Gossamer G3 questions

[maverickbna]

I liberated a Power Mac G3 (beige Gossamer) from the dumpster - it's fully tricked out! 768MB RAM, 300MHz G3, 6.4GB hard disk,OS X 10.4, first boot went into 9.1 classic.

I added a DVD-ROM drive after pulling the mounting sled from a Performa 6300CD.

I'm thinking about ghosting (if this is possible with HFS) to a larger drive (possibly 30GB or higher).

Also, any suggestions on what I could use to accomplish above goal, if it's not a unreasonable goal to set...

Question - what's the last processor generation that still had the 68K emulation (or is abstraction a better word?)

I remember that the 601s didn't require the use of fat binaries, but I don't know if that continued into the G3s and AltiVec G4s.

Also, when did they discontinue classic boot capabilities into OS 9?

Please advise. Thanks!

 

[bluekatt]

G4

mac os 8.5 was the first mac os that had predominantly ppc code but this carried on well in to os 9

>>Also, when did they discontinue classic boot capabilities into OS 9? <<

i am not entirly sure what you mean with this tough if you mean to ask what was the last macintosh able to boot in os 9 its the MDD which apple ran queitly for a while in 2003 before shufffeling it to the grave

 

[Bunsen]

68k emulation is provided in software by the classic Mac OS, not by the CPU. There was nothing in the 601 that was specific to emulation. The very first 603s however had caches that were too small to run the dynamically recompiling emulator efficiently, so 68k performance suffered a little on those. This was fixed in the 603e.

 

[Quadraman]

The MDD model with Firewire 800 is the only G4 that won't dual boot. The older MDD model without FW800 was actually brought back briefly with faster processors after it was discontinued because there was still a strong demand for dual boot systems at that time.

 

[jhvaughan2]

I'm thinking about ghosting (if this is possible with HFS) to a larger drive (possibly 30GB or higher).
Also, any suggestions on what I could use to accomplish above goal, if it's not a unreasonable goal to set...

What you need is carbon copy cloner Http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

I would suggest:

Add the drive, and format/partition it with disk utility (Don't forget to add the boot in os 9 option)

Make the first partition < 8Meg.

I'd suggest paritions of 7 gig for osx 1-2 gig for os 9 and the rest for "documents" (I also create a 750mb disk for swap, but that is kind of esoteric to get working, search the web for "move osx swap" for more info)

CCClone what you have to the first disk partition and then move the os9 to it's partition.

Remember that the disk must be in the master (0) position of the ATA to boot.

JHV

 

[Bunsen]

OS X has to reside in the first partition of the drive on a beige, and said partition must be less than 8 GB.

 

[trag]

OS X has to reside in the first partition of the drive on a beige, and said partition must be less than 8 GB.

But only for drives attached to the built in IDE bus. If you use an ATA card such as the Acard 6280M, this limitation does not apply. I'm also pretty sure it does not apply, if one is using a big SCSI drive on the incredibly slow built-in SCSI bus.

 

[Quadraman]

OS X has to reside in the first partition of the drive on a beige, and said partition must be less than 8 GB.

But only for drives attached to the built in IDE bus. If you use an ATA card such as the Acard 6280M, this limitation does not apply. I'm also pretty sure it does not apply, if one is using a big SCSI drive on the incredibly slow built-in SCSI bus.

"Incredibly slow" being the operative words here. Yes, you can use the SCSI interface for hard drives, but why when IDE drives are cheaper and probably a lot faster.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Question - what's the last processor generation that still had the 68K emulation (or is abstraction a better word?)

As Bunsen said, 68k emulation wasn't in hardware, it was software on ROM. (That's partially why the first gen Power Macs had a ROM significantly larger than the 68040, because the emulation was included in ROM. Later Macs moved to not having a hardware ROM, but having the old ROM as a file that was loaded into RAM. This file contained the 68k emulation code, up to the very last G5. Only the Intel Macs, which did away with Classic, also do away with 68k compatibility. I have successfully run MacWrite 1.0 on a G5 through Classic.

System 7.1.2 was the original System when the first generation Power Macs came out. It contained almost no PPC code, relying almost exclusively on the ROM-based emulator. More PPC code was added each release, until 8.5 removed the boot code for 68k machines. Even then, 9.2.2 still contained some 68k code that had to be run in emulation!

In spite of the fact that 8.0 contained much more PPC code than 7.6, I find 7.6 to be a much 'snappier' OS on older and RAM-limited PowerPCs, even on the cache-starved 603. Once you get more than 32 MB of RAM, Mac OS 8 finally becomes more usable. (I have a PowerBook 5300 that when I got it, had OS 8 loaded on it, even though it only had 8 MB RAM! It was effectively unusable. Even with 7.6, iCab is slow as molasses, taking 2-3 minutes to load the 68kmla home page over a plenty fast network connection.)

Also, when did they discontinue classic boot capabilities into OS 9?

The FireWire 800 G4 did away with booting into OS 9, although they kept the previous-generation G4 around as the "OS 9-bootable" model even after the FW800 G4 was replaced with the G5. The Aluminum PowerBooks are not capable of booting OS 9, while the Titanium models are. The G4 iBooks cannot boot OS 9, while all G3 iBooks can. The September 2003 G4 iMacs (1 GHz 15", 1.25 GHz 17") cannot boot OS 9, the earlier models can, although I am not 100% sure about the February 2003 17"er. The 2003 eMacs are a mixed bag. The 800 MHz/Combo drive model can boot OS 9, the 1 GHz/SuperDrive model cannot. All earlier eMacs can, all later eMacs cannot. (Of course, this makes it odd, since if you bought one 800 MHz and one 1 GHz, you could boot OS 9 on the 800 MHz, but you can't officially run Leopard; while you can run Leopard on the 1 GHz model, but you can't boot OS 9.)

No G5 (Power Mac or iMac,) and no mini can boot OS 9. No Intel Mac can even run Classic, much less boot OS 9.

 

[macintoshme]

Here is how I ran my beige:

I had 3 HDs. As far as I remember, I only had one with that 8GB partition.

You can use disk utility to "restore" to another disk. I don't remember having any trouble copying the live operating system.

All you need is one 8 gig partition in the entire machine, the rest of the hds in it can be formatted however. I remember I triple booted 10.3, 10.4, and 10.4 server. I simply used the helper partition part of XPF. It worked like a charm.

I miss my old G3, it was lost however, when I moved out of the house, and my family decided to clean out the basement

 

[trag]

[The FireWire 800 G4 did away with booting into OS 9, although they kept the previous-generation G4 around as the "OS 9-bootable" model even after the FW800 G4 was replaced with the G5.

The September 2003 G4 iMacs (1 GHz 15", 1.25 GHz 17") cannot boot OS 9, the earlier models can, although I am not 100% sure about the February 2003 17"er.

The cutoff point in the iLamp (LCD iMac with round base and chrome arm) was in the midst of the 800 MHz G4 17". So there is one 800 MHz G4 model with a 17" LCD which can boot into OS9, and another 800 MHz G4 model with a 17" LCD which does not boot into OS9.

As far as I can tell the only difference is the model number, although my memory is hazy, they may have different video chips. Everymac.com does a good job in this case of distinguishing the two models and giving model numbers.

It is interesting, because when I search Apple's documentation for the model number of the one which does boot into OS9, I can't get them to admit that it exists. Yet, using the information on everymac.com, I bought one for my son this past holiday season and made sure it had the "non-existent" model number.

So it definitely exists, whatever Apple may think.

Ah, went and double checked everymac.com. The OS9 bootable version uses an NVidia GeForce4 MX, while the later non-OS9 bootable has a Geforce2 MX, which seems a little backwards.

On closer examination, everymac.com states that the Feb, 2003 non-OS9-bootable is a 15". All this time I thought it was a 17". Hmmmm. I could swear there were 800 MHz 17" which are not OS9 bootable. Hmmm.