-
Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.
Why are the OS 8.6 universial install disks so rare?
- Thread starter JRL
- Start date
tmtomh
Well-known member
I would imagine they're rare for several reasons:
- 8.6 was a free update, it was relatively small (34MB), and the internet was pretty popular by then (albeit most of us had dialup). So there was less need for a whole new OS disc than there ever had been in the past.
- I did a quick search of Mac models and I found only two that originally shipped with 8.6 and didn't require a special add-on ROM file; so only two Macs required (or could use) a generic/universal 8.6 disc, meaning that there was little incentive to produce universal 8.6 discs.
- The speed with which Apple went from 8.5 to 8.5.1 to 8.6 to 9.0 probably left them little time to produce retail boxes with 8.6 on them.
- IIRC Apple never produced an actual "OS 8.6" retail package. If anything, it was the same green OS8.5 box, with an "8.6" sticker on it (similar to how they indicated that some 8.5 and 9.0 boxes actually had 8.5.1 or 9.0.whatever on the installer CD). I imagine it would have been a marketing nightmare to produce an actual 8.6 box (though I could be wrong - perhaps they're floating around out there).
M
- 8.6 was a free update, it was relatively small (34MB), and the internet was pretty popular by then (albeit most of us had dialup). So there was less need for a whole new OS disc than there ever had been in the past.
- I did a quick search of Mac models and I found only two that originally shipped with 8.6 and didn't require a special add-on ROM file; so only two Macs required (or could use) a generic/universal 8.6 disc, meaning that there was little incentive to produce universal 8.6 discs.
- The speed with which Apple went from 8.5 to 8.5.1 to 8.6 to 9.0 probably left them little time to produce retail boxes with 8.6 on them.
- IIRC Apple never produced an actual "OS 8.6" retail package. If anything, it was the same green OS8.5 box, with an "8.6" sticker on it (similar to how they indicated that some 8.5 and 9.0 boxes actually had 8.5.1 or 9.0.whatever on the installer CD). I imagine it would have been a marketing nightmare to produce an actual 8.6 box (though I could be wrong - perhaps they're floating around out there).
M
tmtomh
Well-known member
The 5500 originally shipped with System 7.5.5, plus System Enabler 411. So a universal install of 7.6, 8.0/8.1, 8.5, or 9 would work fine.
And if you specifically want to get back to 8.6, then a universal 8.5, followed by application of the 8.6 update, would do the trick.
M
And if you specifically want to get back to 8.6, then a universal 8.5, followed by application of the 8.6 update, would do the trick.
M
Similar threads
