I love all of these stories of writing new software for Classic Macs. There is something really special about maintaining the usefulness of an old tool that most people have forgotten. Farmers who restore and run vintage tractors know this feeling well. They have built communities around this intersection of hobby and real work.

I have a Mac Classic given to me by my uncle. Last I checked (a few years ago) it booted up just fine. I need to crack it open before trying again because I’m afraid of leaky caps or batteries. Just need to find the time.

What's nice is the ability to do some of these things is becoming a lot more pleasant with cross-compilers and using a fancy modern IDE on your ultrawide monitor.

And the access to information -- trying to find specs and API calls for these devices when they were current was a nightmare.