1-11-2026
Small addition to the private cloud server. I got it connected to notablity for automatic cloud sync as well as adding it to the files app on all my apple devices. My father also updated many of the pages, including this one, to support dynamic resizing. I finally took the time to redo the formating on this blog to accommodate the change and it looks way better.


1-6-2026
New year, more projects
I spent way to long on what was supposed to be a hour side project.
I came up with the idea to make a private cloud server for school and easy file transfer from the PC to everything else
Was it worth it? Maybe
Was it cheaper that purchasing a service? Definitely
Was it way more fun? 100%

Read about it here (coming soon)

12-29-2025
Short update today.
 
Over the holidays I acquired 10 whole terabytes of SeaGate Barracuda HDD storage. It will be
put to good use as a Plex media server. Thankfully setting that up was far easier then getting
DynDNS to work on Cloudflare.

I also acquired my fathers previous IPad Pro (3rd Generation) and its still going strong on IOS 26.2.
I hope to put it to use as a way to watch media from the plex server when out of the house
and a school device for college which is coming up fast. 
 
I think most importantly is this is the day that I finally get this blog posted on the website
Very exciting


Update - 12/07/25 
An eventful day yesterday.

We had some time so we decided to dedicate the day to making some serious headway on the Macs
and more importantly this website which is getting so close to being a full website (and yet so far).

We started with the website as we felt that was most important to get up.

No website, no blog to document, no reason to do any work.

We already had the server up with just an IP and we had a domain, though we had not linked them yet.
We started with DynDns and found that it was confusing and also not free, so after a quick search
we decided to try CloudFlare. Now you would think Cloudflare would be easy due to them
hosting a third of the whole internet and you would be right...

for the first ten minutes...

Setting up the account and linking the IP to the domain was a slice of cake. After that it gets.. well.. difficult to say the least.
What we need is DynDNS which requires a program or custom shell script to constantly update CloudFlare on the current IP. This should be and was easy in the past (according to my tech genius father) and well, it's the one of most frustrating things so far... other than dealing with all the old and failing drives and even the new ones (whole other issue to complain about another time).
We downloaded what we assumed was the Cloudflare developed DDNS script which is called CloudFlare WARP. We were very wrong. I still have no idea what it does but I do know it's incredibly confusing, hard to open, and hard to close.
Sounds like a virus

Just don't even bother with it unless you know what it does.

Eventually we gave up and decided to come back later in the day as even linking the domain and the hostname didn't seem to be working properly.

We then decided to briefly look at some replacement key switches for the //e, which were very much not the correct ones so a new order will be made soon.

My father then suggested we attempt to recap the video/analog board on the Macintosh Plus to see if we could even do it.

We fully expected this to be slow and take more than one day to achieve. We were happily proven wrong when we “finished” just a mere few hours later.

This joy was short lived

To our total shock the Mac Plus immediately booted and the screen came on which was greeted by a surprised string of curses from my father. We attempted to boot in to an OS with the BlueSCSI which failed so we powered off the Mac Plus.

We then tried Plan B

I then assembled the EMU from Bigmessowires while my dad researched all the information needed to use it.

After this we plugged everything in and it attempted to boot in to an OS. The Mac had other ideas and decided to celebrate its new found life with a mini fireworks show just for us.

I, with manly composure, panicked and jumped away as the magic smoke poured out and filled the room with the smell of roasted pineapples.

Don't ask why it smelled like that, I have no idea either.

My father simply walked over and yanked the cord.

that was embarassing

We pulled the cover off expecting the worst. It could have been anything.

A charred motherboard?
Multiple busted capacitors?
An active fire?
The Twilight Saga?

Who knew what horrors were hiding inside.

You could imagine the confusion when I could not see a single thing wrong or out of place for a full ten seconds until I saw the culprit. Capacitor C38 had decided its time had come and oh did it go out with passion.

We are entirely to blame, not for installing it incorrectly but for the fact we didn't replace that one at all.
We neglected what we learned was probably the FIRST one we should have replaced.
After leaving to go eat an amazing meal we came back and promptly replaced C38.

It now appears to be fully functional and just needs a reliable boot drive so we can enjoy the fruits of our labor.
The BlueSCSI and the HD part of the EMU do not seem to be seen by the Plus but the Floppy portion of the EMU boots up right away.

Needless to say, the fact we got that far in a single day is exciting and hopefully a good sign for what's to come.



First Post - 12/06/25

Greetings.

It is I, the aforementioned son on my fathers blog.

I am excited to finally get this project going.
 
I would like to provide a bit of backstory as to why we are doing this now.
It started with my grandfather mentioning an old storage unit of my father's that has been sitting forgotten for 15 years. We quickly found it and rescued the various Macs and accompanying accessories for repair (And a clone).

This all is quickly going from my dad teaching me his nerdy ways to us jointly tackling these old macs while getting our personal collection of apple history back to its former glory.
I have myself had my fair share of apple products which will also be listed on the “my apples” page or possibly just here.
I also have other passions and tech interests which while not apple related will be talked about here.

Hopefully this site doesn’t spontaneously combust from the blasphemy of mentioning windows
products along with other items (like the upcoming VALV^e trio in Q1 2026).

I am looking forward to getting these macs up and going and especially tackling the behemoth that is Big Bertha.
(especially the //e, I really wanna play around with that machine)