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Why would you use Mac OS 6.0.5?

avadondragon

avadondragon

6502
I've been playing with my Mac Plus recently and grabbed the pre-built MacPack_Silverlining image to run on my PiSCSI to speed the process up. I was surprised to find that they had included both system 6.0.5 along side my usual go to system 6.0.8. I was wondering why someone would want to run the earlier version.
 
Versioning back in the early System-before-7 didn't work like we now understand it.
There were some bug fixes here and there, but most of the time the "news" were the bundled drivers to make the system work on the latest edition of whatever Macintosh just came out.

Try to find a list of changes between 6.0.5 and 6.0.8.
 
If you're running just on 800k floppies, 6.0.5 is measurably smaller than 6.0.8, or even 6.0.7, allowing you more room to put other useful things on the disk, like a RAM disk, or other INITs/CDEVs.
 
One reason to use 6.0.7 over 6.0.5 would be to use software that requires it. For instance, SuperClock v4.0.4 requires 6.0.7.
 
I haven't been able to find much about system 6 version feature differences aside from what systems are supported. I thought perhaps 6.0.5 might be using less system resources but I checked RAM usage and it's actually using 26k MORE than 6.0.8. The only advantage I've seen that makes any sense is for building bootable floppies. Given that it's included on a massive 2GB partition in this case I'm still left wondering what the use case was. I'm all about using the bare minimum for what you need but only when it gives some benifit.
 
The use case back in the day was "It was what shipped with your computer".
It was on the restore disks that came in the box.
Not until the System 7 days were there "OS Upgrade kits" available.
 
Nixontheknight said:
there's also 6.0.8L for the Macintosh Classic, Classic II, PowerBook 100, LC, and LC II
Click to expand...
Right.

There's also the Japanese version (6.0.7.1?) that runs on the PowerBook 14x and 170 (and of course there's also the standard versions with the Japanese SSW's 14x/170 bits hacked in but those don't count as "official" releases per sé).

c
 
CC_333 said:
There's also the Japanese version (6.0.7.1?) that runs on the PowerBook 14x and 170 (and of course there's also the standard versions with the Japanese SSW's 14x/170 bits hacked in but those don't count as "official" releases per sé).
Click to expand...
I always wanted to try system 6 on my PB170 but alas I didn't have it anymore when I found out about this nifty hacked version.
 
Yeah, it's pretty neat.

When I got my first 140, the hard drive was dead. System 7 doesn't really run from floppy very well (nor was it meant to; I think it was the first SSW to require a hard disk), but System 6 does!

The hack had just then been discovered and documented (this was sometime around 2013-2014, I think), so I got to be among the first few to try it.

c
 
I use MacPack too, and I was wondering this as well.
6.0.5 didn't even boot correctly, and so I just deleted it :)
 
System 6.0.5 could be installed from 4 800k floppies. Also 6.0.5 was known to work well on the Spectre GCR (Mac emulator for the Atari ST)
 
System 6.0.5 was released to support the Macintosh IIfx. If someone wanted to run the original release software from the IIfx, that would be a good reason why.

Additionally, there were bugs and glitches introduced in System 6.0.7 (which quickly replaced 6.0.6 for a show-stopping bug), that weren’t present in prior System software versions. Additionally, System 6.0.8 introduced a few more problems that weren’t in System 6.0.7.

I ran System 6 at home and used it at school between 1990 and summer of 1993, and even though I had System 6.0.7 and 6.0.8, I found (on my Mac Plus at least) that the 6.0.4 it came with was more stable / reliable. I never had 6.0.5 in those days so I can’t vouch for that version specifically.

These “point” releases contained slight tweaks / fixes to system software and also brought support for new machines. That was the point of 6.0.5, to support the IIfx. System 6.0.6 (replaced with 6.0.7) was made to support the Classic, LC, and IIsi. System 6.0.8 was made to integrate some of the networking / AppleTalk / print functions in System 7 back into System 6, as there were a lot of enterprise and educational customers still using System 6 after the release of System 7.

System 6.0.8L was released as a modified System 6.0.8 for support for some machines that were released AFTER system 7, but where Apple either didn’t have support baked into System 7 yet or there were specific customers who needed a System 6 version for the new systems.

If you thoroughly use each point release of System 6.0.0 through 6.0.8 you will find differences and some compatibility issues with software running on one and not running on another. Some of the specific changes to the OS broke software in strange ways. So it wasn’t always best to have just the latest version only. I myself had multiple boot floppies with different system software versions just for that reason.
 
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