MacKiosk

Currently the MacKiosk consists of the following hardware:

I got the Workgroup Server from the junkpile at work, and thanks to an anonymous donor got a cd caddy that was desperately needed... I also got a keyboard and mouse as well. Total cost so far $0.00

The monitor is the original Mac monitor I bought over 10 years ago. It was $500 at the time, though I got a 15" a few years back for about $7.00. Today I could get a crappy monitor for free, but these are actually good quality monitors...

On to the software!

Mac OS 8.1 was a no brainer, as it's the highest version of the Mac OS supported on this machine. Also, I got a Mac OS 8.1 CD out of the junkpile as well...

Next on the list was some software that was about 5 years old, could display images, do slide shows, and was free... JPEGView! After some searching I found a copy, and installed it.

So what can it do?

Well, the MacKiosk can do two things, well, it can do more, but we just care about two so far. It can play CD's. You stick an audio CD in and use the 'AppleCD Audio Player' which was mega-popular years ago before anyone knew what an MP3 was. Yay, we have a CD player!

Next, I wanted a photo-display capable kiosk. The kids love watching the slideshows in iPhoto. Of course you need a modern day computer running Mac OS X to use iPhoto. Well, Back in the mid-to-late 90's we were happily using JPEGView to do slideshows. Bang! We're good to go. Almost...

My plan was to export my photos from iPhoto, and burn them onto a CD, thusly having 650 mb of photos per disc. I then load the disc into MacKiosk and away we go. Oh, I also had to setup PC Exchange to associate .JPG to JPEGView since Mac OS X didn't assign type/creator codes, but after that, we had a running slideshow. No fancy transitions, no background music, no problem.

Well, in testing it was revealed that the background music did make a difference. So we ended up burning a CD of Minuet in G and connecting a second CD-ROM drive to play the music while the photos did the sliding. So we now have a function (low-budget) iPhoto clone, without the fancy Quartz transitions...

I ended up building a stand out of some scrap wood and covering it with some fabric. All you see is the monitor, everything else is hidden underneath.

So how does it work? Pretty good! We ended up loading it up for Emma's Birthday Party, and the family got a kick out of seeing all the photos we've taken thus far this summer. Hopefully it'll become a regular at the family get togethers... who needs prints when you've got a MacKiosk?

Someday I'll have an old color PowerBook to use, and the MacKiosk will seem downright ancient. (If anyone wants to send me a color PowerBook, I'd greatly appreciate it...)

Note: I finally got a color PowerBook, so the MacKiosk has been disassembled and relegated to the junkpile. It was neat while it lasted...