installing 7.6 on a 5500

[billtchr]

According to Low End Mac, the 5500 uses 7.5.5 through 9.1 for system software. I found a 7.6 universal CD on eBay and bought it, intending to put that on the 5500 as one of the operating systems (the others being 8.6 and 9.1). I tried it out, and nothing...this computer doesn't support this or something to that effect.

I checked back on LEM, and followed the link to Apple's specs page, and it said under OS's: 7.5.5, 7.6.1, 8 blah-blah-blah, 9 blah-blah-blah.

NOT 7.6??!?

Was there something particular about the 5500 that it skipped 7.6?

Anyway, would one way to get around this be to put the hard drive into my 5400 (which apparently does take 7.6), install it there, update to 7.6.1, then put it back into the 5500?

Or, is there some way to make a disk image of the install CD, update that to 7.6.1, then install the whole thing onto the 5500? (This didn't seem too likely, so that's why I thought of the 5400 -> 5500 idea...)

 

[Gil]

Perhaps it needs some sort of System Enabler?

 

[equill]

There were a number of PPC Macs (mainly 603e/603ev) released after the software that were unable to use OS 7.6 as issued, and that is not the least of the reasons why 7.6.1 exists. It contains the 'enabler', although that is not so-called. The update remains downloadable, so there is nothing lost and everything gained by having the full install CD of 7.6. OS 7.6.1 is sometimes dismissed as 'bloated', but if you remove the eminently unsuitable or uninteresting software, at or after installation, it is fast and responsive. It flies on a 50MHz IIci.

de

 

[billtchr]

equill, you have popped up yet again with great advice from the other side of the world!

I did more research last night while waiting to see what would show up in here, and found something interesting:

The Apple specs for the 5500 say no 7.6, but a chart of what models use what flavours of System 7 shows the 5500 as being able to use 7.6! Oddly, 7.6.1 is not listed on this chart, making me wonder if it was originally supposed to be able to use 7.6, but then at the last minute, something went wrong...

Anyway, I did find a cheap copy of a full, sealed 7.6.1 CD on eBay, and bought that, so I won't have to go through all kinds of shenanigans to bet it installed.

I still wonder, though, why a 5500 is able to run 7.5.5, but not its successor? (Then again, I haven't tried 7.5.5 on it, so maybe that info is wrong too!)

Bill

 

[equill]

Apart from the processor angle per se is the consideration of the amount of PPC-native code present in the Upgrade (7.6) and the Update (7.6.1). It can be posited that the two are related. Of course, my IIci knows nowt about such new-fangled sophistries as PPC code, and cares less, but PPC Macs (notably, eg, the 'enhanced' PB 1400s [603ev], which were released in July '97 with their own machine-specific 7.6.1 CDs), certainly do in some cases.

There were some wobbles in 7.6, for which Apple devised several patches that were all aggregated in 7.6.1. One example is the inversion of the brightness controls for the 1400s. 'Let there be Dark', as you pressed the increase button.

de