Anyone Have An 8500?

[kite210]

I just got a Power Macintosh 8500 and was wondering, does anybody else have one, and what do you do with it?

Also, what are the specs on your 8500.

I'm using mine for browsing the web with classilla, doing various OS tests, and playing some classic games on it (since it has a better graphics card than my B&W G3[Radeon 7000 in the 8500 vs. the Rage 128 w/ dvd decoder card in the B&W])

Here are the specs on mine:

288MB RAM

20 GB SCSI HDD

80 GB IDE HDD

Sonnet Crescendo G3 @ 300Mhz

ATI Radeon 7000

CD-RW Drive

USB/FireWire Combo PCI card

Sonnet Tempo IDE Card

OS 7.5.5

OS 9.1 (For Compatibility with Sonnet PCI X Installer)

OS 9.2.2 via OS9Helper

OS X 10.2.8 via Sonnet PCI X Installer

I just need to get the original 180Mhz PowerPC 604e CPU card so I can try installing BeOS R5.

 

[protocol7]

BeOS should install OK on that even with the G3 accelerator. It didn't have any trouble with my G3-accelerated 7500 (although the cache obviously wasn't enabled). It just showed up as a PowerPC 750.

It wasn't the processor that caused problems so much as the logic board that went with the new G3 Macs.

 

[Unknown_K]

I have one 8500, it was my first PPC mac picked up in 2002 or so and my second mac after my 950. Back then I purchsed a Sonnet G3-400, added 256MB of RAM to it, USB card, an ATA/66 card with 48X CDROM and a 20GB HD, and an Ultimate Rez video card running OS 9. Over the years I used it as my main utility Mac for the growing collection and added a bunch more RAM (700+ now I think) and a Rage 128 video card (with DVD decoder) untill I got a B&W G3 that took over utility work 3 years ago and which was replaced by a Quicksilver last year.

Currently the 8500 sits idle most of the time along with my 7500's. I still fire it up once in a while but I use my Beige G3 MT much more often. If you have newer Macs an 8500 would make one hell of an OS 7.61 era machine (especially with upgrades).

 

[dhh]

I have an upgraded 8200/120, which I use for playing around with old software under OS 9.1. Surfing web with Clasilla etc.

Specs are:

Sonnet Crescendo/7200 400MHZ G3

592 MB RAM

UltraSCSI PCI card

UltraSCSI 9.1 GB HD

Radeon 7000

Think it runs pretty fast in 9.1. Also have an 8100/110 which has original specs (not sure if the 72mb ram is original though) on which I play around under OS 7.6.1. Cool to have a fast system 7 machine.

 

[stretch]

I have a couple of 8500s - for parts. I had the chance to upgrade the workhorse with a refurbished 8600. The main advantage being that the 8600 is easier to get into if I need to. I'm lucky enough to have one of those Sonnet G4 cards in it with 700 some odd MB of ram. I have 10.2.8 on one disk, 9.1 on another and 7.5.5 on a third. This machine gets fired up on 9.1 when I want to use the built-in audio ports for dubbing old LPs or cassettes from the stereo and creating MP3s for playback using iTunes. So far, my library is over 48 hours worth with much more to go.

Currently running:

G4 Yikes with 10.4.11/9.2

Lombard G3 with 10.4.11/9.2

3400 with 9.1 (Overgrown MP3 player)

6300 with 9.1 (Boat anchor)

Several parts and closet queens.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I've got an 8500/120, I didn't realize that Apple offered speedbumped versions of the 8500.

Not sure of the specs on mine, I switched over to the 7600 (when I read the frontplate and realized it wasn't a brain-dead 7x00!) for setting up my VidCap WorkStation and re-installed the 8500 as the left legs of the MacCoffeeTable™ (the right legs are my 840/AV) when I set it up for the first time last week in my new apartment (moved 9 months ago and it's supporting boxes [:I] ]'> ) for the time being . . .

. . . as I hurriedly unpack! :lol:

I'll check out the ProcCard from my 9500 though, that might be what you need for BeOS @ 180 MHz.

Nearly all of my machines have been Sonnetized!

side note: Closet Queens! Gotta love it! I take it you're an aviation buff? I've scored a couple of G4 cards too! [] ]'>

 

[kite210]

I actually got BeOS R4.5 running on it about 2 nights ago.

The problem was that the 8500 couldn't boot from the CD-RW drive that came with it. I swapped it with my trusty AppleCD 600i and it loaded up first try.

It sees the Processor as a PPC 750 @ 300Mhz.

It's interesting to see BeOS running on PPC hardware, since I first used BeOS R5 on an x86 machine. My only trouble is finding software for it, as there is more x86 software than PPC.

I probably won't have BeOS on it for long, as I intend to take the SCSI drive out of the 8500 and put it into my Color Classic (which had it's hard drive die recently). I'll be replacing it with a 60GB IDE HDD that I was trying to use with my XBOX.

I've been recently converting tapes from my old JVC VHS-C camcorder and was doing all of the work on my PC through its TV Tuner card, when I went to start editing the footage, I noticed that the MPEG files had several errors in them (missing footage, and audio out of sync). So I'm gonna try to convert them on my 8500 and see how well they come out.