USB PCI Card into TAM running System 7.6.1

[jsarchibald]

Hi all,

I will soon be receiving a USB PCI card (many thanks to Byrd!) for use in my TAM.

Everything seemed to be in order, until I went to look for the drivers to run the card. It seems that you need at least OS 8.5, but my TAM runs System 7.6.1. I have always wanted a Macintosh running System 7, and out of my collection, this is the only one that has it. I have no intention of upgrading the OS just to run the USB card. I also REALLY don't want to swap the hard drive or anything like that. Basically, I want to know if there is a way to get the USB card to work in my computer with the current OS?

I think it is an impossible ask, but I figured if anyone knew how to do this, it would be you guys. To even have USB 1.1 would be great. The current HDD is a 2GB jobbie, and I'd like to run mp3s and be able to copy over programs and files quickly using a removable USB stick. I have a spare 8GB stick ready to go so I can run my entire mp3 collection through the fantastic Bose sound system.

Any suggestions?

 

[LCGuy]

Unfortunately, 8.5 is as low as you can go if you want USB support. Given that no Macs used USB until 1998, Apple never introduced USB drivers for any version of System 7, and nor did any third parties.

If you really want to stick with System 7 as your main OS, what you probably could do is do a very basic install of 8.5 with the USB drivers on your drive and just use System Picker to switch between the two, only using 8.5 for USB access. Or better yet, repartition your drive and create a small partition for OS 8.5, and do the same thing.

 

[Dennis Nedry]

You can trick your eyes by running Mac OS 8.5 with the System 7 theme.

http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.resedit.free.fr/telechargement/themes/cadres.html

 

[jruschme]

Unfortunately, 8.5 is as low as you can go if you want USB support

I thought there was a very early set of USB drivers for 8.1. IIRC the original iMac shipped with 8.1.

John

 

[Gorgonops]

... run my entire mp3 collection through the fantastic Bose sound system.

It seems a more straightforward way of accomplishing this task if you really don't want to upgrade the OS or put in a larger hard disk would be to connect the TAM to an Ethernet network and share your MP3 collection with it that way. No fuss, no muss.

 

[applefreak]

iTunes on a TAM :

use the airport express

and remote

 

[protocol7]

I thought there was a very early set of USB drivers for 8.1. IIRC the original iMac shipped with 8.1.

Correct. 8.1 added USB support. Whether these extensions would work with 7.6.1 is another story, but there's no harm in trying.

 

[LCGuy]

Another thing that I'd be curious to know is whether the USB drivers that came with the iMac version of 8.1 supported USB chipsets other than the one that came with the iMac (OPTi FineLink 82C861), and whether it supported USB Mass Storage....while yes, the version of OS 8.1 that came out with the Rev. A iMac did support USB, I seem to remember that it had only very basic USB support, as it wasn't long before the release of 8.5.