Slashdot Mirror

Some of the pre-G3 Macs (7x00/8x00/9x00) will run OSX (with device support issues in some cases), with the assistance of XPostFacto

Good thing the kernel's open source, then. There are things like XPostFacto which make OS X work on older Macs by providing the necessary drivers/etc and faking things as necessary, for instance.

I bought a new (faster) CPU for my mac here.

I have one of Apple's PowerBook G3 (Firewire a.k.a. Pismo a.k.a 2000) models. It's been upgraded from 400 MHz to 900 MHz and from 64MB RAM to 512. It runs Panther pretty well...I wouldn't open my 1400-picture iPhoto library on it (that's what the G5 is for :) but it does great for random web browsing, word processing, etc. You're still mostly up to date technology-wise since this machine includes an internal Airport 802.11b slot, USB, FireWire, and 10/100 Ethernet.

The key to the Pismo is that it is the last PowerBook to include an additional bay which can hold the stock DVD-ROM drive or another battery (or various third-party fixed and removable drives). If you buy one of these machines used of course you shouldn't expect too much out of the battery included but you can always add one or two high capacity batteries. I have one that gives me 4-5 hours of careful use (no DVD watching) plus one original Apple battery that just gives me an hour. The only problem is weight - with two batteries installed the machine gets up to 8 or 9 pounds. But, working at a university with total WiFi coverage I find it quite worthwhile to bring everywhere I go on campus without having to pack the power adapter.

try here

You can pick up an early iMac or late beige G3, capable of running OS X nicely, for very little money. It might need a RAM upgrade, but they use the same sticks as old PCs of the same speed, so that's not going to cost you much. With the help of XPostFacto, you can even get some of the "unsupported" pre-G3 models to run OS X well enough for web-site testing purposes. Personally, I'd suggest spending a little more to get a used 12" G3 iBook (going for roughly $1/MHz on eBay), and get a swell little notebook in the process.

Yes, but by graduation the non-replaceable battery will surely be toast leaving you with nothing but an overpriced hunk of plastic to go with your overpriced degree.

Huh? Well, trollboy, once the battery's endurance gives out about three or four years from now you can always replace it with one of these, these, or these.

seeing as they still don't have a replaceable battery

I have a Gen 1 iPod that I've used pretty much daily. Excellent device, but the battery is starting to go. Thought about retiring it and buying a new model, but then I Googled for a replacement battery and found one for $30. Comes with a clear and concise user's manual -- see here. From the manual, looks pretty easy to drop in a new one, so I went ahead and ordered one.

Get an upgrade card at OWC and save tons of cash.

They had the standard 32 megs of ram (no expansion slots, of course)...

The original iMacs had two ram sockets. The standard 32 megs filled only one of these sockets. The second should still be free.

As a rule of thumb, every good-looking Mac can run the current OS X.

That includes every iMac, every iBook, and their contemporary Power* counterparts. The old G3 models run it rather well, considering their CPU speed, and you might want to consider a RAM upgrade. The earlier releases of OS X are supported on the old beige G3's and black PowerBooks, and even unsupported-by-Apple earlier models (the 7xxx, 8xxx, 9xxx series) can run it with a little tweaking of the install process using XPostFacto . I'm running Panther on one of the beige All-In-One G3's (if you've never seen one, imagine an angry Mac Classic after an overdose of gamma radiation), and my only complaint is that the internal floppy drive doesn't work (because Apple decided in '98 that floppies were evil).

Actually, this is not quite true. For example, MCE offers internal optical drive upgrades for PowerBooks and iBooks.

Processor upgrades are harder to come by, but Other World Computing offers many different accelerator choices for Macs. I believe the most recent PowerBook you can accelerate is the G3 Pismo which originally came in 400MHz and 500MHz varieties. For $279, you can upgrade it to a 500MHz G4 chip - not too bad. If you happen to have a PowerBook (not an iBook), then you can also upgrade to things like USB 2 via the PCMCIA card slot. So, yes, they're not as upgradeable as desktops. But I'll bet they're more upgradeable than PC laptops - never seen an accelerator for one of those!

Have you partitioned your HD to less than 8 gigs for the first partition? That was something that held me up for a while.

I highly reccomend reading the docs for XPF and checking out osxhints.com for some things.

I will admit, it is tough to get going - I had trouble with the CD drive, had to burn a new copy of the install, reset the nvram, replaced the pram battery (which seemed to do the trick) before I got going.

I then had to only install the combo updates - not software update until I was up to 10.2.8.

It's running fine now, and software update works fine as well.

Once I got it set up, I of course, had to overclock it to 333 (300 mhz g3). It has run without one crash, or 'unexpected quit' since (4 months).

I suggest hanging with 10.2.8 - Apple maintains it with Security Updates (no problems there either) and it runs like a dog in heat.

I got a slightly older one from Other World Computing, made specifically for the 2G 20 GB iPod. Just search for "iPod" at http://eshop.macsales.com/ . The ones you'd want would be in the category "iSkin iPod Cases - For 2G 20GB iPod Only"

Info on the iSkin I got can be found here. FYI it is generally similar to the new ones, but it doesn't have the belt clip and a screen protector is not built-in so you'll want to get some sort of protective film separately. They are still available on the official iSkin site but cost a bit more than at OWC.

Last year, I bought an 8500 for $60 on ebay, loaded it up with cheap ram (check here) and thus began my adventure of endless tweaking of X mode lines, etc. :-) But seriously, it was fun.

Also, the yellowdog-general and yellowdog-newbie mailing lists are pretty newbie-friendly.

HTH

confuse market share for installed base. IDC (subsidiary of IDG) is one of the worst undercounters of Mac marketshare and installed base. A quick look at Google's Zeitgeist shows 3% Mac, 1% Linux. I know these number are not perfect as we all spoof browser IDs, but I think the the ratio of Mac to Linux boxes undercounted due to spoofing is also likely 3:1.

Apple has sold nearly 30 million Macs since 1984. The PowerPC shipped a decade ago in 1994. Any PowerPC will run OS 9, any G3 will run 10.2, and any factory USB machine will run 10.3 (officially, XPostFacto). That is something like 20 million machines still in use mostly as desktops.

I don't hate free software, and I think Mac OS X and Linux complement each other. I just hate these so-called analysts with their biased numbers. My wife used to work for an economics firm that did analysis for the telecom industry. I would liken what they did to selling cosmetics to ugly people to make them look better. They tailored their reports to put the companies that were paying for the reports in the best light no matter what the truth was. IDC is no different. If Apple gave them a crapload of money, they would say Apple's marketshare far outpaces Linux.

what was the process to install that open source driver to run OSX

• Copy XPostFacto to a convenient location on your hard drive. You do not need to put it in a special location.
• Insert the Mac OS X Install CD (or Darwin, or Mac OS X Server, as the case may be)
• Launch XPostFacto
• Select the Install CD as the volume to start up from
• Select the target volume that you want to install Mac OS X to
• Click on the "Install" button
• Sit back and watch the action

what is an IT professional exactly? In your words anyhow

In the context of my post, it's a shorthand way of saying: Computer Science degree in 1981. Past president of the local Unix Users Group. Have worked as a programmer, got mentioned in Dr. Dobbs (Dec 1986 - Turbo Pascal hack). Have also been a systems analyst, project manager, supervisor of unix & network support group. Currently systems analyst/team lead; and I do freelance programming from time to time

...of course, I also code for fun

Now I don't understand why you would buy Panther (you did *buy* it, right?) if you knew that it wouldn't install on a usb-less G3. You knew because you check these things out before you plop down $129 for a forced upgrade (you do read system requirements before spending $129, right?).

Now, if you *really* want to install panther, you can go here. You're going to have to have the required hardware (you will RTFA, right?) before you can do it, which will mean a new PCI video card, as the 4 meg ATi Rage ain't going to cut it.

As far as Apple forcing you to upgrade, did Steve come to your house and hold a slightly rounded plastic gun to your head and make you click on the 'Safari' link? When Panther came out, did all of your software stop working? I don't know where the 'forcing' comes into play - by your logic, linux, windows, and BeOS force you to upgrade every time a new version comes out.

As far as running linux on your G3 - go to town! I happily run 10.2.8 on my beige g3, and its quite usable and easy to configure. If you want to give up OS X, that's your issue. Say goodbye to Photoshop, Safari 1.1 (which works fine), and the rest of the consistent GUI software, 'cause it ain't there for linux.

Switching your iPod. You're switching to activation coded, exploit-filled Windows. Quite a trade up, I'm sure. Although, I'm sure Bill won't come by the house to force you to upgrade. He's too busy leveraging his monopoly to bring more substandard software to market.

As far as the 12" Powerbook, there you're really shorting yourself. I have a 15", and as I've said before, it's the best computer I've ever had. It came with 10.2.8, and I got Panther for 20 bucks.

Steve didn't make me, I *wanted* to.

I think that you will find something to whine about no matter what, so do what you will do. Put up or shut up as Dad was apt to say.

You want to run Panther like the kids in Cupertino intended, get the Powerbook and enjoy it, because you will. It's nice. Retire the G3 (throw 10.2.8 on the bitch and put it out to pasture as an FTP server). It's had a long, hard life.

Most of all, stop complaining. You could be spending that $129 a year on antivirus software, spyware detection and removal, software firewalls, Norton Ghost and your time trying to figure out what services to disable this week, and how to get IE and WMP from stealing file associations.

If all that isn't worth $129 a year, maybe you should give up on computers and get a job pushing a rock to the top of a hill.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go run software update on my powerbook (and not worry about my exploit-free, Beige G3 FTP server) and check out the new Safari.

I think Apple missed the boat not supporting these Macs with OS X. They make great little OS X workhorses.

By replacing the stock HD with a Seagate Barracuda V 120gb ($130) and the fan with a Papst fan ($15), I've made it so the the only audible noise my g4 makes comes from the PSU. Pretty quiet and pretty cheap, considering I needed a bigger HD anyway.

But I want it dead quiet, since I use it to record music, and I hate computer noise anyway. So next step is to replace the PSU, probably with one of these ($80). The only problem is, Apple doesn't follow ATX guidelines with its power supplies, but lucky for me some guy's already figured out the differences. Unfortunately, that's only for the Sawtooth g4s, those of you who have something else may be SOL. But there's no reason why you couldn't find out the pinouts of your own particular g4's PSU and match it to the ATX standard.

Only thing is, I'm never going to want to buy a newer machine, b/c my current one rocks so hard (or rather, so softly). So I started looking into g4 upgrade cards (more). I'm probably going to try and hold out till they come out with something that lets me upgrade to a g5, but i figure an upgrade card with the heatsink replaced with something more like this, perhaps with a fan controller, might be the way to go. Anyone know if it's possible to use a heatsink like that on an apple chip?

Of course, if I've got a heatsink like that, I'm going to have to cut a window into the case to show it off. Anyone know anything about how much EM shielding the case offers, and if cutting a big hole in it is a bad idea? I mean, I see all-plexiglass cases around, how do they get around the EMI problem?

I'm here to second the FireWire proposal. Be sure you get a controller with an Oxford 9xx chipset and go to it. OtherWorld Computing has some great enclosures, decent prices and good customer service.

NetBSD/68k, supports 68k cpus and various free cluster architectures.

Appleseed, supports OS 8.6 - 9.x on PPC.

Quite a few older PCI Powermacs can be coaxed to run OS X 10.1.x using XPostFacto and some patience. Won't support XGrid for now, but the other free suspects will work.

No, no, no. People have just installed Panther without making sure that EVERYTHING in their system has the latest updates. We've gotten to use to "just plugging it in and going". That's a great feature of Macs, but like any good thing it can be taken too far. Update your firmware people, Oxford has released a statement saying as much. If you have a OWC 400 or 800 Firewire drive go here:

Tech Support

Note that while OWC's firmware update has only been tested with their drives, other people in the forums have successfully used it to update other vendors' drives using the Oxford chipset.

Their updater will also tell you which chipset (911 or 922) your drive has and which firmware it's running. Note that some FW400 drives use the affected Oxford 922 chipset rather than the 911.

As of this writing, nobody's quite sure yet whether Oxford 911 (FW400) chipsets are also affected. Some evidence indicates that they are, Official Statements to the contrary.

According to this Apple page the problem is with the chipset.

OWC has posted a firmware update for their drives, as has Wiebetech. It looks like the Wiebetech requires you to update the firmware in Jaguar, and then they don't recommend using it IN Jaguar afterwards... Sheesh.

And that's what scares me about "going Mac".

Your concerns are well-founded. I discussed this long, long ago in this comment (yay google!). The only updates since that comment almost 3 years ago would be that 10.1/10.2 (1 and 2 years ago) broke compatibility with certain really old G3 PowerBooks, and that 10.3 (today!) breaks compatibility with "Old-World" Macs (more easily recognized as pre-USB Macs).

In summary, it's certainly uncomfortable that your OS upgrades and hardware upgrades come from the same source. However, Apple has generally shown itself to be a Good Guy in this regard, with the notable exception of MacOS X 10.0, which obviously made a number of sacrificies to be released to the public as early as it was.

I should also mention that XPostFacto has done a pretty good job of defeating Apple's unwillingness to support older hardware in the time since I wrote that comment.

I've got a number of pc's all around my house, and here at work - from 486's to PIV's. All running Linux or Windows XP (mostly Linux). All are very useable, given their expected purpose (ie 486==firewall).

I have for several years run a firewall on a 68040-based mac. This is a Mac from 1993, and it's still very "useable" in that regard. If I was running linux, I'd certainly expect that I'd be able to run the latest kernel on it. In reality, it runs MacOS 8.1 (from late 1997 or early 1998, I believe). And the reality is, if you're going to have low expectations of old hardware (I don't expect the Quadra to be usable as anything more than a router these days), there isn't much need to have modern, more usable software on it.

I'm looking forward to using Panther but I'm disappointed that machines that didn't ship with USB are being orphaned with this round. For a workaround we'll have to wait for XpostFacto to be updated. I really doubt that a Wallstreet G3/300 is significantly different to support than a Lombard PowerBook. This looks very much like a purely marketing driven decision rather than one based on technical issues. The drivers already in 10.2.x supported my USB 2/Firewire combo PCMCIA card right out of the box. I wish Apple would understand that many like myself are eager to buy new machines as justified for GOOD reasons (like vastly improved performance for demanding tasks), and that dropping support without good technical cause just breeds resentment and costs them OS upgrade sales. I generally avoid running unlicensed software but I'm feeling very reluctant to actually pay for copies of the OS that need 3rd party hacks to install on unsupported machines. Running Panther here isn't essential, but I'd sure like to see the same version of the OS on the old and new machines. Retiring machines prematurely is not only a waste of money, it is environmentally irresponsible. I suspect that in some settings having a portion of the installed machines orphaned would give Mac-hostile managers an excuse to jump platforms. It's a bit ironic that default OS installs include hundreds of megabytes for printers and languages we won't use, but not the little extra it'd take for slightly older Apple hardware. Shades of "Gil killed my dog" I guess...

For $500, you'd get a 1.3GHz G4 upgrade.

Here's a list of what MacSales says will fit into a G4/500 Sawtooth Mac.

800MHz upgrades are about $250.

If the warranty is already expired, this is way better than getting the same processor again.

For replacement CPUs, check out Sonnet Technology and Other World Computing. Sonnet makes most of the upgrade chips and Other World has some great support for issues involving CPU replacement/upgrade.

So what, exactly, are you whining about?

Not to mention, a new eMac with Panther will cost you about $800. If you can't afford $1000 every 5-8 YEARS perhaps you shouldn't be looking at Apples in the first place.

Apple hardware is closed to third party vendors?

I guess that means there are no Mac CPU upgrades from third party vendors... no disk controller cards from third party vendors... no thriving market in third-party optical and hard drives... and I'm sure Apple keeps a lock on the hardware so you can't install Linux or BSD. Yeah, Microsoft would just be doing what Apple do.

Or maybe you're full of it.

Firewire is SLOW.

Only the fastest IDE drives can outpace a 400Mb/s firewire link, and then, if you want, hook up an Oxford 922 based Firewire 800 box and you'll have plenty of headroom.

Disregarding the Apple ROM NewWorld or OldWorld, the support can be added to OS X for the various chipsets found on a pegasos board. There is a widely used project XPostFacto which includes specifically developed kernel modules to support OldWorld hardware will allow one to install and run OS X on an OldWorld machine. So I'm sure similar methods could be used to support the chipsets on the pegasos boards.

You've had a lot of people say don't bother, which is not that helpful really.

Here's what I recommend

• If you have an original machine with version 1 firmware ROM, be scared. It works perfectly once upgraded, but the install CD itself has problems. Options:
  • Do the install on you disk on a friends newer machine - remember the install parition must be the first one, and under 8 gig, and that you will need a class installation as well, probably on your second or other partition.
  • Upgrade the ROM if you can - then the install will work.
  • With no new hardware...you will find horrible horrible tips on support.apple.com lists, including stripping the machine back to basic hardware, using a single reliable sim, zapping pram, pressing the pci reset switch, installing minimal options and so on, all to try to delay a black screen crashing bug on the jag install CD for long enough to do finish the install. Some people reckon that XPostFacto helps, but it just hindered me.
  • Whatever you do, learn about certain debugging features... CMD-S at startup for single user, CMD-V for verbose booting, CMD-OPT-O-F for boot to open firmware.
• Yes - add RAM. 256M will do.
• Processor speed - you can probably crank up the 266 to 315MHz as I did.
• Add a USB card, you'll need it sooner or later. Don't worry about firewire. You may need a new shiny printer too unless you want to fight with the machine for hours. Apple no longer support serial printers. This is frustrating. The serial interface is still exposed in unix if you want to mess with the barely supported cups and gimpprint stuff.
• I really valued the boost from my new video card with 10.0... but jaguar makes an OK job of using the RageII you have. It depends how much you want to spend. If you stick with onboard video, you want to seek out info on turning off the bells and whistles to speed things up.
• You may find it useful to be able actually to use your floppy drive. This driver was derived from Darwin code.

Regards,

Greg

$190 - OWC MercuryZA G4/450-466MHz Altivec Enhanced ZIF with 1MB@225MHz 2:1 Backside Cache. New with 2yr OWC Warranty here $96 - 3 256MB SDRAM sticks here $40 - Dual Head 32MB PCI Radeon 7000, Flashable to Mac ROMS here $46 - Combo Firewire/USB card here $72 - 80GB HD here $450.

$190 - OWC MercuryZA G4/450-466MHz Altivec Enhanced ZIF with 1MB@225MHz 2:1 Backside Cache. New with 2yr OWC Warranty here $96 - 3 256MB SDRAM sticks here $40 - Dual Head 32MB PCI Radeon 7000, Flashable to Mac ROMS here $46 - Combo Firewire/USB card here $72 - 80GB HD here $450.

They key points are,

• Get a bigger hard drive (the 4GB-6GB standard on these are too small). If your G3 has Rage II on board video, your built-in IDE controller supports only one IDE drive, so you can't just attach a slave. I've done it, but it's not reliable.
• Get a USB card. These are cheap.
• Get a ZIF upgrade from a place like OWC. 500MHz for $160 with a 1MB backside cache gives you a fantastic performance boost; I've installed a 400 MHz myself.
• Get at least one 256 MB DIMM. These are cheap. 400 MB is good to shoot for, but it depends on what you do (We've got an iMac DV with 128 MB, and with its light workload I totally forget that).
• I recommend getting at least an ATI Rage 128, as the Rage II/Rage Pro that came with the G3 doesn't like to display millions of colours at high resolutions, and OS X does like to display millions of colours at high resolutions.
• Install no less than OS X 10.2.3 (a fresh retail box of Jaguar would be at least this).

You can put in a G4 ZIF upgrade, but I can't vouch for stability or compatibility of those.

This has nothing to do with your machine being old.

The 10.2.0 installer disk is the easiest way to trash any Mac, new or old. Check out Apple's support forums, there were people buying brand new Macs which came with 10.2 who reformatted their drives so they could re-partition it, and they couldn't install 10.2!! They were left with useless Macs with no operating system (except for OS 9, if they wanted that).

My own examples,

• Digital Audio G4. 10.0 installs fine. 10.0.3 does not install (can't remember details). 10.1 installs fine. 10.1.3 does not (kernel panics through install, after first reboot, all kinds of crap). 10.2.0 installs fine, no problems at all.
• QuickSilver G4 - purchased a bit before 10.2 was released. 10.2 gets an error after trying to install. Hard drive is still intact with original 10.1 installation. Impossible to upgrade machine to 10.2.0 (this is a newer G4 than the Digital Audio).
• iMac DV - Upgrading 10.1 to 10.2 works (older than G4 and QuickSilver). Not sure about other 10.x install discs.
• Beige G3 Minitower. 10.1 - When booting into the installer CD, and the Mac is in "OS X boot mode" and looking for an OS, it cannot find the boot device. ?. 10.2.0 - didn't dare.
• Wallstreet 233: 10.1 upgrade to 10.2.0: worked the first time, but every app crashed after launching; seemed as if it were a permissions issue. Tried a clean install of 10.2. Installer kept kept kernel panicing during install at various points. Had to revert to 10.1.

Apple never really responded to the outcries on their forums, people thought their logic boards were f'd up or something and many just decided to buy new Macs (and again, people with new Macs were having the problem!).

Eventually Apple released the 10.2.3 installer disk - I got one as part of the Developer Program. This thing is a God Send (or rather, a really good bug fix). It runs perfectly on every Mac with no complaints, especially the Beige G3!

The Beige G3 was originally a 233, it's been upgraded to a 400MHz/1MB backside cache from OWC (you can get that for about $150, makes your Mac very usable. Get a USB card too).

The Beige G3 running 10.2.6 is far more stable than when it's running 9.2.2 or 8.5.1 (I have all three on the same box). It's faster, easier to work with, and a heck of a lot more modern. Honestly, I've been toying with some old hardware and old versions of the Mac OS for the last couple of weeks (8.1, 8.5, 8.6, 9.0, 9.2..), and playing with what's supported on what (8.5 supports the GeoPort, 8.6 does not, 8.5 does not support USB hard drives, 8.6 does, 9.2 does not support my DVD drive, 8.5 does.. etc). In OS X, everything works perfectly (except the GeoPort, of course). And reliabily. You get used to all the little patches and extensions and your perfectly selected Extensions Manager Set to get your Mac booting perfectly, with 10.2 things just work. I don't need no friggin' driver for my DVD drive in OS X. OS X didn't freeze because my HD has a corrupt hard disk driver -- it mounted it anyway! This is all on the G3! With 10.1/10.0, using Mac OS X was iffy. But with 10.2.3+ Mac OS X is FAR better than using OS 9!! I've used a B&W G3/400 daily 'once upon a time' with 10.1 a bit over a year ago. This G3 running 10.2 is far smoother.

"Funky" and old world hardware still isn't supported - the AV personality card I've got on the G3 that gives me video/audio in/out doesn't work (just the basics work, audio), but hey, when I reboot into OS 9.2.2 the Finder crashes because it doesn't like my Toshiba DVD drive's driver (OS X uses it automatically).

Assuming there's no regressions with Panther, OS X runs fine on these old Macs. It's running great on that PowerBook too, we've got a PowerLogix G4 upgrade for that thing as well, but the develop

Actually, you can buy them at OWC brand new. http://www.macsales.com. $380 for Gigabit models and $400 for earlier.

XPostFacto 2.2 works with Mac OS X 10.2, aka Jaguar (as well as previous versions of Mac OS X). There are a couple of issues with Jaguar on unsupported systems. The most serious is that Jaguar simply does not work with the 603 or 604 processor--it will only work if you have a G3 or G4 upgrade installed. It may be possible to fix this eventually

Just in case anybody from Apple is reading...

I'm quite glad to hear the number of positive reports about the new Finder; I guess that means the thing that bothers me most from the screenshots is the Brushed Metal interface. It just doesn't fit for me. I'd like to have theme support back as it was in OS 8.5->9.2. Not that I'm pining for the days of Classic or anything, but I would eagerly use a Platinum theme or Dark Platinum from OS X Server 1.x. I would also take the current Aqua (with graphite buttons) over the new "toned-down" Aqua.

Another thing that bothers me is the lack of Beige G3 install support. With the new Sonnet 1GHz G4 ZIF or even the XLR8 800MHz G3 upgrade, I can make my Beige the rough equivalent of a more modern Mac desktop, tho possibly not a top of the line one and definitely not the G5. I'm not too terribly worried about it however, as XPostFacto will allow me to install even if Apple doesn't want me to.

Want to use iDVD with your external DVD writer? Sorry, but if you didn't get a Mac with a superdrive then you're out of luck. It only works with the superdrive.

apple didn't want to pay MPEG2 licensing fees Per-Mac when they shipped iDVD. They only wanted to pay it per-Superdrive. Can you blame them for not wanting to pay thousands of dollars on a feature that practically no one without a Superdrive would want?

And don't bring up the "OWC was threatened with the DMCA" crap. That was IMPLIED (not even stated) by the CEO of OWC, specifically to get Slashdot types foaming at the mouth...and it looks like it worked.

I do agree Apple needs to address the low-end. At the time the clones were killed, Apple was finding it impossible to shift boxes. Had they not killed the business, the entire Macintosh platform would have died at the hands of a bankrupted Apple. Jobs has revitalized the company. Right now though, with the exception of one, bulky, all-in-one, there's no sub-$1000 machine and there needs to be. Apple does have a poor marketshare, and this decision by Microsoft risks making Internet access for Apple users poorer as webdesigners who code "IE-only" code only for the PC.

Here's hoping the iCheap is just around the corner.

FYI, OWC (the site I linked to) does a 400MHz G3 for what's probably your system for a shade under $100 (you can get faster models, obviously), and a Firewire/USB card for $50. Their page on OS X support should help you with getting Jaguar up and running. Jaguar is about $100, an Apple keyboard is about $60 from the Apple Store (if you really want to do that.) A 400MHz G3 with about 256M of RAM and a 10G HD is about minimum for running OS X. So if you want to upgrade, there's certainly cheap ways for you to do it.

I do agree Apple needs to address the low-end. At the time the clones were killed, Apple was finding it impossible to shift boxes. Had they not killed the business, the entire Macintosh platform would have died at the hands of a bankrupted Apple. Jobs has revitalized the company. Right now though, with the exception of one, bulky, all-in-one, there's no sub-$1000 machine and there needs to be. Apple does have a poor marketshare, and this decision by Microsoft risks making Internet access for Apple users poorer as webdesigners who code "IE-only" code only for the PC.

Here's hoping the iCheap is just around the corner.

FYI, OWC (the site I linked to) does a 400MHz G3 for what's probably your system for a shade under $100 (you can get faster models, obviously), and a Firewire/USB card for $50. Their page on OS X support should help you with getting Jaguar up and running. Jaguar is about $100, an Apple keyboard is about $60 from the Apple Store (if you really want to do that.) A 400MHz G3 with about 256M of RAM and a 10G HD is about minimum for running OS X. So if you want to upgrade, there's certainly cheap ways for you to do it.

I do agree Apple needs to address the low-end. At the time the clones were killed, Apple was finding it impossible to shift boxes. Had they not killed the business, the entire Macintosh platform would have died at the hands of a bankrupted Apple. Jobs has revitalized the company. Right now though, with the exception of one, bulky, all-in-one, there's no sub-$1000 machine and there needs to be. Apple does have a poor marketshare, and this decision by Microsoft risks making Internet access for Apple users poorer as webdesigners who code "IE-only" code only for the PC.

Here's hoping the iCheap is just around the corner.

FYI, OWC (the site I linked to) does a 400MHz G3 for what's probably your system for a shade under $100 (you can get faster models, obviously), and a Firewire/USB card for $50. Their page on OS X support should help you with getting Jaguar up and running. Jaguar is about $100, an Apple keyboard is about $60 from the Apple Store (if you really want to do that.) A 400MHz G3 with about 256M of RAM and a 10G HD is about minimum for running OS X. So if you want to upgrade, there's certainly cheap ways for you to do it.

If you're concerned about the legalities, buy yourself a USB card and order an official Apple USB keyboard from Apple's website. That should ensure you're running the operating system on "Apple branded hardware", assuming you actually are under a legal obligation to agree to an EULA (you probably aren't, and even if clicking on "I agree" when the product is useless without being able to gets upheld in court, you can always bypass the agreement by getting someone legally unable to agree to push the button for you. But plugging in official Apple gear into your machine should ensure you're compliant with the EULA anyway.)

It could be done on that original PB G3 using Xpostfacto

But certainly you would need to upgrade the RAM from 64 MB for OS X...

Mac OS X Version 10.2 requires a Power Mac G3, G4, G4 Cube; iMac; PowerBook G3, G4; iBook; or eMac computer; at least 128MB of physical RAM and a built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card. Mac OS X does not support the original PowerBook G3 or processor upgrade cards. Verify your hardware is supported from the list below

You'd need XPostFacto to get pre-beige G3 PCI Power Macintoshes to run Mac OS X. Your older Macintosh requires a G3 or better to run Mac OS X 10.2.