• Hello MLAers! We've re-enabled auto-approval for accounts. If you are still waiting on account approval, please check this thread for more information.

Run Mac OS 9 on a PM 6100?

I have a mac performa 6116 with sonnet nubus g3 at 500 mhz installed and i use Mac Os 7.6.1. It is really fast. I have also 136 mb of ram.

 
Thanks for the advise everyone!

@trag: 264MB? I know what I'm getting!

@Bunsen:

I note that you later amended that to DVD-RAM, but I just thought I'd mention in case: you won't be able to play DVD movies on a 6100, no matter how upgraded it is.
Do you know why this is?

That's a PDS right angle adapter you want, not a Nubus adapter. They are two different parts; the HPV card will not work in the Nubus adapter.
Oh, thanks for the heads up! Any idea if I could do anything with the NuBus Slot?

The Sonnet G3 upgrades have a PDS socket for the HPV card, and take the place of the PDS riser. Get one of them; it's about as easy to find as the plain PDS riser and you get a G3 and cache thrown in for free. Cache is either 512k or 1MB - IMHO getting the larger cache is more important than the CPU speed. NB: with a G3 card installed you can't use (and don't need) the motherboard cache.

Oh look, brand new with warranty 400MHz/1MB for $30
Looks good :approve:

 
@trag: 264MB? I know what I'm getting!
Note, that I wrote that I couldn't get a pair of that particular 128 MB SIMM to work with the 6100. It might work if those resistors tie the RAS lines on the SIMM, and if one rearranged them to correspond to how the 6100 ties the RAS lines together. But I haven't confirmed that.

 
Do you know why this is?
Insufficient bandwidth and CPU grunt. Pre-G4 machines usually needed some sort of decoder card to have reasonable frame rates, which was never available for any NuBus machine. A G3 is just not going to be able to decode the disc fast enough.

You *could* play VCDs on it though -- MPEG-1, and especially "low res" MPEG-1, is much easier to decode than MPEG-2.

 
@ClassicHasClass: So theoretically, if I was to install a G3 upgrade, the only problem would be a decoder card? Sounds like a hack/mod begging to be made!

 
I agree that's the most practical way. That's how I "played DVDs" on my IIci (using a Video Spigot, which should work with the 6100 too if you don't have an AV card). The only downside to that you should try to find a DVD player that is ... er ... flexible with Macrovision or it will screw around with the automatic gain control on the card and give you a distorted image. I have a region free I "imported" from Taiwan for this purpose that doesn't even implement the Macrovision circuit, let alone RCE, and this works well. It plays both NTSC and PAL as a bonus.

It's a shame you really have to go grey-area to get this totally legal application to work. This is another reason I stick with upscaled DVDs instead of Blu-Ray -- Blu-Ray is just another means to ensure you don't actually own what you buy, and upscaled DVD is "good enough" with an HDMI connection and a good upscaler, like a Sony player.

 
I disagree. Upscaling may look the same (or "good enough") to your eyes but it looks pretty blurred to mine, even when compared to HD streaming content.

 
Like everything, it's a matter of taste, of course. But there are crappy upscalers and there are good upscalers, and a good upscaler makes good output. (I didn't say indistinguishable. :p )

But that's orthogonal to the OP.

 
Any idea if I could do anything with the NuBus Slot?
Er ... Put a Nubus card in it? Not really worth it, IMO, because a/ you can only use 7" cards, without severe case surgery, and b/ you can't mount a G3

the only problem would be a decoder card? Sounds like a hack/mod begging to be made!
Uh, no. You still have to find some way of getting data off the disk, fast enough, to the decoder card, and then back to the video controller in some form recognised by both the hardware *and* the OS, and find some way of driving it from the OS as well. In short, not impossible, per se, but also not gonna happen, unless you're a very bored qualified EE with classic Mac OS coding experience.

Use a faster machine to transcode files to VCD format if you really want movies on your 6100.

 
Totally necro'ing this for amusement..

There's a dvd decoder card that goes in the PCMCIA slot for the powerbook g3 isn't there (like this --> http://store.mcetech.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DVDMPG2&Category_Code=_pbg398&Product_Count=1)? Not that adding a pcmcia card would be trivial or anything, but that seems like one plausible direction to take. Assuming you fit the qualifications below, some kind of wacky nubus pcmcia controller might allow you to use that. I expect you'd seem some kind of special software to make that work... Or, maybe this -> http://micha.freeshell.org/pcmcia_drive/index.php could be repurposed for that...

I hate theoretical possibilities... They are always incredibly unlikely to be doable, work out, especially not for the average person.

 
Back
Top