Open Transport on a Classic II?

[beachycove]

I have been playing with a Classic II for the past couple of days, and have been pleasantly surprised at its performance. In an effort to achieve a good balance of features and performance, I have installed 7.1, with System Update 3, and am contemplating BeHierarchic and similar add-ons, though what I do not want to do is to bring the machine to a crawl by asking too much of it.

Now, I am not likely to take the thing online. In light of this, I have a question: Is there any reason to install Open Transport on a Classic II running 7.1/ any real features to be gained?

 

[napabar]

Congrats! The Classic II was the first Mac I ever bought!

There's really no reason to put Open Transport on a Classic II. For one thing, OT runs horribly slow on a 68030, especially one with a 16-bit data path like the Classic II. Also, the only way to add Ethernet is with a SCSI to Ethernet adapter, and if memory serves, the extensions for those things worked only under classic networking, not OT.

Hope that helps!

 

[Unknown_K]

I wouldn't bother with OT on a machine without ethernet. As stated the old SCSI to Ethernet adapters don't use OT either just the older mac networking software that you have to set IP's with manually (I set up a SE using one recently). OT will suck up RAM and you are pretty limited on a Classic II (which is why I got rid of mine).

 

[beachycove]

I had the same instincts, so am glad to see them confirmed.

Software upgrades drive the need for hardware upgrades. If you want to keep your Classic II/9600/Intel iMac functional, don't "max it out." Thus the pirates of Silicon Valley would not have us think, but thus we should think.

One by one, I have been installing a Claris software suite on the thing, being a big fan of the old Claris products. I then fire them up and see how they behave on this particular Compact. What I am surprised to see is that applications like ClarisCAD and ClarisDraw appear to run just fine on the Classic II (in the case of ClarisDraw, minus the colour, of course — which, however, the software conveniently compensates for in some measure by substituting words for colour swatches).

I am not really going to use graphics software on a CII, of course, but am doing this just for kicks. To really give it a run for its money, however, I plan later this week to install NisusWriter v.5, and see how it behaves. I have that program around here somewhere. Will report back.

 

[napabar]

When I bought mine in 1996, I used Netscape 2.02 and it worked just fine!

 

[Unknown_K]

I like maxing out systems with hardware upgrades but still use the OS and software that is close to the year the system was sold new. People run into problems installing a much newer OS (and associated software) on old machines.

Lets face it, some machines were sold new with small HDs and little RAM (heck the original Mac was pretty much unusable). A Mac SE for example didn't have ethernet out of the box, but it makes life much easier these days. Maxing out the RAM, installing a newer and faster/larger HD makes life easier as well. Some CPU upgrades make sense as well, if they don't cost too much.

The older word processors were nice because they didn't have all those options people with ADD play around with instead of writing (actually I prefer DOS based ones because you don't even have fonts to worry about until it is time to print). And you don't have that IM/internet stuff popping up to distract you when you are deep into whatever it is you are doing.

People designed rockets and got to the moon using much less processing power then is in my old relic of a IIfx. Real work can be done on pretty much anything if you are creative.

 

[beachycove]

The Classic II has a much-faster-than-stock 350MB drive in it, which I think is plenty and more storage for any Compact Mac, and the maximum 10MB RAM. I do not have one of the semi-mythical FPU cards. That's about it for hardware expansion in one of these things.

I found Nisus Writer 5 last evening and did the install. It does work, and surprisingly well, but is a little (not a lot) too slow in screen redraws and so forth to be pleasing to work with. Such slowness is a sure sign that the little machine is struggling. As the idea is to remind myself of what it is possible to do on a very basic machine, and as the machine coughs and wheezes in the attempt, I think I will try NisusWriter v. 4 and see how it behaves.

NisusWriter was chosen because it is still unsurpassed in many ways as a pure writer's tool. The alternative, I suppose, would be Word 5.1, which in my experience still works relatively well with current versions of the beast.

 

[beachycove]

NisusWriter v. 4 is indeed much faster on the Classic II, though v. 5 is much better with fractional widths turned off and using a monospaced font like Courier.

I am surprised, having thought for years that the Classic II was a real dog — a cute but slow one.

 

[insaneboy]

OT is nice to Appletalk to newer devices, but that's about the only use I've had for it. Had it running on my IIci to connect to a LaCie d2 network drive.

I for one would not use a vintage mac for my 'real work'. I'm an image retoucher and I remember how long it would take my IIci doing even simple image editing tasks, no thanks, I prefer the 8core MacPro I have at work

OTOH if I was a writer, PB 180/170 with a CF card for a HDD and WriteNow 3 would be killer. In college I kept a PB 165 just for distraction free, silent, portable, battery backed up writing. (as long as auto save was off I could keep the HDD spun down and type in silence) 180/170 would just be better for the active matrix screen and the CF card drive upgrade so I could leave auto save on and still have it quiet.