OS on PPC

[juan123]

I'm thinking of downgrading the OS from 9.1 on my performa 6200 to OS 8.1........I'm just hoping someone can give me a small list of pros and Cons of each OS... Also, would mozilla run on 8.1? IE 5.1? Is OS 8.1 A LOT faster than 9.1? I got a 20gb HD 5400rpm, 48mb RAM, and it has a 75mhz 603 processor....Well thanks a bunch!

 

[The Macster]

IE5 runs on pretty much any PPC OS I think, I've certainly seen it on 8.1 and I think it may even work on 7.6. Certain apps do need 9, although mostly only newer apps like Photoshop 7 that you probably won't be running on this machine anyway. iTunes won't work though - you'd have to tell us what apps you want to work on it. Some hardware eg video cards only have drivers for 8.6 or 9, though only newer cards like Radeons that you're probably not using in this Mac anyway. 9 has more advanced features eg multi-user startup, Sherlock, CD burning etc, whereas 8.1 is pretty barebones - 9 is of course the pinnacle of Classic as far as features go.

With 48 MB Ram and a 20 GB disk, I'd definitely stick with 9.1 though, maybe even try to go up to 9.2.2 which some say is slightly faster (but fiddly to install as it's not supported by Apple). 48 MB is plenty for OS 9, in my opinion. There's a lot more 68k code in 8.1 than 9, so the speed boost won't be as great as you might expect. Booting will be faster in 8.1, but 9 is pretty responsive on older machines with a reasonable amount of Ram once it's running

 

[Unknown_K]

OS 8.1 runs great on one of my Beige G3s, 48MB of RAM is a little low to get the most out of OS 9.1 in my opinion. The 2 machines I have OS 9.x running on are my G3-300 MT with 512MB RAM (9.2.1) and my 8500 (G3-400, 700MB RAM).

And yes IE5 seems to run on just about any PPC OS, think I have it on a 7.6.1 setup but I am not 100% on that.

 

[bluekatt]

personally 64 mb is the lowest you can go for os 9

even under 8.6 i had trouble with just 64 mb

 

[MultiFinder]

personally 64 mb is the lowest you can go for os 9 even under 8.6 i had trouble with just 64 mb

OS 9 runs on 32 megs. It takes bloody ages to start up, but after that it's okay-ish.

I wouldn't use it for anything productive on anything under 64 megs though. 96 is really nice.

 

[The Macster]

OS 9 runs on 32 megs.

I expect it will run on much less than that if you wanted it to. It's certainly fine with 40 MB on my 6100/60 - yes, it takes a little while to get going, but is fine once it's ready. Even Windows XP will run with no modifications on only 24 MB Ram (it BSoDs on startup with less than that, although someone did modify it so that it worked on something like 4 MB!).

 

[bluekatt]

it runs in 32 yeah but 8.5 also runs in 16 mb and so dows windows 98

but do you really want to use them like that ?

mouse click wait mouse click wait

especially on a 75 mhz monster like the performa 6200

i used win xp on 128 mb once i can tell you it was no pleasure ride the machine paused with everything i did

 

[Quadraman]

I read somewhere that you can get Tiger running in as little as 96 megs, but it crawls. Some people are even having trouble keeping a productive flow going with 512megs. Power users are definitely going to need more than 512 when 10.5 comes out.

 

[bluekatt]

never tried that but i did run jaguar in 96 mb ram

it was passable

can thelp to think that we are getting spoiled though used to be a time when 64 or 128 mb ram was a lot

these days its pitiful 512 is considerd a minimum

 

[Quadraman]

never tried that but i did run jaguar in 96 mb ram it was passable

can thelp to think that we are getting spoiled though used to be a time when 64 or 128 mb ram was a lot

these days its pitiful 512 is considerd a minimum

Nobody will ever use more than 640k of RAM.

-Bill Gates

 

[bluekatt]

Nobody will ever use more than 640mb of RAM.

-Bill Gates

 

[Patrickool93]

lol

 

[TylerEss]

I would totally downgrade your machine to MacOS 8.1 if you want it to be as quick as possible. IE 5.1 will run as far back as 7.5.5.

 

[bluekatt]

going back to 7 is a bit too a drastic a downgrade

i think 8.6 would be a good choice though

 

[QuadSix50]

going back to 7 is a bit too a drastic a downgradei think 8.6 would be a good choice though

I would recommend 8.6 if your Mac can run it nicely. That being said, 7.6.1 isn't that bad. It's a lot leaner and uses less memory.

 

[bluekatt]

but 7.6 is not easy to get

he live sin bolivia i think its easier for him to get 8.6 then 7.6

 

[Flash!]

Nobody will ever use more than 640mb of RAM.
-Bill Gates

Quadraman was correct - it's 640k

 

[defor]

while 7.6.x is harder to get, a lot of the software out there that had an 8.x requirement needs 8.5 minimum.

I'm personally one to recommend 7.6.1 as the best pre-g3 os due to its small (read: tiny) memory footprint of sub 8MB with virtual memory off on a full stock install without trimming extensions, etc. While having a system that small may seem pointless if you've got say 128mb or more ram, just imagine what you can do with 120mb ram with virtual memory completely off, and not slowing the system.

Ramdisk, perhaps?

anyhow... while 8 is argued to be a better system because it's ppc native, that doesn't mean 100% of everything you run and have installed is PPC native. iirc a number of Apple extensions and parts of 8.1+ are still written in 68k...

 

[bluekatt]

and i stil say that 8 is easier to get

7.6 is quite hard to locate and it wont be cheap