PowerMac 8500/120

[MrFuzzy]

This box has a 50 pin scsi interface, I wanted to upgrade it to a dvd drive with the 50 pin pc drive that I have. It should be a direct swap shouldnt it a cdroms a cdrom pc or mac right? Someone have one of these they have upgraded? :dive:

 

[jhelm007]

This box has a 50 pin scsi interface, I wanted to upgrade it to a dvd drive with the 50 pin pc drive that I have. It should be a direct swap shouldnt it a cdroms a cdrom pc or mac right? Someone have one of these they have upgraded? :dive:

you may need a driver, what kind of drive is it, what os are you running?

Search the drive compatability database on www.xlr8yourmac.com they have user reports on all kinds of drives and all kinds of macs.

 

[MrFuzzy]

its a toshiba os is system 7

 

[MadSkillzMan]

lol wow thats old, no way tahts gonna work without some serious upgrading..software wise that is

 

[MrFuzzy]

hmm was gonna try and up it to os 9

 

[jhelm007]

hmm was gonna try and up it to os 9

I think 9.0.4 is the end of the line for officially supported OS for that mac. you can check on www.everymac.com or www.lowendmac.com. There is a hack for running OS 9.2.2 called OS9helper and one for running os x called xpostfacto.

Try to google the drive model number for OS 9 drivers.

Have fun and good luck getting that dvd drive to work. let us know how it goes.

 

[MrFuzzy]

thx, yeah im trying to get it to work because i wanna try and put server on it heh and get a upgrade card but for the price to do that a minimac is looking more attractive.

 

[MadSkillzMan]

yea you have so many limitations on that old thing. bus speed, ram, cpu, hard drive, etc..usually you need a special video card to watch DVDs anyway on the older macs..i know on my Beige G3 even with OSX it doesnt work, neither does my G3 wallstreet...still useful computers by far though, no doubt about that

 

[jhelm007]

thx, yeah im trying to get it to work because i wanna try and put server on it heh and get a upgrade card but for the price to do that a minimac is looking more attractive.

mac mini is cheaper and faster. Its fun to play with the old stuff though.

 

[dtravis7]

I have an 8500/120 with Sonett G3/400 card installed and 190megs RAM. With XPostFacto I have OSX Jaguar running on it. It's kind of slow but useable for some things like Web and basic stuff, but without a Video Card with Hardware DVD support I doubt DVD's will play. Since I have many other newer Macs, I have not even tried a better video card nor DVD drive. The slower Bus, RAM, old SCSI HDD's all take their toll on the speed of OSX. I just did it to see how well OSX would work on such an old system. I am suprised how well it does work for what it is. It's a credit to OSX and it's dead stable!! Just Slow.

If I can help in any way let me know.

 

[MrFuzzy]

Yeah it is fun to play with and I got it for free so hey, The DVD isnt for movies its for the server disk I have is on DVD im just trying to get the drive to work so I can install that and fool around with that.

 

[MadSkillzMan]

oh, data only probably would work then, but you might still need drivers, im not certain. definently get it up to 9.2.2 if you can

 

[MrFuzzy]

i have it hooked up like the old one was but im not to familiar with system 7 how do i tell if it even see's it?

 

[dtravis7]

It will not show up till there is a CD in the drive. Sometimes it may not mount by itself. In System 7 I used to use a utility called SCSI-Probe to force some drives to mount, but be sure there is a readable CD in the drive or nothing will show up.

 

[MrFuzzy]

k thx, Tiger wont even install on this will it?

 

[jhelm007]

k thx, Tiger wont even install on this will it?

If you use xpostfacto you can get up to jaguar (IIRC). If you install a g3 or G4 upgrade you could run Tiger (again using xpostfacto to install and boot). You might find a relatively cheap upgrade used on ebay. sonnet and XLR8 (daystar) still sell new upgrades for these machines.

If you decide to upgrade this thing and try to use to run OSX max out the ram. The cheapest ram I have found is at www.macsales.com (OWC) they have it for $17-19 per 128 meg stick. You could max out at 1gb for less than $150.

 

[MrFuzzy]

Hmm yeah i was reading about that... The task now is to get 9.2.2 on it heh

 

[MrFuzzy]

what would you guy recommend sonnet or XLR8?

 

[MadSkillzMan]

hahaha no way will tiger work on this thing. go with either OS9 or linux if your just usin it as a server for other macs

 

[MrFuzzy]

well i got 9.2.2 but i cant get os9helper on to the machine lol it wont read my disks burned with osx