The Macintosh SE/30 - Computer Hall of Fame

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They say never meet your heroes, but every once in a while they live up to the hype. Here in Userlandia, let’s welcome the first inductee to the Computer Hall of Fame: The Macintosh SE/30.

It’s rare these days to find a computer that expresses some kind of philosophy. One example is Framework, whose primary design focus is upgradability and repairability. Compare that to a sea of lookalike and workalike laptops from competitors who can’t articulate why you should buy their machines over another’s except for price. Of course, there’s another manufacturer that makes computers with some kind of guiding philosophy, and that’s the trillion dollar titan: Apple. You might say said philosophy is “more money for us,” and you wouldn’t be wrong! But on a product level, there’s still some Jobsian “Think Different” idealism at Apple Park. To wit, the rainbow-colored M1 iMac still channels the soul of its classic introductory commercial narrated by Jeff Goldblum—“Step one: Plug in. Step two: Get Connected. Step Three… there is no step three.”

2024 will mark the fortieth anniversary of the Macintosh. Not just the Macintosh as a platform, mind you, but the fortieth anniversary of the all-in-one Macintosh. Today’s iMac is vastly more powerful than the original 128K, but both of their built-in displays say Hello in Susan Kare’s iconic script. Another thing they have in common is a love-it-or-hate-it reaction to the all-in-one form factor. A compact Mac, for all its foibles and flaws, sparked something in people. It had personality. But while the Mac was fun and whimsical and revolutionary, something always held it back. Even die-hard fans couldn’t ignore its insufficient memory or inadequate storage, let alone its lack of expansion. Apple crossed off these limitations one by one with the 512k, Mac Plus, and SE.

Only one limitation remained, and that was performance. Inside the SE was the same 68000 CPU found in the original Mac. Sure, it was slightly faster thanks to slightly speedier memory, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy Mac users who wanted a more powerful Mac without spending five and a half grand on a Macintosh II. They turned to third party upgrades like DayStar Digital’s accelerator boards to give their Macs a turbo boost, and Apple took notice. Why leave that money to a third party when they could take it up front?

Apple announced an upgraded SE on January 19, 1989: the SE/30. This upgrade didn’t come cheap—the SE/30’s suggested retail price of $4,369 was a considerable premium over a vanilla SE. But underneath a nearly identical skin was a brand new logic board based on the range-topping Mac IIx. With a 16MHz 68030 processor and 68882 floating point unit, the SE/30 crammed phenomenal computing power into an itty-bitty chassis space. It’s a rare example of Apple actually giving some users what they wanted. An SE/30 could be a writing buddy, a QuarkXPress workstation, an A/UX server, or even a guest role in Seinfeld as Jerry’s computer.

Although I missed the SE/30’s heyday, I experienced it after the fact through books, magazines, and websites. The argument that the SE/30 is the best version of what Steve Jobs put on the stage in 1984 is a persuasive one. Prominent Mac writers like John Siracusa and Adam Engst proclaim the SE/30 as their favorite Mac of all time. They’re joined by decades of Usenet and forum posts from people all over the globe who love this little powerhouse. All this praise has inflated prices on vintage SE/30s, even ones in questionable condition. So when I was given the opportunity to pick one up, complete in box, for free? Now that’s an offer I couldn’t refuse.

One Person’s Mac is Another Person’s Treasure

You never know what treasure’s buried in somebody’s basement. Back in September I was at a work function catching up with a colleague, and I mentioned my trip to VCF Midwest. “Oh, I didn’t know you collected old computers,” he said. “I’ve got an old Mac from the 90s in my basement. It was my aunt’s, and she barely used it. It’s still in the box. Do you want it?” Do I?! Of course I wanted it! A day later he sent me some photos of the box, and I couldn’t believe what I saw: it was an SE/30! It was like somebody told me I could take a low mileage Corvette from their barn. I stopped by his house the following Saturday and picked up the SE/30, an Apple Extended Keyboard 1, and an ImageWriter II all still in their boxes. I couldn’t in good conscience take all this for free, so I gave him one of my vintage Mamiya film camera kits and a case of beer in return.

I’d love to tell you that I brought this Mac home, took it out of the box, powered it on to a Happy Mac, and partied like it was 1989. But you and I both know that’s not how this works. Schrödinger’s Mac might have succumbed to a multitude of maladies during its many years in the box. Even new old stock or barely used gear suffers from aging components, because a box isn’t a magical force field that halts the passage of time. SE/30s are notorious for using explosive Maxell batteries. Surface-mount capacitors have the capacity to leak their corrosive electrolyte all over the logic board. Spindles and heads inside the mechanical hard drive could be seized in place. The only way to know for sure was to open the stasis chamber and bring this Mac out of hibernation.

Outside the box was a shipping label that said this machine was sold by the New York University bookstore, which was one of Apple’s pilot universities for selling Macs to students and teachers. Inside the box is the SE/30 along with a complete set of manuals, some software, and a mouse. Up first is the open me first packet, containing the system software and tour disks. Bill Atkinson’s HyperCard comes standard for your stack-building pleasure. All the manuals and extras are there too, like the QuickStart guide, quick reference sheet, Apple stickers, and even the “Thanks for buying a Mac” insert. There’s even a a bonus copy of Microsoft Word.

Fully recapped board

Manuals and accessories are nice, but what you really want to see is the Mac itself. This SE/30’s case looks pretty good for a computer old enough to have a midlife crisis. The keyboard and mouse have yellowed a bit more, but it’s nothing a retrobrite couldn’t fix. But how it looked outside mattered less than how it looked on the inside. I cracked open the case to inspect the condition of the logic board. The intact purple Tadiran PRAM battery exhibited no signs of leakage—phew! A light coating of crud clung to the capacitors, which meant a recap job was in order. Barely any dust covered the boards and cables, and the CRT had none of that notorious black soot. The analog board capacitors showed no signs of bulging or leaking. Honestly, this is really good condition for an unmaintained machine of this age. I thought my odds of a successful power-on test were very good. I plugged the board back into the Mac and turned it on. Unfortunately, it powered on with a garbled screen colloquially known as simasimac. This condition could happen for a variety of reasons, but the prime suspect was those cruddy capacitors. After a date with a soldering iron and some tantalum caps, the newly recapped board was ready for another test. I flipped the switch and got a familiar bong—now this Mac is a Happy Mac. Success!

Maximizing My Macintosh

While the recap brought the SE/30 back to life, it wasn’t ready to head back into action just yet. This machine was a bone-stock configuration, and it would need some upgrades to unleash its full potential. My coworker’s parent’s sibling’s former Macintosh came equipped with 1MB of RAM and a 40MB hard drive. That was Apple’s mid-range config for the SE/30, but one megabyte of memory was a bit stingy for a machine that cost over four grand in 1989. The 40MB SCSI hard drive was more appropriate for its price, and I wouldn’t mind keeping it if it worked. Alas, I couldn’t rouse it from its decades-long slumber. Thankfully, both of these problems are easy to solve for the modern vintage Mac owner.

Mass storage was first in the lineup, because the hard drive was ding-dong-dead. I needed a better solution than another SCSI hard drive—even if found a compatible drive, it’d just as likely to die as this one. I turned to the current champion of modern retro storage: BlueSCSI. The external DB-25 model is an okay solution, but an SE/30 deserves internal storage. I could have mounted it on the same bracket used by the internal hard drive, but that would mean cracking open the case every time I needed to put something on the SD card. The solution is PotatoFi’s 3D printable PDS slot bracket. Now I can access the SD card from outside the case and even see the BlueSCSI’s status LEDs. Brilliant!

Batting second was RAM. An SE/30 can address a maximum of 128MB of RAM when all eight memory slots are populated with 16MB SIMMs. This stood as the record for the maximum memory inside an all-in-one Mac until the Power Mac 5400 in 1996. Few users actually took advantage of that high ceiling because 16MB SIMMs took a long time to come to market, and when they did, they were outrageously expensive. Nowadays they’re cheap as chips, as my British friends like to say. There’s plenty of eBay shops selling 64 and 128 meg kits for $50 and $100, respectively. Or you can get them from Other World Computing for a similar price. 128MB felt like overkill, so I bought a 64MB kit and saved the difference.

RAM

I snapped four new SIMMs into four empty slots and flipped the power switch. The Mac booted up to the desktop and About This Macintosh displayed a total of 65MB. Hooray! But—there’s always a but with old computers—there’s more to the memory story. Many old Macs, including the SE/30, run a memory test on a cold boot. Stuffing your SE/30 full of RAM will have a significant impact on the duration of this test. A maxed out SE/30 can take a minute or two to go from power on to Welcome to Macintosh, and a 64 meg system takes half as much. But that’s not the only caveat for large amounts of memory. The SE/30, along with the II, IIx, and IIcx have a dirty secret—a 24-bit dirty secret.

Have you ever thought about what defines the bit-ness of a CPU? If I polled the average retro computer enthusiast as to how many “bits” are in the Motorola 68000 CPU inside their Amiga 500, Atari ST, or Mac SE, they’d likely answer “16-bit.” Sega used the 68000 in the Genesis and advertised it as a 16-bit system. And they’re not wrong, but they’re not completely right either. To understand how Apple’s ROMs got so dirty, we have to understand the development of the 68000.

The year is 1976, and Motorola Semiconductor was in a heap of trouble. Sales of their 8-bit 6800 microprocessor were slumping due to stiff competition from the likes of the 6502, Z80, and 8080. Meanwhile, Intel’s marketshare was soaring thanks to their advancements in silicon fabrication. They were already designing a new 16-bit CPU, the 8086, that would leapfrog the 8-bit competition. Now Motorola’s plans to reinvigorate its flagging CPU sales were at a crossroads. They could rush a me-too 16-bit product to market, but it wouldn’t be able to beat Intel on price or performance. Having determined that fighting Intel head-on was a losing bet, Moto would zig where Intel had zagged.

Motorola 68000 in Mac SE

Colin Crook, Tom Gunter, and the 68K team decided that a 32-bit instruction set would be a way to future-proof their design while offering something Intel wasn’t. There was only problem with this clever idea: economically packaging all the support circuitry for a full 32-bit CPU wasn’t yet possible. A dual-inline package CPU with more than 64 pins was costly both in manufacturing and in board real estate. So how could they keep an eye on the future while utilizing then-current tech?

Motorola’s solution was implementing the 32-bit 68K instruction set with 16-bit components. The CPU has 32-bit registers, a 32-bit memory model, and 32-bit data types, but it also offers 16 and 8-bit data types. Only 24 of the 32 address lines are connected to memory, and the data bus and arithmetic logic unit are 16-bit. This let the CPU use those common 64-pin DIP chips. Most programs used the 8- and 16-bit instructions, with 32-bit operations possible if you were okay with reduced performance. This forward-thinking architecture made it easy for Motorola to design a full 32-bit chip, unlike Intel who needed to work around a lot of cruft when designing the 386. 68K software would be forward compatible with Motorola’s eventual full 32-bit chip, so long as you didn’t do anything foolish like hijack the unused high-order memory address bits for non-addressing purposes.

Unfortunately Andy Hertzfeld did exactly that when he designed Mac OS’ lockable and purgeable memory flags, to his later regret. The memory pointer had room for all 32 bits, but only 24 were actually used because only 24 physical memory address lines were available on the CPU package. Exploiting this seemed like a good idea at the time; those eight bits weren't doing anything and it’d be an efficient use of limited resources. But that quest for efficiency in the present mortgaged their future, and the bill came due when Apple shipped Macs with 32-bit 68020 and 68030 CPUs. These 24-bit dirty Macs couldn’t address more than 8MB of RAM unless you used A/UX.

Apple fixed this memory malady by including new 32-bit clean ROMs in Macs beginning with the IIci. Application developers also had to fix their apps to avoid touching those memory address bits. Owners of the II, IIx, IIcx, and SE/30 expected Apple to offer a ROM upgrade to unleash their systems’ full potential, but Apple never did. Most users back in the day fixed this limitation by installing a 32-bit patch extension like MODE32 or Apple’s 32-bit Enabler. If you were lucky to find a spare Mac IIsi ROM SIMM, you could install that into your SE/30 and have a truly 32-bit clean compact Mac. But those ROMs were hard to find back then and are even rarer today.

Instead of stealing Peter’s ROMs to fix Paul’s Macs, the community has developed new hardware to clean up Apple’s dirty laundry. I procured a Big Mess O’ Wires ROMinator II, which is one of several modern Macintosh ROM SIMMs. It’s not only 32-bit clean, it also eliminates the memory test, adds a ROM disk, and a few other features. I’m not sure how I feel about the pirate icon and the new startup chime, but I admit it gives the Mac a little more character. If you don’t care for the frills, a GGLabs MACSIMM or a PurpleROM will get you 32-bit cleanliness and a ROM disk for a lower price. Honestly, running Mac OS 7.6 and later on these machines without an accelerator is probably a bad idea. I’m sticking to System 7.5 and earlier.

After the repairs and upgrades, the SE/30 was ready for a test drive. I wrangled words in Microsoft Word, slummed around in SimCity, and floated with AfterDark’s flying toasters. Apple claimed the SE/30 was four times faster than a vanilla SE and it sure feels that way. My past experiences with a Plus, SE, or Classic left me wanting because applications always felt a little slow. Not so with the SE/30—its responsiveness, especially with solid state storage, was excellent. I had to admit I was falling for the SE/30’s charms. I get it now. It’s not just hype or nostalgia—this was the compact Macintosh as it was meant to be, without compromises or excuses. So why did Apple kill it?

SE/30/30 Hindsight

Apple discontinued the SE/30 on October 23, 1991. Its replacement, if you could call it that, was the Classic II. The headline specs for the Classic II sound like an SE/30 in a cheaper package. It had a 16MHz 68030 CPU, 2MB of RAM, and a 40MB hard drive all for the low cost of $1900. Sounds like a good deal, so what’s the catch? While the Classic II’s 68030 ran at the same clock speed as an SE/30, it was hobbled by a 16-bit external data bus, making it 30% slower than an SE/30. Floating point calculations are even slower because the FPU was now an optional add-on. Two, its maximum RAM was cut down to 10MB—a fraction of the SE/30’s 128MB. Three, the versatile PDS slot was replaced with a more limited connector for that optional FPU. All these changes combined to make the Classic II more of an entry level appliance and less of a power user’s machine. SE/30 fans were understandably upset; they wanted an upgrade. Why would Apple kill a beloved Mac like the SE/30 without offering a true successor?

A lot changed at Apple from 1989 to 1991. Jean-Louis Gassée—Apple’s product man responsible for high-cost, high-powered Macs like the IIfx and the Mac Portable—left the company in 1990. CEO John Sculley and newly promoted COO Michael Spindler delivered new marching orders to Apple’s engineers: build less expensive computers to grow Apple’s marketshare. From that standpoint the Classic II was a smashing success. The SE/30’s copious component count made it a prime target for a cost-reduced revision. The Classic II’s highly integrated logic board had 60% fewer chips than the SE/30’s, making the Classic II considerably cheaper to manufacture while maintaining a healthy margin. The street price for an SE/30 with 4MB RAM and 80MB hard drive in 1991 was $2800. A Classic II with the same specs was $2400, and one year later Apple’s retail partners would sell the same machine as a Performa 200 for $1200. Slashing the maximum memory and removing the PDS slot pushed power users to more expensive Macs instead of buying a Classic II and hot-rodding it.

The Color Classic wasn’t the upgrade SE/30 owners were looking for.

By 1993 the black-and-white Mac was looking pretty dated in a world of Super VGA graphics. It had been four years since the announcement of the SE/30, and its fans picked up on rumors of an upcoming all-in-one color Mac. Surely this time will be different and they’d get the upgrade of their dreams. And when the Macintosh Color Classic was announced, it looked it might be the one! It came in a brand new case featuring Apple’s curvaceous Espresso design language and a glorious ultra color Sony Trinitron display. Apple even brought back the PDS slot! But wait—further down on the spec sheet was the same old and slow 16MHz 030 hampered by a 16-bit data bus. And a maximum of 10MB of RAM, again? It’s not different at all, is it, Steve?!

Apple soon realized their mistake and launched the Color Classic II a few months later with a 33MHz 030 and a full 32-bit data bus. Now this was a true upgrade for most SE/30 users, but Apple didn’t sell them in the USA. Too bad, so sad. Apple was descending into its beleaguered era, when prospective Mac buyers had to choose between the dizzying array of Centrises, Quadras, Performas, or whatever Apple’s roulette wheel said they should name their computers on any given day.

But wait—you’re a discerning power user with an SE/30 on their desk. Why should you spend multiple thousands on a new Mac when you could spend multiple hundreds on an accelerator instead? DayStar Digital’s Turbo 040 sold for about $1500 in 1993. As long as you were still okay with monochrome video, this card gave your little Mac enough power to trade blows with the reigning heavyweight champion, the Quadra 950 tower. And if you weren’t okay with monochrome video, Micron’s XCeed brought multiple shades of gray to the SE/30’s display. Color graphics cards were available too. A determined user could hack together an accelerator, graphics card, and network card into this tiny package and keep it going until the PowerPC transition finally made them cry uncle and buy a new Mac.

Apple’s power users have been remarkably loyal to the Mac through some pretty tough times. Not necessarily loyal to Apple, mind you—I have a hunch that the kind of people who owned SE/30s bought Mac clones. But these people stuck with the Mac through the beleaguered era, eventually becoming the bloggers and podcasters who filled the vacuum left by the death of Macworld, MacUser, and MacAddict. Whenever there’s a new Mac announcement I always sense this undercurrent from their coverage that “if only Apple made a computer tailored to my specific needs, it would be the best computer ever! Just like the SE/30, and the Cube, and the G4 towers!” But like it or not, the Macintosh and Apple are no longer the underdog who’s too cool for school. You’d think they’d be happy, because Apple finally won and took over the world, but they can’t be happy because Apple lost their counterculture joie de vive in the process.

Macintosh SE/30 on desk

The SE/30 Abides.

I understand why so many former SE/30 owners have been chasing that machine’s ideal for decades. Perhaps it’s an impossible standard to live up to and their idea of the Perfect Mac can never actually be realized. After all, the SE/30 had its share of shortcomings. But in the context of the overall package they were minor inconveniences. It’s no surprise that it found an audience with college students, writers, and designers who appreciated aesthetics and the value of the overall package while appreciating its technical prowess. If I had one at the time, I would’ve appreciated it too. Sometimes when you meet a hero, you’ve actually met the real deal.

The Vintage Computer Festival East 2023 Report

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Whirring hard drives, clackety keyboards, and CRT monitors—ah, the sounds of spring. Unable to resist this siren song, certain species of migratory nerds find themselves congregating at the source of this cacophony: the Jersey Shore. Here, in Userlandia, we’re taking a road trip to the east coast’s finest antique computer event: the Vintage Computer Festival East.

Ah, New Jersey. Home of the Devils, Bruce Springsteen, and Rum Ham. My last visit was back in 2021 for VCF East. After missing the 2022 event due to a scheduling conflict, I cleared my calendar to attend in 2023. I enjoyed the vibe of the 2021 show—check out my review from back then—and a five hour drive from my home base northwest of Boston is reasonable for a long weekend getaway. Driving to the show makes it possible to buy or sell big, bulky computers that won’t fit in a carry-on. With a car packed full of hardware to sell in the consignment hall, I set my course to the Garden State and hopped on the highway.

VCF East’s usual venue is the InfoAge Science and History Museums in Wall, New Jersey. Not much has changed since my last visit, and the same rooms (save for one) played their same roles. Hundreds of antique computers and the people that love them congregated in these halls over the course of three days. With exhibitors that exhibit! Vendors that vend! And consignments to consign! So let’s dive in to the highlights, lowlights, and LED lights surrounding VCF East.

Exhibits and Vendors

Flipping through the show booklet or scrolling through the VCF website reveals an impressive slate of exhibitors and special guests. Keeping a show fresh and attracting new visitors without sacrificing its soul is a tough job, but the VCF crew is up to the challenge. By selecting broad themes like “computers in education” and “keeping computing alive” the team fostered a museum road show vibe. Saturday and Sunday promised over forty tables of exhibitors and vendors across three halls. Some familiar faces returned, while others were new to the show.

One thing I appreciate about many of the exhibits is that they’re not just static machines on display, but active demonstrations of what the computers can do. The first hall was a wonderful microcosm of the entire show. Dan Fitzgerald’s Making Music with the Macintosh featured a Mac Plus, SE, and Mini running various MIDI and DAW apps. You could compose and record your own digital music and take it home with you thanks to a giant TASCAM mixing board.

Across the room was Tech Dungeon, selling some Commodore equipment and accessories like their Freeloader 64 cart. For $25 the Freeloader 64 gives you a system monitor, enhanced DOS, a reset button, and fast load functionality. Maybe I’ll write an in-depth review it in the future. Next, Eli’s Software Encyclopedia had hundred of boxed software titles for sale. Three for $20? Sounds like a fair deal to me. C64, Apple, IBM, and Amiga titles were on hand, many still in their shrink wrap. Foenix Retro Systems had a very interesting booth, demonstrating their F256K “modern” retro computer. It’s a system powered by a 6502 family CPU and its own custom TinyVICKY video system. It’s the first I’ve heard of the project, and I liked what I saw. A Fire Emblem-style demo will always catch my eye. Rounding out the room was Cosmic Void, selling some very cool retro hair dye and computer themed accessories.

The next room offered even more systems to play with. Want to read and punch some paper tape? Corey Cohen’s got you covered. Vlado Vince’s collection of eastern European micros gave a glimpse into a world of computing that many of us hadn’t seen. A magnetic core memory demo reminded us what life was like before DRAM and SRAM. The one-two punch of The Unseen World of PowerPC and Workstation Overload featured many expensive machines I only read about back in the day. Alpha, PowerPC, PA-RISC, and more were on tap to show that Intel wasn’t the only game in town.

Eric Rangell’s booth displayed Apple computers used in education back in the eighties. The centerpiece was an Apple IIGS wired to a MIDI keyboard running music tutor software. But just as important was a IIC running Broderbund’s Science Toolkit. Live experiments ran all weekend thanks to working sensors monitored by the program.

The role of Macs in education and edutainment were well represented on the northern half of the hall. Peter and Heather Fletcher’s exhibition on the Living Books CD-ROM series was a nostalgia bomb for people like me who grew up on the cutting edge of multimedia. Across the way was the Macintosh Classroom, a series of Apple computers running learning software and common educational apps. It was like being back in a 90s middle school computer lab, when Apple was the principal computer in American schools.

Southeast Pennsylvania’s Kennet Classic Computer Museum was on the road here at VCF. An SGI Indigo was on hand to detail new museum exhibits and it looked good doing it. Make sure to stop by the next Kennet Classic events in May and September!

I can’t forget to mention the Motorola 88000 exhibit. One of the rarer RISC chips, it’s hard to find working examples of these machines. In an alternate universe, this is what Apple switched to instead of PowerPC.

Dave from Usage Electric had some of his antique terminals and tubes on hand, along with a teletype that could have been ripped from the pages of a steampunk comic book.

The other main exhibit hall was jam-packed with even more variety. It also had its own array of workstations, featuring 50 Years of Unix by System Source. It’s the greatest hits of workstations by Sun, NeXT, Apple, HP, and more. An Apple Workgroup Server running A/UX, a BeBox that seemed a little out of place, and SGI workstations rounded out this colorful clique.

You might remember the hype surrounding Ken and Roberta Williams’ virtual reality remake of Colossal Cave Adventure. It’s not just hype anymore—the game was released earlier this year! Marcus Mera had a full VR setup for you to try the game, as well as an exhibit celebrating its journey from text to VR. If the VR headset was too new for you, then you could play along with a teletype machine in all its clattering glory.

Working Digital Equipment Corporation into the education theme isn’t as tricky as you’d expect. Indeed, Ethan Dicks’ DEC in Education exhibit had a learning PDP-8 and some fun DEC workbooks to teach you about mini computing. Once you’re done with your lesson, you can get your photo taken and converted to ASCII art at the PDP-8 photo booth.

SGI also had some serious representation, with several booths showing various SGI systems and applications. Multiplayer Quake was on hand, along with Alias demos and the SGI Web.

Alastair Hewitt is back again with his TTL logic computer, now with many upgrades and improvements. This time I didn’t forget to bring my LaCie ElectronBlue monitor hood for his monitor! My monitor may be long gone, but his monitor is now complete.

RetroTech Chris’ IBM Classroom had a full network setup featuring IBM’s Classroom LAN Administration system, or ICLAS. This might be the only operational Token Ring network I’ve seen in person. Props to the PS/2 Model 30 286—I’ll get one back again some day!

You might remember Behind the Screens, the folks who preserve old Weather Channel and Preview Guide systems. They were out in full force, and they’ve expanded a bit. Want to know how cable scrambling worked? It’s right there! Just, uh, don’t tell ASCAP about the live performances of music videos.

I also spent some time talking to Dave from Dave’s Retro Video Lab about his collection of vintage camcorders. Despite the fact that I’m producing videos these days, I don’t really consider myself a “video guy”—it’s never been my forte, and I’m usually more comfortable with audio and writing. But Dave and I had a great chat about the invention of electronic image stabilization and our struggles with “doing it live.” His enthusiasm is infectious and his live stream of the event is worth checking out.

Friends of the show Steve from Mac 84, Sean from Action Retro, Ron from Ron’s Computer Vids, and Mike from Mike’s Mac Shack were all gathered together at their Totally Normal Computing table. Their greatest hits were there, like Mike’s prototype iMac G5 and Shaun’s cursed SE/30, but they brought some new material as well. The Apple I replica attracted a lot of attention, as did the ImageWriter LQ and the 20th Anniversary Macintosh G4.

Want to see how digital retouching and painting for video was done before we had Photoshop on commodity hardware? Adrian Wilson presented a working Quantel Paintbox, which allowed many attendees to give live demonstrations of their artistic abilities.

If you’re a TRS-80 fan, then you’ll love Mike Lowen’s Tandyland. S-tier name, no notes. A TRS-80 timeline from the 1977 original all the way up to the mighty model 4P celebrated the life and times of a foundational microcomputer.

Lastly, a big shout-out to Amiga of Rochester, Retro Innovations, and DosDude for performing live repairs, custom board assembly, and upgrades. One such upgrade was soldering G3 CPU upgrades in ball-grid-array Mac logic boards. Turns out that you can upgrade many 604 Macs to a G3 processor if you can solder ball grid array chips! I happened to catch one of these upgrades live, and he made it look so easy. Don’t try this at home, kids.

Panels and Guests

Scheduled along with the exhibitions were three days of talks, classes, and special guests. Hands-on learning has been a part of the Federation’s mission for years now, and the tradition continues in 2023. A learning space dedicated to Commodore computers was one of the headline events for this year’s show, and it didn’t disappoint. Beginner and advanced classes on Commodore BASIC and assembly language were available on all three days to teach you how to keep up with your Commodore. Learning about Commodore wasn’t limited to programming, either. Dave McMurtrie of commodore.international hosted history classes where you could learn about the business dealings of Jack Tramiel and company.

Next door in the Computer Deconstruction Lab was a mini-repairathon as well as build-your-own-board sessions. XT-IDE kits were on hand along with other projects to test your soldering skills. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to solder, because classes were available to help teach you how to wield an iron.

All three days had a jam-packed panel schedule. You could spend eight hours a day watching all the talks, with subjects ranging from the Apple Lisa, the Nabu, computers in schools, and advanced C64 sprite programming. Unfortunately I missed most of Friday’s panels, which means I’ll have to catch the VODs that the Federation conveniently posts on their Youtube channel. I did catch the Friday Streamer Roundtable, featuring Adrian Black, Jeri Ellsworth, David Lovett, and Fran Blanche. Casting Bill Herd as the moderator was a brilliant choice. I love Bill’s candor—he’s able to get away with some good-natured ribbing, especially with this group of guests. Bill also hosted Saturday’s roundtable, which featured David Murray (the 8-Bit Guy), Steve from Mac 84, Sean from Action Retro, and Mike from Mike’s Mac Shack. Both panels were worth attending as the guests had very different answers to Bill’s questions.

My favorite non-roundtable panel award goes to Jeri Ellsworth. Retro nuts know her best as the wizard behind the C64-on-a-chip found in the C64 Direct to TV joystick. But that device is only part of her story. She told tales of her time as a computer shop owner, race car builder, and augmented reality startup CEO. I highly recommend checking out the VOD once it’s live.

Consignment

One of the big draws of VCF East is the consignment hall. It’s open to anyone willing to schlep their stuff and fill out a form. It’s like stepping back in time to an old computer store, which means you can see some seriously cool stuff. At previous shows I’ve arranged some trades ahead of time with other attendees, but this year I decided to try my luck as a seller. Overall the consignment sales experience was excellent, with only a few minor hiccups that were handled by the VCF team.

Life as a seller starts with signups. Back in 2021, you had to list your items for sale on a paper form. 2022 overhauled the process by introducing an electronic inventory system and bar code price stickers. This carried forward to 2023 and it was a pleasure to use. After sending an email expressing your interest in consignment, the staff replied with a Google Sheet linked to their inventory system. All I needed to do was itemize my items, proclaim my prices, and quantify my quantities. At check-in the staff printed out a string of price stickers using that spreadsheet data. When the barcodes are scanned, the point of sale system looks up the price and seller info. This makes tracking who sold what and how much they’re owed a breeze. Checkout and payments are handled by VCF staff, saving consignors from babysitting their wares.

Not that I would have been able to babysit anyway. Unlike 2021, which hosted the consignment in the large open hall in building 9010-C, 2023’s consignment was in the two adjacent cafeteria rooms. Apparently this is because that hall is under renovation. These smaller, cramped quarters meant a maximum capacity of 25-ish people, and that meant a long wait just to browse. If you weren’t in line first thing in the morning, then you were going to miss out on some of the unique items for sale.

Being a consignor also grants some advantages as a buyer. After bringing in my items, I was able to browse around and see what’s for sale. There were some legit deals on those shelves. I bet this $100 A600 was bought by the first person in line. But what caught my eye was a Compaq ProLinea 4/33. If you’ve read my Computers of Significant History about this machine, you’d know why I want it. $70 was a reasonable price and I knew I had to get in line early to have a good chance at buying it.

I joined the line on Saturday at 8:30 AM in preparation for a 9 AM opening. By any reasonable measure I had a decent spot in line, and I was in the room by 9:30 or so. Fortunately nobody had snagged the ProLinea, so I was able to bring it home. My buyer’s experience was painless. A Square cash register meant customers could pay with cash or cards, and the barcode scanning made checkout a breeze. The easier it is for people to buy things, the easier it is for consignors to make money, and the easier it is for the show to earn a 15% commission.

There were hiccups and adjustments, of course. Most were born from good intentions. The free pile was originally located in the corner of one of the consignment rooms. Between the crowds and issues with checking receipts, it was eventually moved outside. Good thing it didn’t rain during the day. This change wasn’t immediately obvious, since there was no signage or announcements, but consignment staff informed people when asked.

Another inconvenience to shoppers was a perk for others: the consignment hall closed for an hour or two to serve lunch on Saturday. That’s because lunch was served from inside the hall. I believe this food service is in partnership with the JROTC or something, as I saw volunteers serving various foodstuffs from the larger consignment room. I overheard grumbling from various attendees about this, and I see both sides of the argument. On the one hand, offering lunch for sale is a great idea because there’s not much around for food unless you want to give up your parking spot and drive off the campus. On the other hand, the crowd was enormous and losing a chunk of the day to browse and buy might have messed with your availability for shopping. Still, VCF did what they could within the constraints put upon them. An outdoor food tent for the volunteers or a food truck would be a good idea. I also didn’t really like the idea of food mixed in and around stuff for sale, but as far as I know there were no spills or disasters.

I did have one consignment problem during the weekend. One of my items for sale was a Sun Ultra 10 workstation with various accessories included. Sometime on Saturday the matching keyboard and mouse disappeared. I only noticed this late in the day because I was busy at panels and couldn’t really check the room due to the long lines. I notified the show staff, who made it a priority to find the missing items. Luckily, they did—the keyboard and mouse were reunited with the tower before the hall opened on Sunday morning. The system eventually sold later that day. I can’t thank the VCF staff enough for taking the problem seriously and saving the day.

This leads to another tricky part of consignment, and that’s item lots. I had two lots to deal with—the aforementioned Sun workstation and a TI-99 collection I was selling on behalf of a friend. The TI-99 was easy enough—I had the machine and a box of software and accessories. I attached a readme and price tag to the box, and set the computer next to it. Seemed fairly obvious that they went together. With the Sun, I laid the accessories on top of the case. In my mind, this implied they went together, but I can see the ambiguity there. I want the accessories to be seen to increase the attractiveness of the lot, but with the way things were laid out on the shelves it’s hard to tell where one group stops and another begins. I’m not sure of a good way to improve this, other than to use more readies and tape and boxes to keep everything together.

Another conundrum is dealing with the rush. Given the number of Saturday attendees this year, there still would have been lines and wait times if the larger hall was in use. But with how tightly packed the merch was and how few people were let in, the whole thing had a Black Friday kinda vibe, and I don’t think that’s the atmosphere the show runners were angling for. I hope there isn’t an escalation of either camping or backroom dealing in our future. That said, the lunchtime break did have one benefit: it cleared out the line, which reset the vibe of the room.

My other points about consignment are more towards fellow sellers and, to a lesser degree, buyers. I’ve done a lot of conventions where I’ve tabled and sold things, and the key to making sales is knowing your audience. I saw a lot of Mac Pro towers, and the vast majority didn’t sell. Odds were that they were asking for too much money, but let’s be honest: people aren’t going to this show to buy ten year old Xeons. Haggling was an option, but that required getting contact information from the volunteers. I bet most buyers didn’t even know that was an option. If you’re a seller open to negotiations, I’d recommend attaching signs with your phone number to your items. Most consignors who wanted to cut prices opted to update their spreadsheets and print new price labels on Sunday morning.

Another piece of advice: don’t bring a bunch of late-model office or home PCs. They might be useful to somebody, but it’s not in the spirit of the show, and it’s no surprise there were still a bunch around at the last call. I saw a lot of plasticky Pentium 4 Dell towers and late aughts HP boxes from various sellers. Now, I know a decent number of them sold, but the leftovers implied that supply far outstripped demand. These machines have very little collectible value at the moment. Of course, we said the same thing about Pentium MMX PCs a decade ago. Just give it time.

What about pricing? Most of the gear ran the gamut from “bargain” to “expensive but fair.” I think the most expensive item was an Amiga 4000 tower with a Video Toaster and some accouterments which stickered at $3,000. Yes, that’s a lot of money, but given that they’re generally unobtanium, I’m willing to allow it. One of the gotchas of trading in vintage gear is that you might have something that’s rare, but if you don’t have a buyer, then it doesn’t matter what it’s valued at. The guidelines warned that eBay prices were “too high,” and I think most people heeded that warning. You also have to factor in the show’s 15% commission into your price, which I think is a fair take. Everything sold at the consignment hall benefitted the Federation in some way—not a bad idea for a fundraiser.

I think people like using these events as an opportunity to pass gear along to someone who needs it. If you bought something with the intent to flip, you’re bad and you should feel bad. That’s why I’m glad when good people find a good bargain. A great example is this Macintosh LC 575 picked up by Ron from Ron’s Computer Vids. It was tucked away with the faceplate off to the side, and the price label listed the Apple ML model number, which most people don’t understand. A perfect recipe for being overlooked until noticed by a discerning eye. The machine powered right up to a desktop with no problems whatsoever. Maybe the person who brought didn’t have an ADB keyboard and didn’t know about soft power. Had I seen it, I would have bought it. For only $85, this was an incredible bargain, much like the $100 A600. Good find, Ron!

Things slowed down as Sunday wore on. Some otherwise decent machines didn’t sell, either because they were spendy or a little niche. Still, I don’t think anyone was unhappy with their experience. The only thing of mine that didn’t sell was an old boat anchor dual socket Pentium III Dell server, and it was kind of a reach anyway. Getting paid was easy too. Give your name to the staff, they look up your sales sheet, and print it out. After signing with your John Q. Nixon you can request Venmo, Paypal, or cash monies. Aw yeah.

The Experience

As I wandered around the show, I heard some chatter that their Eventbrite presale numbers were more than triple the previous year. The number was somewhere in the range of 650, and that didn’t include at the door tickets. I totally believe it, especially on Saturday. The main exhibit halls were crowded with people, and latecomers on Saturday had trouble finding a parking spot. Sunday was considerably less busy, which made it easier to explore and spend time with the various exhibits. There was still plenty of people, but it felt far less claustrophobic.

What did I bring home from the show, you ask? Unlike VCF Midwest, where I went all-out on that NeXT kit, the neat and weird stuff I would have bought (like the Amigas) were all gone by the time I made it into the consignment hall. I picked up the ProLinea and a $3 new-in-box Compaq keyboard, both of which will be featured in an upcoming video. The Freeloader 64 cart was the other tech item I bought. I also bought a few T-shirts, including the C64 one that I missed from last year’s show. T-shirts and other VCF merch were on sale next to the consignment register, which also has its pros and cons. Yes, you have to wait in line to get into consignment, but I think it’s great for impulse buys—might as well get a shirt while you’re buying a computer, right?

What does the future hold for VCF East? Crowd management has to be high on their list. I’m not sure if the growth trajectory will continue like this, but if Eventbrite pre-sales look similar for next year’s show they’ll surely make some adjustments. I’m sure having some very popular YouTubers on hand goosed the number, as people around here rarely get the opportunity to meet David Murray or Adrian Black. I heard a few people saying that attendees “should really consider some of our other events” like the swap meets, but unless you’re within day trip distance it’s tough to justify the swap meet, especially if you’re east of New York. If I were to go to the swap meet, I’d have to spend a minimum of two tanks of gas (probably $90), $30 to $40 worth of tolls, and a $150 night at a hotel for the chance of finding something interesting. And that isn’t even talking about the traffic. There’s also no guarantee that there would be stuff I’d want to buy, although I’ll grant that the odds are very good. It’s a lot easier to justify that kind of expenditure on a long weekend with a lot of events.

Yes, consignment and trading equipment is a large part of the show’s appeal. But visitors want to see the panels, they want to see the exhibits, and they want to talk to the guests. The venn diagram of people who would go to the swap meets or smaller events doesn’t completely overlap with a VCF crowd. I saw license plates from as far away as Washington—jury’s out on whether they were rental cars.

But in spite of the crowds, the lines, and the cost, VCF east was a smashing success. The best part of these shows is always the people. I owe a lot of thanks to Steve, Mike, Sean, and Ron for letting me be part of the Macinsquad, as I dubbed it. Friends don’t let friends take questionable laser printers, even if they’re free. I also met some new people and made several connections, which is another important part of these events. Waiting in line could be boring, but it’s actually an opportunity to make friends with your fellow waiters.

If you’re considering attending next year’s event, try going for the whole weekend and not just Saturday. The VCF team has done a good job spreading events across the three days, and I expect they’ll continue tweaking their schedules to balance the load. Given the changes and updates they’ve implemented already over the past few years, I’m fairly confident they can handle the growth in interest and attendance. The Federation staff put in a Herculean amount of effort into the show, and it really does come through in their presentation and enthusiasm. So if you’re interested in going to the show, make a vacation out of it and enjoy everything New Jersey has to offer. Maybe I’ll see you there.

The Objectively Definitive Weird Al Tier List

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Do you like “Weird Al” Yankovic? I love Weird Al Yankovic! Everybody loves Weird Al Yankovic. What do you mean, you haven’t heard of Weird Al Yankovic? Only complete losers don’t know about Weird Al. If you don’t want to embarrass your entire family on the world wide web, then you need to watch the Objectively Definitive Weird Al Tier List! Behold as three white and nerdy guys listen, analyze, and rank every single Weird Al studio recording ever put to tape or digital bits!

This project was cooked up back in November. My good pal Brickroad and I were chatting around Discord (as we do) and he proposed the idea of ranking every Weird Al song ever recorded. I don’t need an excuse to talk at length about music, let alone Weird Al, who is one of my favorite artists. But we knew this project would be too big for the two of us to tackle, so I suggested we bring in mutual friend notabuttface ShifterChaos to act as our Canadian Idiot. Before you know it, the three of us had the criteria for our tier list defined in the most scientific way possible.

We go through every one of Weird Al’s fourteen studio albums and methodically review and rank each and every song. From Mr. Frump in the Iron Lung to Craigslist to It’s All About the Pentiums, we’ve got them all. Which songs will reach the rarified S-tier? What will be unlucky enough to fail in F? Plus, at the end of each show we review a bonus potporri track from Weird Al’s archives. Don’t worry, The Brain Song, our funky, funky neurons haven’t forgotten about you.

So if you’re interested in hearing the most accurate list of rankings for Weird Al songs, you can head over to Brickroad’s youtube channel. Here’s a playlist you can follow which will have all the videos in chronological order. A new video covering each studio album will be posted every Saturday. So see it! See it! Don’t you make me repeat it!

The Assassination of DPReview by the Coward Amazon

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The world can’t have nice things. I was shocked to find this email in my inbox yesterday.

At first I thought it was a phishing attempt. I punched up DPReview.com in my browser, and sure enough…

Yep, it’s really real. Due to Amazon’s attempts to please its unpleasable shareholders, DPReview.com will cease operations on April 10th. To say this is a great loss for the photographic community is an understatement. Phil Askey started the site in 1998, back when we still used AOL Instant Messenger on the regular. DPR would soon grow to one of the largest resources for digital imaging on the internet. Combine the staff writer’s work in reviews and test suites along with community posts in the forums and you’ve got the largest library of digital photography info on the planet.

Of course I was there; it won’t be hard to root out my many posts in the Konica Minolta and Sony Alpha forums. And while I was there I participated in the usual ragging on the site’s foibles. The “Highly Recommended,” the “Canon/Nikon/Sony” bias depending on what your system was, and so on. But such is the nature of posting on a forum, where user versus user sometimes brings out weird arguments.

But none of the old pissing contests matter anymore, because Amazon’s pulled the plug. They bought the site from founder Phil Askey in 2007, presumably to use it as an advertising engine. To their credit, they largely left it alone; the only Amazon influence I’d seen was affiliate links here and there. Amidst the flamewars and other noise were genuinely helpful contributors who helped each other out with settings, style, and critique.

To say that shuttering this site would be a huge loss for the photographic community is an understatement. The employees will be fine; Chris and Jordan have already joined PetaPixel and I’m sure the other staff writers will land on their feet. But it’s an indictment of our current society that it’s more profitable for a corporation to destroy something than to find it a new home. Don’t get me started on David Zaslav and HBO Max.

Every digital camera I own was purchased after a thorough research process. In the early aughts it was DPReview, Steve’s Digicams, Imaging Resource, and maybe a few more I’ve forgotten. The years have whittled them down, but Imaging Resource is still around, which is the Nikon to DPReview’s Canon. Whether it was my lowly Kodak EasyShare DX3600 or my current Sony A99II, the folks at DPReview made sure I knew the pros and cons.

My hope is that somehow someone can buy it off Amazon (unlikely) or that the site’s content is archived in some fashion. Forums come and go, and I’ve lost a few over the years. It’s the nature of the web. But DPReview is large enough that having an archive for historical purposes is pretty important. The early years of consumer digital imaging were a whirlwind, and where else could you track every movement, every rumor, every piece of news but DPReview?

As for Amazon, well, they’re making billions of dollars. DPReview is literally a rounding error to them, and Bezos is the Don Draper to DPR’s Mike Ginsberg. But there are people who do care, and they won’t forget.

Iomega Zip Drives in Pixel Addict Magazine

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If you’re a fan of obsolete storage, make sure to check out the newest edition of Pixel Addict magazine. I’ve written a new column about everybody’s favorite drive, the Iomega Zip. You can find it in bookstores and newsstands worldwide, or you can order digital and print copies online. Make sure to pick up a copy of volume 10 and remember a time when you could fit all your digital stuff onto a three-and-a-half inch cartridge.

Which SimCity is the Greatest SimCity?

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This originally appeared in Pixel Addict Magazine. It’s been expanded and revised for a video version. You should subscribe to Pixel Addict for more content like this!

Here in Userlandia: I dunno. I never heard ‘ah no mayah.

It’s rare when a game combines art and science in such a way that it becomes a cultural phenomenon. SimCity’s one of them, and I became a SimAddict the first time I plopped a zone. It doesn’t matter if it’s new or old, because I always enjoy a good city building experience. But you never forget your first love, which is why I always come back to the one that started it all. Poll a random gathering of gamers and chances are you’ll find many with happy memories of Will Wright’s SimCity. Whether you’re dutifully detailing a downtown district or marshaling monsters to make mayhem in midtown, there’s no wrong way to play. But maybe it’s been a while since you’ve micromanaged a microcomputer micrometropolis, and you’re ready to dive back into city planning. Thankfully, classic SimCity is the choice for you, with the right amount of charm and complexity to entertain newbies and veterans alike.

Or it would be, if it existed. What is “the original SimCity,” anyway? There's over a dozen “original SimCities,” each for a different platform, each with its own perks and quirks. Just check out this list—Commodore 64, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro and Acorn Electron, Macintosh, Atari ST, IBM PC, Super Nintendo, UNIX, Psion, Palm Pilot, Sharp X68000, FM Towns, Amiga, enhanced Amiga, Amiga CDTV, and a partridge in a pear tree. The same gamers polled earlier will probably share their fond memories of whatever system they played it on too. Before you know it, they’ll all be arguing about which SimCity is the true classic.

“The BBC Micro version did the most with the least!”

“No, the PC version  had the most add-ons!“

“Oh yeah, well, the Super Nintendo version had the best graphics and sound!”

“Fools, the UNIX version had network play!”

There’s nothing gamers love more than an old-fashioned platform fight, and I’m happy to oblige. My history with SimCity started on the C64, where I treated it more like a drawing app than a city builder. I soon graduated to the SNES version, where I spent countless hours crafting copious cities. I even played my fair share on PCs and Macs at school. SimCity ignited a love of city building games that still burns in me today. I’ve played every SimCity sequel and spinoff—even that weird one on the Nintendo DS. So fear not, because as a SimCity expert who's spent years preparing for this moment, I'm here to tell you which classic SimCity is the true classic SimCity.

First to be eliminated, and first chronologically, is the Commodore 64 version. Yes, it's the first game to bear the SimCity name, but it's not the best. Its gameplay was limited, and slower than rush hour traffic when you didn't build enough roads. And its presentation was noticeably worse than the other 8-bits. Think of C64 SimCity as a historical curiosity, like Action Comics #1: something to check out to see where the series began, but not the definitive take. Speaking of the other 8-bits, the Acorn, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC versions manage to cram the complete gameplay experience into their tiny memory footprints, which is an impressive feat on its own. They have better graphics and sound than the Commodore version, but obviously they're not up to the caliber of the 16-bit platforms. The PC-98, FM Towns, and X68000 versions are nice to play for gamers fluent in Japanese—or so I assume, because that group doesn't include me. The UNIX version may have multiplayer, but it’s so hard to run that you’ll never get to try it, much less find a buddy to share it with. PDA versions are right out. These may be good SimCities, but they are not great SimCities.

This leaves the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, Apple Macintosh, IBM PC, and Super Nintendo.  Now it gets tougher. You can play the Amiga, Atari ST, or Mac versions and be confident you'll get the complete gameplay experience. There’s even a terrain editor and custom graphics packs, for those who like to customize. Of these three, the Mac supports larger, higher-res screens, but the enhanced Amiga version has better graphics. Still, actually running these versions is more challenging than using the Deluxe PC CD-ROM or emulating the SNES. They’re still not the greatest SimCities.

That leaves us with two contenders: the IBM PC and Super Nintendo. The IBM PC itself had multiple versions—MS DOS, OS/2, Windows 3.1, and Deluxe 32-bit for Windows 95. The DOS version is more like the Amiga and ST versions, but in the interest of fairness, we’ll use the Deluxe 32-bit Windows version as a point of reference. It’ll even run on modern Windows, making it the easiest way to experience classic SimCity. Playing SNES SimCity is almost as easy, thanks to ubiquitous SNES emulation.

The Super Nintendo version makes a strong opening argument thanks to its audiovisual prowess. A crack team of Nintendo pixel artists created brand new graphics, taking full advantage of the system’s capabilities. Watching the seasons change to the tune of Soyo Oka’s brilliant soundtrack is one of the most Zen experiences in gaming. Not satisfied with just updating the graphics and sound, Will Wright and Shigeru Miyamoto teamed up to tweak the gameplay too, crafting the best SimCity possible on a console. New mechanics like bank loans, special rewards, and enhanced tiers of city services are major improvements over other versions of SimCity. Computer gamers wouldn’t get these features until SimCity 2000!

The PC version’s graphics and sound might not be as good as the SNES, but it takes the lead in performance and usability. As good as the SNES version is with a controller, a PC gamer with a mouse and keyboard is a master of multitasking. Maps, tools, and charts are displayed in their own windows alongside your city view, which makes it easier to track your city’s growth without interrupting construction. Plus, the gameplay is literally faster—a 486 PC runs rings around the Super Nintendo’s 65C816. I appreciated these advantages when playing SimCity on a PC, even though I missed the SNES's changing seasons. Plus, PC gamers can create their own custom maps, which is impossible on a console.

It’s a tough call, but SimCity for Super Nintendo is the greatest SimCity. The PC version might be a better simulation, but the SNES version is a better game. It’s the definitive version of a classic that still endures because it’s the complete package. You’ll be charmed by the graphics and sound, but you’ll keep coming back to try to reach the next population milestone. Or you can just enjoy the bonsai experience of putting roads and residences wherever you like, because you’re the mayor and it’s your city. Just remember that happy citizens make for a happy mayor.