How low can a Classic go?

[MultiFinder]

Most sites and other sources list System 6.0.7 as the lower limit of the Classic System Software running ability. However, I recently got my Classic booting into System 3, and will probably try earlier versions once I bother to write the images that I have to some floppies. So my question is this; What's the lowest you've gone on a Classic?

 

[MacMan]

I've had mine booting System 4 successfully before (I accidentally clicked System 6 above - doh). If I remember correctly, the System that lives in the Classic ROM is 6.0.3.

 

[MultiFinder]

I'm gonna wait and give 1.0 a try before I submit my vote, but that's cool that you got 4 working. I can't exactly remember how I got 3 in the first place; I think I found it on some old floppy I found at school years back

 

[MacMan]

I actually didn't even intend to startup in System 4, I accidentally inserted an ancient application floppy into the drive before switching the machine on and it turned out that the disk had a very basic System 4 install on it. It booted very quickly I must say! The disk is a 400K one intended I think for Mac 512Ks.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Yeah, the Classic, SE, Plus, 512Ke, 512K, and 128K are all the same core hardware deep down. System 1.0 (Even the "System 0.97" on the Guided Tour disk,) works just fine on a Classic. Just make sure to *NOT* have a hard drive plugged in when trying any System earlier than 2.1, as Systems earlier than that didn't support HFS, so it may hose your hard drive's formatting. (I have tried out early systems on a Classic, SE dual SuperDrive, and Plus. I heeded the warnings, and have *NOT* tried it out on my SEs that have hard drives, or the Plus when a hard drive is connected.)

 

[MultiFinder]

Yup, just got mine booting System 1

This is so epically cool.

 

[gobabushka]

i used to have a mac se that i booted with system 0.97 i believe, and had no problems with the hd being plugged in.

 

[Mac128]

Thanks for confirming that MultiFinder17. Please do some more testing with it to see just how compatible it is. In particular I think there are going to be issues with the Control Panel and sound. You also will have no way to adjust brightness, though the settings in PRAM should persist from the last time you set them. I would imagine since the early Systems patched the 64K ROM and 128K ROM, that there might be some changes to the 4th generation 512K ROM in the Classic which won't work as expected in System 1.0, so I wouldn't expect it to be especially stable.

Just make sure to *NOT* have a hard drive plugged in when trying any System earlier than 2.1, as Systems earlier than that didn't support HFS, so it may hose your hard drive's formatting.

Having dealt with the HFS/MFS problem, I would suggest you will have no problems just booting up from an MFS only System disk (1.0, 1.1 & 2.0) with a hard drive turned on. The ROM will read the drive and load it on the desktop, regardless if the System or Finder know what to do with it. However, under NO circumstances try to write any data to the HD. If you merely read data off the HD, you should have no problems. Also keep in mind the Classic ROM is doing most of the work, but the System and Finder on very early systems have a limited capacity to recognize large volumes. Though I am not absolutely certain, there is no danger of an old System re-formatting your HD. At worst it should only ask you to initialize the disk as unreadable and of course you would cancel this request.

Since you can't easily turn the Classic HD on and off, MultiFIner17, what was your experience (I'm assuming it was on)?

System 1.0 (Even the "System 0.97" on the Guided Tour disk,)

System .97 IS System 1.0. AFAIK there was no actual System "1.0" released. System .85 is on the Guided Tour Disk.

 

[iMac600]

System 0.97 was the lowest I ever ran. I'm fairly certain it would work with 0.85 as well but I have a feeling that it may run in to some minor issues.

 

[MultiFinder]

Alright, 1.0 worked fine booting off the HDD. For some reason, it popped up as two floppy icons; one with the system stuff in it and none of my folders showing up, and another with noting but an empty folder in it. It's a 40 meg HDD. I assume that the thing with none of my folders of apps showing up was due to System 1 only being built to deal with the root level of filesystems.

System 0.85 was a whole different story though. It gave the Happy Mac, Welcome to Macintosh, and popped up the menubar with the menus in it. Then it popped some sort of I/O error, and when you clicked OK, the dialog box would blank and sit there and redraw itself really really fast so it looked like it was flashing. And that's what it does :\

Just as a note, when I boot 1.0 off a floppy, I'm using a standard HFS 1.44 meg floppy. It boots fine

Also, if you wanna see something interesting, lookie here

That's what happened when I accidently ran the "Mousing Around" app from the 0.85 disk image on my 540c. It wasn't pretty

 

[Mike Richardson]

Also, if you wanna see something interesting, lookie here

You should see some of the crazy ass stuff my PowerBook 1400 does when you try to run Battery Recondition. It starts making these terrible noises and the screen goes absolutely mad. Too bad I didn't make a video of it, since the problem will probably go away when I put in the new logic board.