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Run Mac OS X On Those Old Macs
AllInOne writes: "Despite Apple's claims to the contrary, Mac OS X runs just fine on older Apple hardware.
Thanks to the Open Source nature of Apple's underlying Darwin system serveral clueful folks have written kernel extensions that allow "Old World" machines such as the 7300, 7600, 8500 etc to run OS X. They even support G3 & G4 processor upgrades cards as well.
The best release (and free as in beer) is by Ryan Rempel. I just installed his Version 2.0b3 of Unsupported UtilityX on my old 8550 with a Newer G3 upgrade card along along with 10.1 and performance is quite respectable."
And elsewhere along the OS price/performance front, Cinematique writes: "I was surfing around and came across this useful little tidbit for mac os x users. Apparently, apple included a way to compress the memory-hungry finder window buffer images, but didn't turn it on at the last minute due to a debuging issue. this turns the compression on, thus saving a sh*tload of memory."
The coolest thing about OS X's window compression (off by default) is that is actually *improves* performance, as well as conserving a lot of memory. Because most CPUs are limited by a RAM thruput bottleneck, compression of window data will actually improve performance by transfering far less data to and from the CPU. The compression/decompression routine does indeed consume CPU cycles, but it almost trivial with modern CPUs.
I love simple, free little performance boosts like that.
While there are scads of OS X "tips" sites, most of which are newbie unix introductions, I have found the following to be very useful with a wide variety of tips and other neat hacks:
http://www.ResExcellence.com/osx/index.shtml
Some of the more low-level hacks are probably pretty obvious to NeXT vets and Darwin & GNU-Darwin users.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The DayStar Genesis mac clone series was wild! (For those that aren't familar, see this: http://www.lowendmac.com/daystar/ and this: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/ULTIMATE_MAC/Elvis/inde x.html). Back in the day, it was one hellof machine. Up to four PowerPC 604e CPUs on the CPU card. 16 DIMM slots, 6 PCI slots. Not bad for 1997.
Because Mac OS Classic's multithreading was app-dependant, only "pro" apps such as Photoshop supported the additional CPUs. But when they did, whoa, did that thing ever haul.
But it was on the PowerMac version of BeOS that the DayStar really shined. The coolest thing was the CPU meter app in BeOS. You could click on and click off CPUs at will. Turn off two CPUs and watch the load on the other two increase. Click off all four, and poof, the OS halted! (they later fixed that "feature").
Anyway.... yeah, the old DayStar Genesis was awesome.
Are these adaptions useful? Sure, particularly for those with a significent investment in an existing Mac. If one's box is already tricked out, running well and has the oomph to run MacOS X 10.1 properly then this is a great thing. But for folks thinking "heeey, I'll just pick up an old junker Mac and cobble MacOS X onto it" you're probably not making a good investment of time or money.
Wintel hardware has an optimum lifespan of 24-36 months, 48 months is still ok but you're running into diminishing results. Sure folks still use 5 year old Wintel hardware but rarely as a desktop system and even more rarely do they go out and buy it just to put a new OS onto.
On the other hand lots of Mac folks are perfectly happy running 5 year old Mac hardware and are in no hurry to move on. They paid a premium and got a box that has lasted well and is only now going to be a problem if they want to jump to the new MacOS X. Selling for 10 cents on the dollar isn't how the old Apple hardware market works: There are folks out there still willing to pay serious money for extra PCI slots or built-in SCSI or whatever.
So, if you're looking to play with MacOS X borrow a friend's. Or buy a cheap new box. Or throw Darwin onto your Wintel and play with the underpinnings. But going the buy-an-old-Mac-&-fix-'er-up route isn't really worth it unlesss you've already got one laying around.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
> The best release (and free as in beer)
Will someone finally point me to that free beer
open source people are talking about ?
I hear the port to the MOS 6502 8-bit CPU is coming along better than expected. Should be out this spring, probably very early in April.
I'm using this hack. It seems to work well and appears to do no harm. I can see the difference on my slow PowerBook G3/300/192 just dragging windows around.
If you want to improve your Finder experience further, run the app ShadowKiller. It removes the window shadows which seem to take too much power to make on a slow, old Mac. Definite improvement. However, because OS X windows don't have a frame all the way around, you're gonna get weird white window on white window experiences; you'll get used to it.
Another good site with Mac OS X tips is Mac OS X Hints.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
...when is the NeXT Cube port of OS X coming out? Ok, so a 25MHz 68040 isn't going to set the world on fire, but my cube has the NeXT Dimension graphics card. In its day this was a powerful beast and has an Intel i960 accelerator.
I bet Steve Jobs would secretly love such a release. Hey, I'd even get enough RAM for it (mine can go to 128MB I believe).
Chris Morgan
If Apple weren't a software company, they could just jettison all the expensive MacOS development work and produce translucent, elegant, highly certified and tested x86 machines, and save a bundle.
If Apple were a hardware company, they wouldn't have lost so badly when the clone makers gave Apple's customers what the customers wanted---inexpensive, powerful machines that ran MacOS, without logos, frogdesign, or ad campaigns. Instead, Apple was forced to reconsider what made them competitive, and yanked all the software licenses.
Back in the days of PReP (a joint IBM/Motorola/Apple standard for PowerPC motherboards), Apple stonewalled on support, claiming there were problems getting MacOS to run on PReP hardware---they couldn't get it to work without having Mac ROMs, and there was some problem with *that*, and etc etc etc. A small Swiss software company (I believe called Qix) demonstrated MacOS running on PReP hardware, and IIRC Apple threatened them into little pieces. Later, Apple sorta endorsed CHRP, a successor to PReP, this time with a spot for those all-important Mac ROMs to live. But Apple never shipped MacOS for CHRP; this was the era when Apple was retaking control over hardware that could run MacOS. Of course, all that talk about engineering requirements for Mac ROMs in hardware turned out to be bullshit; the iMac next to me has OpenBoot ROMs, and loads the Mac ROMs from the hard drive.
Apple's work on PReP and then CHRP, and their commitments to supporting MacOS on those platforms led to great hopes for a commodity market in PowerPC motherboards, especially among Linux weenies like me who wanted widely available, appropriately priced non-x86 desktop machines available. Apple's broken promises are a part of why more of you aren't running Linux on non-x86 machines. But hey, at least Apple got to keep their software locked up.
Locked up? Well, maybe that's the wrong concept. Let's think of Apple-branded hardware as a Really Big Dongle, a copy-protection mechanism for MacOS. (The CPU incompatibility also keeps them from looking like they're competing with Microsoft, which makes Microsoft happy.)
Here's a fun experiment. Sit down with the parts list for a modern Mac and compare it to a well-built, well-designed Windows box from a first tier vendor, like Sony. The two machines may even have a lot of identical parts, now that Macs have PC133 memory, PCI, AGP, IDE hard drives, etc. Once you get done, add ~15-20% to the price of the PC to compensate for the generally better quality and design of Macs (if you believe that.)
If you do this across Apple's product line, you'll notice price differences anywhere between $75-100 for iMac-like machines to several hundred dollars on the high end boxes. Part of that margin is what pays for R&D, and in particular, OS development. So in some sense, Apple prices their OS by the capabilities of the hardware it runs on. Microsoft can only dream of this kind of profit maximization through differentiated pricing. Oh, and the license isn't transferable; you end up buying a new MacOS license fee when you buy a new Mac. That's how Windows OEM licenses are supposed to work; there's still a fair amount of piracy of Windows onto beige boxes, but Apple avoids that too.
Anyway, a potentially important reason why Apple hardware retains value is that a significant portion of original hardware cost is actually paying for the MacOS Dongle. Even as the cost of the hardware depreciates, the price of the ability to run MacOS does not depreciate as sharply.
Rhapsody is not OS X
9 95/q3/950508.pr.rel.copland.html h tml
Close, but not quite. Perhaps it's time for an Apple OS and Code Name refresher.
First off, and totally unrelated, is Apple's first unix OS from the mid 1980s, A/UX. This OS made its way thru several revisions, eventually ending up around 3.1. A/UX was available for certain 680x0 CPU based machines only and was never ported to PowerPC as at that time Apple had been hoping to move completely to Copland.
http://applefritter.com/ui/aux/
(The move from the 68K to PPC is also an interesting story, especially the small side storys of Apple's lab experience with later model 68Ks (68060, etc), the 88K, Alpha, 5x86, and MIPS CPUs.)
Apple's first attempt to upgrade and overhaul the Macintosh System software (Mac OS) was with Blue and Pink. Blue eventualy became System 7.0 and was a significant upgrade over previous versions of the OS, but still lacked many modern architectural features that were even present on the Lisa's OS in 1983 (in the Macintosh's defense, the Lisa had almost 10x as much RAM and cost 5x as much when it originally shipped). Blue was to be followed by Pink, a modern OS to be designed by Apple and a startup known as Taligent. Pink died a horrible political death and never saw the light of day.
Apple's second attempt was Copland, which was to be later followed by Gershwin, a heavily OpenDoc container based platform. Copland came close to being finished, Apple had released an early developer release (DR0) to select developers and had already started a Mac OS 9 marketing campaign. Copland was canned for a number of reasons, application compatibility (or the lack thereof) was a major factor.
http://product.info.apple.com/pr/press.releases/1
http://www.bozosoft.com/copland.html
http://www.macworld.com/1995/04/news/550.html
http://www.macworld.com/2000/09/buzz/windingroad.
Following the demise of Copland, Apple continued development of Mac OS 7.X (at the time at 7.5.X and 7.6.X). A version with some of the Copland features and appearance was developed as 7.7 but released and marketed as 8.0. Today this series is known as "Classic" Mac OS and is currently at 9.2.1. Since 8.0, Classic has undergone several major microkernel changes, driver architecure tweaks, and VM overhauls.
At the same time, Apple began a new OS search. Their options were to revive Copland, license Windows NT, or buy someone such as Be or NeXT. They decided to buy NeXT (which came with Apple and NeXT cofounder Steve Jobs).
Apple's most recent OS attempt, the the one that made it out the door, was Rhapsody. This project began at NeXT porting and updating their "OpenStep For Mach 4.2" (formerly NEXTSTEP 1.x - 3.3) OS to Apple PowerMacintosh hardware. The first devloper release of this was Rhapsody DR1 and came in three flavors... Rhapsody for Mac, Rhapsody for x86, and Rhapsody for NT (essentially a runtime framework to run Rhapsody apps atop Windows). Apps could be crosscompiled into a single fat binary to run on both platforms.
Rhapsody went thru several developer releases and was first publically shipped as Mac OS X Server 1.0, which had a GUI that resembled both Mac OS 8 and OpenStep. OS X server eventually reached version 1.2. 1.2 was codenamed Rhapsody 5.5. This can also be seen by doing a uname -a.
Later Rhapsody developer releases were known as Mac OS X Developer Previews, eventually gaining the Aqua look and perhaps most importantly, Carbon support. Previously, Rhapsody supported only two types of binaries -- Classic (non-ported Classic Mac OS apps running within a virtual machine, originally called Blue Box, later simply called Classic) and Yellow Box (applications specifically written for Rhapsody, based on the NS framework from the NEXTSTEP/OpenStep era. Yellow box is now known as Cocoa). Carbon was created to allow something no previous Apple Macintosh OS attempt had - an easy upgrade/porting path. Apple cleaned up the Mac APIs and supported them on both Classic Mac OS versions (starting with Mac OS 8.6) and on Mac OS X. The average developer now only had to modify 1% - 5% of his code to make it run on both Mac OS X and Classic Mac OS.
When Apple decided to release the source to the OS's internals, they replaced the Rhapsody name with Darwin. Today the current version of Mac OS X is 10.1, aka Darwin 1.3.1.
These Helped the subsystems more than the gui, but I highly recommend it...YMMV, of course.
/System/Library/StartupItems are several things you can/shoud get rid of to reduce memory/CPU load on older macs:
Ok, enable root via the Netinfo manager.
enable other logins in sys prefs (assuming 10.1 installed)...
Now logout and login as root and in the
1) Sendmail (why is this loaded and no way to turn it off via scripts?...at least that I have found).
2) NFS..this loads FOUR times, but if you do not mount network file systems..again...why?
As root you can create a startup disabled folder and just drag these folders in there an reboot. Or in the terminal do a ps -aux | grep sendmail (or nfs) and get the PID's and kill -9 (the PID).
It kind of irks me (this is no OS specific, mind you) that these programs load when I don't need/want them. Granted, I may in the near future, but every other options in os X is loadable/unloadable via a control except sendmail and NFS.
How many new OS X users are going to be spam relays w/o knowing it? Could this be a vulnerability (actual/potential).
(humph...as an aside, you mean to tell me sharing all those links in a previous post did not inform anyone? Pique a little interest?
Oh, well, I tried...just like here)
Moose.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
One big misconception in your post --
PReP was an IBM/Motorola standard established so that they could eat Intel's business desktop market by selling Windows NT and OS/2-based RISC workstations. For a number of reasons, this effort pretty much when nowhere and was dropped by 1996.
The key words being "business" and "Windows". IBM/Moto's marketing efforts were so lame and such a spectacular failure, that it's no wonder that everyone has forgotten this billion dollar initiative, and laid the blame at Apple's feet.
Apple never really gave a clear indication that they were ever going to change thier business model from being a "systems vendor" to a software-only company. They really just wanted to get in early with what was supposed to be (according to IBM/Moto) the commodity CPU of the future and got dragged into the rest of it. (At this point, with Moto in embedded and IBM in big servers and a stangent parts supply, Apple probably sees that using PPC was a gigantic mistake to begin with.)
Furthermore, Apple had neither the marketshare nor the business users to drive the PReP/CHRP pony, so hopefully it's _obvious_ that it wasn't their idea.
There's also was serious problems with the lack of hardware indepedance in MacOS -- the clones had to use Apple-designed boards, and Apple wasn't planning to fix this until Copeland shipped (which it didn't).
Open PPC Hardware failing is Motorola and IBM's fault, not Apple's.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.