, things like that happen.

None of us should publicly "condemn" someone for not finishing something. Instead, gently and lovingly providing encouragement to keep the project going or offering help is okay and actually good at times. We need to encourage people to post about their new projects, not make them fearful of doing so. Posts like "Hey, guys! Look at what I'm starting on today!" are not a waste of time, even if they don't pan out.

And so, I say go ahead pull the trigger on sharing. When in doubt, just share. It's perfectly okay here. And if a bully tries to give you flack about it, I'll likely notice it and privately confront them about it; but even if I don't notice it, you can tell me or a mod, and we'll handle it. There's no bullying or gatekeeping on the TinkerDifferent main forum. But even when someone does a bad thing (i.e., "sins a bit differently than you and I"), we don't immediately hammer them with Warning points or threats because that harshness only breeds more harshness. It's my personal aim to diffuse tension with a soft hand and a kind heart. A soft answer most often turns away wrath. Not everyone is a lost cause.

Anyway, post away!