Mac OS 8 - 8.6 -- Are you a Fan?

[uniserver]

Did the whole 68k-->PPC transition make OS8 not wonderful for 68k's,

and not so great for some PPC's ether?

Looks like even the 60mhz Power Macintosh 6100 will run MacOS 9.1.

And the 040's will run 8.1 --- Seems like most people like Mac OS 7.6 with 040's

And according to main.system7today.com, System 7 works the best with older PPC Macs as well.

I guess my question is: Anyone here a fan of Mac OS 8 - 8.6?

 

[ClassicHasClass]

My rule of thumb:

7.1 for '030 or earlier.

7.6.1 or 8.1 for '040s. (I have no use for 7.5.)

8.6 for 60x.

9.1 for Old World Macs with G3s.

9.2.2 for New World Macs that can boot OS 9.

 

[CC_333]

Hi,

I like Mac OS 8 (8.5 in particular), mainly because my first Mac (a Rev. C iMac) came with it, and I learned most of what I know about Macintoshes of that era with it (and later OS 8.6, 9.0.x, and finally 9.2.x).

It was quite fun .

Early on, I didn't care much for Mac OS X (partly because it was unfamiliar to me, and also the machines I had at the time (right on up to late 2006, actually) couldn't run it very well (not enough RAM, and I didn't really begin to know my way around the hardware like I do now until 2007 or so).

c

 

[Bunsen]

I quite liked Mac OS 8.1 when I upgraded to it from 7.5.x (I skipped 7.6.x for some reason back in the day). Neat, visually clean, and just seems less cluttered or something than 8.6 and 9.x.

There are fansites out there for System 6, 7, and 9 - but none for OS 8.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

I think the lack of OS 8-specific lovin' is because there's really nothing "special" about OS 8. OS 9 has Platinum, but it also has more built-in functionality to boot (especially hardware support), and was the last classic Mac OS. Conversely, while certain apps will only run in System 7, I don't know of anything that will run on OS 8 but won't run in OS 9, and System 7 has a distinct "classic" look some people prefer. System 6 needs no introduction to this group.

The only reason 8.6 is in my rule of thumb is that it's smaller and works better on pre-G3 Power Macs, for those apps that don't need OS 9. And 8.1 even on a 40MHz '040 does not run extremely well, though it's acceptable on my Q800; 7.6.1 is a lot sprightlier.

If there were something about OS 8 that made it stand out, I think it would get more fans. But OS 8 gets more respect for its presence in Apple's history than its distinctiveness, and the lack of distinctiveness IMHO means it's fondly remembered but not particularly used.

 

[beachycove]

Well you have to remember that System 8 and 8.1 as we know them were never actually "meant" to be commercial products. They were cobbled together from this and that feature of the Copland project, and that in haste, so much so that it's kind of astonishing that they work at all.

The later 8.6 is obviously in much the same boat, but is extremely stable, which is a bonus, but its real assets are that it is much more complete than 8.1, and yet takes up so much less memory than 9.1, and is so much more nimble on machines that tend to choke under 9.1. MacOS 8.5 I just avoid as an unstable approximation to 8.6.

I have run 8.6 for these reasons on my 2400c, on a 6400, 6500 and so on. It can function well on about 96MB of RAM and yet it can run more or less all period software (occasionally with small hacks, as in the case of iTunes).

 

[markyb86]

8.6 on my B&W G3 450MHz/512mb ram... is very quick with virtual memory turned off.

It shipped with that OS, that's the only reason I am keeping it on there.

(I break this rule with my 68k machines though because I'd rather not use system 4 or 5..)

9.2.2 on my G4 350MHz Sawtooth with 384mb ram and 9.2.2 on my G3 iMac 350MHz with 512mb ram are both pretty snappy too.

The only thing I don't like about 8.6 is the lack of support for my USB floppy drive, and for the life of me I cant set the correct resolution no matter what video driver I use.

The Powerbook G3 was supposed to have 8.1 on it but 9.2.2 is on there as well, and running off an CF card and is really quick for only having 256mb ram.

 

[volvo242gt]

8.6 worked quite well on my old 7100/80. Seemed quicker than 8.1, surprisingly. Probably due to there being no 68k code in it. I continued to use it on my 7500/100 (with 200MHz 604e installed), until MSN Messenger started requiring 9.2.2. At that time, I had to upgrade, since the interface of MSN Messenger was better than Mac Messenger's interface. Still using that install as my Classic Environment OS on the G4 digital audio (yes, been bad - haven't done a reinstall of said OS since 2003 or so), albeit with the System Folder copied from the original 3GB Quantum Fireball to the current Seagate 80GB drive. 9.2.2 was a little slower and the fonts seemed a bit strange compared to 8.6 with the font fix applied, but I got used to it.

-J

 

[Macdrone]

I personally liked the 8's but the speed of the hardware made it feel clunky. I preffered 7.5.5. System 7.6 just seemed like bug fixes and not worth the effort.

 

[CC_333]

Hi,

As far as bugginess is concerned, I have never found Mac OS 8.5 to be particularly bad.

People have also complained about the initial release of OS 9 being buggy. Except for a mysterious "Preserve memory contents on sleep" checkbox in the energy control panel which seems to crash the machine if activated, I haven't experienced any bugs (and, of note to me, that checkbox is disabled in subsequent versions of OS 9).

In fact, I've found that every version I've tried (6.0.x, 7.0.x, 7.1.x, 7.5, 7.5.3, 7.5.5, 7.6, 8.1, 8.5, 8.6, 9.0, and so on) has been very stable.

Also, I've found that more recent versions (in particular 9.0 and up) are slightly easier to crash if I really want it to (probably a manifestation of the purported bugs in those releases).

c

 

[jamie marchant]

Well I don't think I want to run OS 9(very reouses intensive) on my Mac and OS 8.6 is the minimum for some of the drivers I use(like USB). So I'm a fan!

 

[tecneeq]

I would say that 8.1 has some USB support, since it was shipped on the original iMac.

 

[Cory5412]

8.1 as shipped on the orange iMac CDs has some support for USB, but it's pretty barebones, and 8.1 as shipped on a retail CD won't have those bits.

In my experience, anything that'll run 8.6 satisfactorily will almost certainly run 9.1 or 9.2 just fine, unless the system is so old that it's really better off with a nice install of system 7.6 anyway. (Like, if it has a 601, that may be the case.)

I do have a few PowerPC systems where I favor 8.1, such as with my UMAX C600, which has a 2GB~ish SCSI boot disk, and a 20-or-so-gig IDE data drive (formatted HFS+) and runs ASIP5.

 

[Charlieman]

Err, HFS+ is pretty nifty. For video editors, it was a must have upgrade. For the rest of us, it was interesting and we upgraded when it was necessary.

I suppose that one of the reasons that Mac OS 8+ is under utilised is that there aren't many resources for maximisation. Gamba spent an eternity getting System 7.1 to run at the max on 68030s. With the exception of, say, the Turbo 601 hackers, few people got under its skin.

Apple produced several USB support kits for Mac OS 8.x (which may be hard to find) that support USB 1.0 and 1.1 devices. Try finding information about what actually works and you'll be disappointed.

 

[IIfx]

This is how I decide what to run:

68000:System 7.0

68020-68030-Low RAM 040: System 7.1.1 Pro

68040 high RAM-first and 2nd gen PPC-System 7.6.1

New World Macs-OS 9

Why do I skip 8? System 7.6 FLIES on my PPC Macs, and the Macs new enough that they shipped with 8 run just as well with OS 9.

8 is a transitional era, and short one at that. OS9 could had been OS 8.7, but Apple needed a new version for some reason.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

You've got a gap in there, though. What about upgraded 1st/2nd gen PPCs?

 

[feeef]

Personally, I use 7.6 on my 9500/G4@700. The speed of the system and the user experience that goes with it are just incredible and I don't think I will go back to 9 on that machine. The Radeon 7000 is well handled and even Open GL works with a bit of hack. I can play Quake 3 at full speed.

Sometimes, I feel that my 2009 intel iMac is slow compare to the 9500.

There are tons of cool apps that run on 7.6. I even found a really cool launcher called The Tilery.

The only thing that I miss on 7.6 is the 3ivx plugin to be able to watch full length movies. For the rest, I use Quicktime 5 with Mpeg1 encoded videos. The result is not bad at all in term of quality/compression!

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Open GL works with a bit of hack. I can play Quake 3 at full speed.

I'm intrigued: what hack?

That said, Q3A was fine on my 7300 with 9.1, a Rage Orion (Rage 128) and a G3/500, so I don't know how much the OS plays into that. (It has a G4/800 now, so it's even better. )

 

[feeef]

Hi ClassicHasClass,

The hack is because the openGL installer wont install on 7 so you have to extract the files with TomeViewer. I explain how I did in the last post of this thread => http://forums.system7today.com/viewtopic.php?t=14&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=12

That said, Q3A was fine on my 7300 with 9.1, a Rage Orion (Rage 128) and a G3/500, so I don't know how much the OS plays into that. (It has a G4/800 now, so it's even better. )

Well, I don't say that Quake 3 will run better on 7, I was saying that there are plenty of really cool apps on 7 (I used Quake 3 as an example because it's not supposed to work). I don't really miss much from 9 but 3ivx and I forgot to mention Classila!

In fact, I bought this computer as a second hand in 1999. It came with 7.5 and 8.1 and at the time, I first installed and used 8.1 (for a few years) , then 9.1... then I made it a G3 and a G4. It's only recently I realized I never used it with its original system. So I did and was amazed by the speed. It's a few months now and I still didn't go back to my 9.1 partition.

Because for me "fast" is more to do with how the computer responds to the user events, I am making it the fastest mac I ever owned. haha!