Unsupported OS X

[zodraz]

I'm digging around trying to find as much information on this as I can.

I've searched the TS site and read some of Krissel's posts.

And I know that if I pay $10 I can be a registerd XpostFacto user and have access to their forums, etc.

BUT I'm not sure I wanna spend any money - yet.

I need to know if running Jaguar (or Panther) on my setup would be more than just a "proof-of-concept", but actually usable.

I know the pitfalls are:

• Loss of the internal Floppy drive
• Incompatibility/problems with some RAM
• Incompatibility/problems with some SCSI chains/drives
• Loss of "LocalTalk"
• Restrictions on "Boot" drive size/partitions
• Incompatibility/problems with some PCI cards

General comments have been made that seem to indicate it's worthwhile, but nothing specific, like - "runs iMove and iDVD, Photoshop 7 soars!"

What I have is a "FrankenMac" as follows:

8500 case
7500 motherboard
Sonnet 450Mhz G3 processor with 1MB L2 cache
512 MB RAM
3 fast internal SCSI Drives 1) IBM DGHS 4GB 7200 RPM and 2) IBM 18XP 7200 RPM UltraStars
Rage 128 16MB PCI video card with DVD decoder (from B+W)
USB 1 PCI card
FireWire 400 PCI card
Ethernet networked to printers, other Macs

I'd really like to see some test data on how the performance is.

Any insights, links would be appreciated.

Thanks

Oh, with my daughter away at college, I'm sooo broke (she has a G4 PowerBook!).

     

[krissel]

If you've read my posts on my XPostFacto experiences I won't repeat anything here except to note that if you have a lot of time to spare and you wouldn't be freaked by having your machine go down requiring a lot of troubleshooting...
well, then give it a go.  

Don't know if you picked up on the free email list that you can join or access online here.The members of the list are very helpful and many have similar "FrankenMac" machines.

Certainly you are aware that you won't get great speed out of your apps but "adequate" for most uses. It would be a good opportunity to learn to use X and get used to the system and there is nothing cooler than seeing X running off an ancient beige Mac. Kind of a nyah, nyah type of thing.  

[zodraz]

Thanks for the link Krissel!

Just what I was looking for!

And I do figure I'd be in for some trouble shooting.

For instance, my internal CD is NOT an Apple OEM, but is "Bootable" using command+option+shift+delete.

To be usable in OS 9 I did the Apple CD/DVD "Hack" that got the Apple driver to work with it.  

Hopefully there is something simular for OS X.

If I can get acceptable speed using iPhoto and iDVD I'd be very happy. I'd do the rest with OS 9. (I imagine "Classic" would be a dog).

I've got a dual 1.25 Ghz at work running X so my home machine would be a good trainer for me since I'm still a "Newbie" to OS X and UNIX and get my kids some experience with it.

So that MAYBE next year I can get a G5 or late model G4.