Is system 7.5.5 even worth using?

[coius]

Ok, i got a PowerMac 7200 that I put 7.5.3 on, then updated to 7.5.5.

I have 8MB Real RAM (with total of 16MB with Ram Doubler) and just sitting in the finder, it uses up all the memory without any applications running. Then it freezes. Would this be a ram doubler thing or a system 7.5.5 thing?

I also noticed, when I updated to 7.5.5, it now takes 6MB of memory instead of the 3.5-4MB it used to take with system 7.5.3.

Does anyone know of a better system for this?

Either that, or a way to remedy this?

 

[porter]

If you are on a PowerPC and want to run System 7 then go for 7.6.1.

7.5.5 is the limit for 68000 macs.

 

[TylerEss]

System 7.5.5 is a great system, but it's not a very good choice for that Mac. The best way to remedy this is to get more RAM, as 8MB is paltry for even a 68k Mac.

I personally like 8.1 and 8.6 on early PowerMacs, but as porter said, 7.6.1 is the best choice for System 7 on the PowerMac.

If you really must stay at 8MB, I'd recommend uninstalling RAM Doubler and using Virtual Memory instead; I assume you can afford the hard disk space. Pump it to 16 or 32MB of virtual memory.

Then go through your Extensions and Control Panels folder and prune everything you don't need. That should get you down to about 4 or 5MB just to boot, and then you can swap that out to disk with VM when you want to run a big application.

System 7.5 wasn't known for great stability on the PowerMacs, especially those with PCI, but it shouldn't be randomly freezing for no good reason.

I have some random 8 or 16MB PowerMac DIMMs laying about; I could send you a few if you like, just kick in a few bucks for postage and a padded envelope.

 

[Unknown_K]

601 CPU are good with 7.1,7.55 (7.1 for Nubus), 604E, 7.6.1, g3, 8.1 to 9.1 depending on RAM.

You should be able to score some 8-16MB DIMMs for shipping, might even have some here if I didn't toss them.

8MB on a PPC sucks.

 

[Scott Baret]

If I were you I'd upgrade your RAM to 32MB at the minimum and buy OS 9.1. Not only is it a stable version of the system, it also is compatible with a broader range of software.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

RAM is your problem. 8 MB is almost completely unusable on a PowerPC. The 601s are bad, the 603s are horrendous, but the 604s and 603e's are passable.

RAM Doubler doesn't help as much as you'd think. It really needs more physical RAM to become useful. (RAM Doubler is *NOT* a 'hard drive caching' virtual memory app, it compresses the contents of your physical RAM. The less RAM you have, the more compression it needs to apply. And some apps are basically 'incompressible', so regardless of the fact that it says it is 'reporting' 24 MB of RAM, you don't actually have that available.)

You may want to look into RAM Charger, too. I have an 8 MB PowerBook 5300, and with RAM Charger, RAM Doubler, and Speed Doubler, 7.6.1 is just barely usable. (7.5.x isn't much better.)

RAM is really what you need. The 7200 at least takes a nice standard type of desktop memory.

 

[Quadraman]

Quadras and 601 machines are really nice under 7.6.1. If you have a Mac that is 32 bit clean, then 7.6.1 is probably the way to go.

The RAM for the PCI Powermacs is super cheap, so there's really no reason to go with a software solution to solve lack of memory issues or to wear out your hard drive prematurely by forcing to thrash under the demands of virtual memory.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Legacy-Mac-DIMMs-SIMMs/

The ones on top are the ones you want. 64mb for 8.99 and 128mb for 17.95. At those prices you should easily be able to afford enough real RAM to run any OS your machine is capable of at a good speed. Be sure to get non-EDO for a 7200. If you have a spare 7500/7600 motherboard laying around, I'd swap that in and just ditch the 7200 board as they are worthless. A 7300 board would work, but from what I have been reading you also need the 7300 power supply.

(And the 603 wasn't a bad chip by itself, it was the machines that it was installed in that made it look bad. The 603 SHOULD have been a much faster chip than the 601 at the same clock speeds but all those x200 and x300 Macs with their horrible architectures wiped out any potential for performance gains.)

 

[register]

A 7200 with 64 MB RAM is quite usable up to Mac OS 9.2.2 (http://www.os9forever.com/os9helper.html), giving you the benefits of most recent drivers for graphic cards or USB host adaptors. From 8.1 on you can use HFS+ formatted volumes to boot from. The 7200 comes with a slow SCSI host adaptor. But you might have a PCI IDE host adapter card for the machine, to use large drives.