by Jason Snell
Keep Time Capsules viable under macOS 27
James Chang has built a project that upgrades the file-sharing stack on Apple’s long-discontinued Time Capsule hardware so that it will work on modern OS versions:
This is a modern Samba setup that runs directly on the Time Capsule itself; macOS 27 can connect to the Time Capsule as a network share, and use it for Time Machine backups…
You get the full Apple experience reproduced: after you install this, you do not have to worry about it again, even if the device IP address changes. It will show up automatically in Time Machine in settings app, and it will use mDNS/Bonjour so it will work fine even if the IP address is not static and gets changed.
It’s a clever piece of work that uses a very specific version of Samba and some other software running on a tiny RAM disk with other files stored on the device’s storage partition. I don’t have a Time Capsule to test this myself, but if you have one and have been lamenting its retirement, think again!