8.6 Software Install Disc for Sawtooth AGP?

(UPDATE: Disc image found!)

Chris Nova from Mac OS 9 Lives has put out a call for a certain Software Install & Restore disc. This one's very rare, an 8.6 one specific to the Sawtooth AGP (not Yikes). Apparently they were bundled with Sawtooths only for a couple of months back in 1999, and not one has made its way onto Macintosh Garden or any other Mac archive site.

Here's a Mac OS 9 Lives forum link to the thread where Chris lays out the full details. If you can report a sighting of one of these rare birds, click on over and drop Chris a line. :)

FreeCol For PowerPC Macs

If any of you were downcast that the strategy game FreeCol required Java 1.6 and wouldn't run on PowerPC Macs, today's your lucky day. Thanks to the compiling talents of reader Javier A., we now have a new version of FreeCol that runs on Java 1.5. He uploaded it to his Dropbox folder (direct link), and it's only a 30 MB download.

Here's a blurb from the FreeCol website:

FreeCol is a turn-based strategy game based on the old game Colonization, and similar to Civilization. The objective of the game is to create an independent nation.

You start with only a few colonists defying the stormy seas in their search for new land. Will you guide them on the Colonization of a New World?

So it's a little like FreeCiv. FreeCol somehow escaped my attention, but I tried it out a little bit and it looks great. In addition to single player, you can also join multiplayer games over the internet. I'm not sure about the security implications of that, since Java 1.5 is outdated. From what I understand, only the web browser plug-in was vulnerable, but maybe someone can weigh in with a comment. I only do single player, anyway. It's humiliating enough when the A.I. kicks my ass ;)

Gawker Writer Slave To Consumerism, Hates Self

One of Gawker's latest slew of nondescript hires, Leah Finnegan, wrote an odd polemic taking Chloe Sevigny to task for using a "15-year-old Macbook." Her point being, well, at the end of her word salad I'm not sure what her point is. Something about Chloe being pretentious for using a fashionably unfashionable fashion. As usual, what's left unsaid is more interesting, that Finnegan can't stand to see someone opt out of the upgrade merry-go-round and so that person must be attacked.

The worst part of it, though, was Finnegan quoting Gizmodo's Editor-in-Chief Brian Barrett on whether it was possible a human could have such an ancient machine in today's world. Now, Finnegan doesn't have to know anything. She writes for Gawker. But Barrett's supposed to be an expert. This is his area. So what does he say?

"Honestly that thing is several factors shittier than a shitty phone," he typed in a Slack message. "I would say if she does have a 14-year-old MacBook I hope she does not need to use it very often."

Barrett continued: "Assuming she has a 2000 PowerBook, she has half the disk space you'd need to run Chrome and probably half the RAM, but I don't think she even has the hardware you'd need. Basically Chrome alone would destroy her computer."

For the record, Chrome never existed on PowerPC. And for the record, a 2000 Powerbook can run TenFourFox 31 (equivalent of Firefox 31) and, if RAM is limited, have even better luck with Iceweasel and Linux. As to Barrett's point that the Powerbook is worse than a "shitty phone" by several factors, I don't see too many people using three-year-old phones much less 15-year-old phones like people still use their Pismos.

So go to Brian Barrett for all of Apple's latest press releases, but don't expect him to know what he's talking about.