10-01-2005, 12:15 AM

I was kinda curious to play around with some old mac OS's, and was wondering how far back I can go.

I have a 1.67Ghz Powerbook, 366Mhz Clamshell iBook G3, 400Mhz Powermac G4, 350Mhz Powermac G3.

10-01-2005, 12:24 AM

10.1, os 9 will not install natively on it but i am sure there must be a way.
apple stopped making drivers for os 9 and below.

10-01-2005, 02:01 AM

The Clamshell, the G4 tower and the G3 will run, IIRC, all the way back to System 6, maybe earlier. You can get up through System 7.5.5 (maybe System 7.6 by now) for free from Apple. They are available on their web-site, somewhere, you can download the disc (floppy) images. You'll need a floppy drive and disks to install them.

I'd start with System 7.1 or 7.5, System 7 is still one of my favorite Apple OS's.

10-01-2005, 02:17 AM

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=43103

Check the supported OS's at the bottom of the specs. check for each machine you have.

10-01-2005, 05:50 AM

Originally Posted by baggss

The Clamshell, the G4 tower and the G3 will run, IIRC, all the way back to System 6, maybe earlier. You can get up through System 7.5.5 (maybe System 7.6 by now) for free from Apple. They are available on their web-site, somewhere, you can download the disc (floppy) images. You'll need a floppy drive and disks to install them.

I'd start with System 7.1 or 7.5, System 7 is still one of my favorite Apple OS's.

There's no way you could install System 6 or 7 on one of those, not even the latest version of 7 (7.6.1) will work.

PowerBook G4 1.67GHz: requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later
PowerMac G3: requires Mac OS 8 or later (8.5 for the G3 B&W)
PowerMac G4 350MHz: requires Mac OS 8.6 or later
iBook 366MHz Clamshell: requires Mac OS 9.0 or later

To try older systems than 8, you'd need something like a Macintosh LC, Macintosh II series etc....well one old Mac of that aera. :cool:
You can find that for a couple of bucks on eBay.

10-01-2005, 02:50 PM

Ya, your right. I went and looked. I can run 7.5.3 on my G4/400, but the disc has to have been formatted and the OS installed on my old Performa 6400/200.

10-02-2005, 02:12 PM

Originally Posted by rs2sensen

I was kinda curious to play around with some old mac OS's, and was wondering how far back I can go.

I have a 1.67Ghz Powerbook, 366Mhz Clamshell iBook G3, 400Mhz Powermac G4, 350Mhz Powermac G3.

look at www.everymac.com or www.lowendmac.com. They tell you what range of system sw is supported. The rule of thumb i that no apple computer will run anything older than what it shipped with. Some people have found workarounds, but they usually are more trouble than they're worth.

10-07-2005, 08:27 AM

Originally Posted by jhelm007

look at www.everymac.com or www.lowendmac.com. They tell you what range of system sw is supported. The rule of thumb i that no apple computer will run anything older than what it shipped with. Some people have found workarounds, but they usually are more trouble than they're worth.

If you have an OS X only Mac try:

Mini vMac - Mac Plus/Classic emulation. Black and white only, 512x342 screen resolution, up to System 7.5.5 supported.

Basilisk II - Written originally by Christian Bauer, something of an authority on 68K Macintosh emulation having written the Shapeshifter emulator originally for the Amiga (which also used 680x0 processors, even the 68060 which Apple never used which made Amigas emulating faster than real Power Macs in 1994/5!!). It's an excellent emulator, can emulate the 68020, 68030 (essentialy a '020 with 68851 MMU built in) or 68040.

It can also emulate the 68882 FPU (020/030), or full 68040 (without FPU emulation you will get a 68LC040 emulation).

Will do colour too, any resolution as well and being a 68K Macintosh emulator will run up to OS 8.1. The Mac OS X port is a little flakey on the config side (better to edit that manually) but it works well once you get going.

You should get 33MHz 68040 speed out of any of those Macs, which is as fast as Apple took the Quadras (the top flight Macintoshes before PPC). Your faster G4 Macs will run faster than 68060 based Macs (which never officially existed), meaning older version of Quark would fly, even under emulation.

You would of course be limited to 680x0 Macintoshes, and you will need a ROM image (128KB for vMac, 512/1MB for Basillisk II), but it works admirably.

I am going to have a shot at setting up Basillisk II on this PowerBook later; as I have found Classic mode seems to do very nasty things to 10.4.2...

I still run a IIfx on System 7.5.5 and a 7200/90 on OS 8.6 (mainly for supporting the USB PCI card I have in it)

As a side note the older Macintoshes I recommend would be any of the Quadras or Centris systems (which later became Quadras in late 93), the LCIII (the LC and LCII are to be avoided), try and avoid the compact Macs except for perhaps the SE/30 or the Colour Classic II - but you will still be limited to 512x384... (342 in the SE/30s case) If you go for a Macintosh II series, get something like the IIsi or IIfx.

The older II series (e.g.: II, IIx) do not support high density disks and I'm not overly sure on the IIci's status on that off hand. The IIsi and IIfx are Superdrive ready (meaning 400/800/1400K disk ready with MS-DOS readyness, not DVD-R etc!!), as are the IIvi and IIvx.

I do not recommend the IIvi and IIvx even though they have CD-ROM. They are weak machines compared to the IIfx (It had a 40MHz 68030 and 2 6502s in that beast in 1990! It's still very good today)

Power Macintosh wise, avoid the 1st gen 6100/7100/8100s, get at least a 7200/7500 (don't expect to upgradet he 7200 to G3 overly cheaply, about $100 for G3 400MHz), ideally something like a 7300 -- or one of the beige G3s.

Any other questions do ask, I know an unhealthy amount about 68K and early PowerPC Macintoshes! (sad innit :flower: )


Have fun! :flower:

Vicky

10-07-2005, 09:45 AM

why do you guys want to run the old os?

10-07-2005, 09:59 AM

Originally Posted by nicklwj

why do you guys want to run the old os?

Why do some people only want to use the new OS? :flower:

Basically I have been using Macs a long time, have a lot of old software I still use which isn't suitable to use under Classic, especially as it seems to ruin my install of Tiger on my PowerBook.

(And I have no idea why)

For some people it's curiosity. At least it saves old hardware from being dumped into the ground or thrown out into the trash into doing a good turn for somebody.

And the fact that you can do it :flower:

Vicky

10-07-2005, 03:21 PM

for me, it's curiosity. There is a lot of history to be found in those old OSs. Some of the software that was included with them was written by some people who are pretty famous now. It's just interesting to see what's changed.

For example...the early Macs had the designer's names engraved into the inside of their cases. To be able to see that...the history is just astounding.

10-07-2005, 03:49 PM

For those of you not lucky (or cursed) enough to own an older Mac, you can get an idea of the evolution of Apple's various OS's from the sites below
http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/oshistory/
http://www.macos.utah.edu/Documentat...macintosh.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_history

And yes, there are some good old programs out there that haven't made it to OS X. Some of the old games, from before every game had to be a 3D, photorealistic environment that took hours and hours to work your way through.

10-07-2005, 05:33 PM

Originally Posted by rs2sensen

for me, it's curiosity. There is a lot of history to be found in those old OSs. Some of the software that was included with them was written by some people who are pretty famous now. It's just interesting to see what's changed.

For example...the early Macs had the designer's names engraved into the inside of their cases. To be able to see that...the history is just astounding.

Agreed completely. That is the reason I mess with the older macs. I have newer systems to get my work done, but love to just mess with old systems that I never got to work with when they first came out. It's a hobbie of sorts and as I learn new things, I can help others with older systems/OS's.

I would never run a Mac with OS9 or before for my main or only system. Same goes for Windows ME and before.

Edit: Like Technologist pointed out, There are some interesting old programs and especially games for the older systems. I still find some of them more fun than the new games although the newer games look better, sometimes the fun is missing for me at least.