Hi Russ,
Yes, you remember correctly.
Good news:
You can install 10.1.5 on the 9600 with the original 350 processor. I did so on mine and it ran rather well because I had 1.5G of RAM, very important on the older machines. You will need to get the XPostFacto program from OWC to allow the install. I used the original 4G hard drive for the install and have another 18G (partitioned) drive for OS9 and other apps, files etc.
The RAM is all 128 chips. I did interleave them (A1, B1, A2, B2, etc.) even though the XPostfacto forum says some people have to deinterleave to run X. Best is to use chips purchased at the same time for the interleaving, ie, same chips on the A1, B1 and so on.
I did lose one chip along the way in my troubleshooting process (see below) which I think I may have damaged myself or it just couldn't take all the in and out movement. Anyway I now have 1.37G which is running fine.
Bad news:
You will not be able to install Jag or higher unless you upgrade the processor to a G3/4 and you will also need a better video card than the 8MB Twin Turbo that was stock. I upgraded to a G4 and added a 32MB video card with the intent of installing Jag but ran in to a problem where the install CD did not recognize the drives in the machine. I tried all the troubleshooting suggested at the OWC forum except changing the SCSI chains internally. I removed all PCI cards except video, deinterleaved RAM as much as possible, but never got to the install point. I was really tired of fooling around and decided to just live with the extra speed gain of the new processor and video and stick with 9.1 for now.
Oddly X.1.5 would run fine with the old unsupported 350 processor but not with the new G4. Go figure.
Additionally there are major issues with getting printers, scanners, etc. to run with X on older machines. My two printers were serial so they weren’t recognized. My CDRW was SCSI external and was invisible despite trying third party apps that claimed to work.
I now have firewire/USB cards that are connected to external dirves, mice, new 52xCDRW, card reader, etc. and all works fine with 9.1. I also have a Wacom tablet that would not have been usable under X.
If I hadn’t the investment in externals and was looking at the G5 almost here, I certainly wouldn’t spend money on that major an upgrade. Depending on what you do with your machine, about the only addition I would recommend economically speaking besides RAM is firewire/USB cards to run externals. Any CDRWs, scanners, printers or drives you purchase as externals could always be used later with a newer machine.
If you want to just play with X.1.5 to get the feel of X then it shouldn't be too much of a hassle to put in on the 9600. I didn't run into any problems on the original X install and I had to go through about 3 or 4 incremental upgrades which are now rolled into one, I think. Just read through all the info on the XPostfacto site and believe that it will work. Do back up everything first though just in case.
Mi dos centavos..
Happy to answer any further questions...
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