How compatible is OS9 stuff with OS8.6?

[supernova777]

...and there goes the benefit of having 6 PCI slots ... you need them to add all the upgrades you would have for free on a newer mac.

quite true unfortunately.

[filipetolhuizen]

wouldnt it be the same as a b&w g3 for video.. radeon 7000 

I couldn't get this card to work properly on OS 8.6, only on 9.xx

[supernova777]

the 8.6 update to 8.0 was released in may of 1999..
5 months before the release of mac os 9.0

5months isnt that much time for them to be so terribly different from one another.

[Syntho]

Ok, I finally got a 9600 on the way. Now I'm looking into upgrades. I'll take care of the video and CPU stuff myself so it's just a SATA PCI card and a USB card that I need. I heard a few mentions of different USB cards that will work under OS8.6 but they don't seem to be available.

[Syntho]

IOGEAR GIC250U
IOGEAR GIC251U
IOGEAR GUF3121 (w/FireWire)

All of these have OSX as a requirement, but from the PDF files I looked at on their website all of these support Mac OS8.6. Kind of contradicting.

[supernova777]

contradictions like that will be rampant they are all a result of the manufacturers + companies
followuing suite with steve jobs own "attitude" towards the classic mac os
blatantly turning his back on it  and dumping it like a bad habit

i also beleive thats also what spawned the same opposite reaction from "diehard" mac os 9'ers
because of the disregard they witnessed mac os 9 get.. they try to do "ignore" + "disregard" mac os X
lol

its just amazing how all these companies totaly deleted all the websites + reference materials that were EVERYWEHRE
before in and around 2004.. rather then archiving.. + keeping the info linked (which is easy to do.. wtf? its the internet)
look at companies like refx pretending they never even made mac os 9 product ever.. if u ask them "sorry thats too old, we cant be bothered keeping track of that"

i was a web developer and have always thoughtt personally every company should have been keeping every version of their website online
since the dawn of the web archiving + adding info over time, instead companies constantly break links.. delete old versions...same as manufacturers do
thankfully there are a few rare exceptions + also the "Web.archive.org" backups
anyways all of these issues are ancient history..

u should be fine using any nec based usb card
i dont think u need to find a specific usb 1.1 (non usb 2.0) card with specific support for os 8.x
is that what you are doing?

[Syntho]

There seems to be some Mac USB support driver from Apple v. 1.4.1 that works with just about any USB card from what I'm reading.

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1238

They have some cheap Macally card on Ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/MacAlly-UH-275-2-Port-USB-1-1-PCI-Card-Mac-/361025370426?pt=US_Internal_Port_Expansion_Cards&hash=item540ec9f93a

I'll probably pick one of those up and see how I fare.

[supernova777]

at least get a 4 port card if ur gonna use up a pci slot at least get 4 usb ports;)

i have the nec usb 2.0 card that has a darker pcb (http://www.sunsway.com.hk/photo/pci-usb-nec-4.jpg)
pulling my card and inspecting further on the rear i see a sticker with this info:
ADAPTEC AUA-4000C P/N 221770-R REV:A 0612
a quick search reveals: http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/support/_eol/usb_adapters/aua-4000/

USB2connect 4000
This USB 2.0 host adapter supports both PC and Macintosh environments. Provides connectivity to USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 devices. It has four external ports

works fine for mac os 9.22 without any drivers - i have my midi controller pcr-30 edirol connected to this card aswell as my emagic usb dongle

http://download.adaptec.com/pdfs/user_guides/usb2connect_ug.pdf
i think the 4000 is part of a series that includes earlier or just less featured
cards that have other model numbers such as :

adaptec aua-2000 http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/support/_eol/usb_adapters/aua-2000/ (this seems equivelent to the macally card u linked?)
aua-3100lp http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/support/_eol/usb_adapters/aua-3100lp/
aua-5100 etc

and i have a few other ones too.. let me check the chipsets.
i think one is siig... but it works
alot of articles i read say that via chipsets are to be avoided
but i think i even had one that just worked fine somehow
but i cant remember if this was for 9 or X or whatever id
have to take a list of the cards i have and recheck thoroughly


(http://www.jcsenterprises.com/Japamacs_Page/PCI_Cards.html)
http://www.jcsenterprises.com/Japamacs_Page/Blog/B8B574BC-BB45-4B3E-9D9B-F97EBB3230BC.html
these pages are all about osx (as japamac is all about osx) but i thought he referenced mac os 9 somewhere in the pages
maybe not

everywhere u look on the net, re: usb carsd
mac os 8 compatibility is definatey going to be mentioned alot less
then mac os 9 compatibility
the other major issue is deepsleep support

maybe if u specifically look for reference material from the mac os 8 time period
Mac OS 8 (Jul 1997) - 8.6 Update Released (May 1999)
u would have a better chance of finding references to mac os 8 compatibility

but like i said most of this reference material is long deleted by all companies as "old news" of "no value"

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1238 - this update i would guess is already integrated as part of 9.1 + 9.22 versions?
which is why they say "If you use Mac OS 9.1 or later, read the important notes in the Requirements section before installing."

[IIO]

There seems to be some Mac USB support driver from Apple v. 1.4.1 that works with just about any USB card from what I'm reading.

hm, and usually there is also a driver coming with a card.

why no hub? cables? would save you the PCI slot for something else.

[supernova777]

the 2000 card lists:

System Requirements
   PC

    IBM-compatible PC with 266 MHz or faster processor
    Microsoft® Windows® 98SE, Windows 2000, Windows Me or Windows XP
    Available PCI slot
    CD-ROM drive


Macintosh

    Mac OS 9.2 or later
    Power Macintosh Beige G3 rev. B or later
    Available PCI slot
    CD-ROM drive

maybe i could try to do a 8.6 install and see if the 4000 card works
id have to burn a copy of 8.6 install cd i dont have one..

[supernova777]

why no hub? cables? would save you the PCI slot for something else.

this is a valuable point.. a powered usb hub would save u a pci slot
i was considering the same solution on my mdd 1.25ghz as all my slots are full
using a hub would save 1 slot and switching to a stealth port instead of the megawolf pci would save me another
pci slots get used up quick!

[Syntho]

I have a hub. How would I get USB working without a PCI card?

[supernova777]

I have a hub. How would I get USB working without a PCI card?

lol..
another valuable point LOL .. kinda need a usb port to plugin a hub;) lol

[IIO]

I have a hub. How would I get USB working without a PCI card?

i already forgot that we are talking about a 9600.

[Syntho]

Now I'm wondering if I should just get an IDE card like you were mentioning Chris. The two HDs I have are an SSD and a larger 1TB drive, both SATA, but both of them are connected via the SATA-IDE connector cards that I bought from OWC in my MDD at the moment.

I never noticed any speed problems with them at all that way, but having two adapters on each drive going to a PCI card I'm not sure I want to risk. The IDE cards are much cheaper than a Sonnet Tempo 2-port SATA card by about $60.

I might just bite the bullet and buy the SATA Tempo card to be safe.

[Syntho]

SIIG SC-SAT212



These are cheap on Ebay but I don't know if they'll work.

[supernova777]

syntho i bought a bunch of those cards from a guy that reprogrammed the silicon image sil3112 cards with specific bios chip
it was a guy from 68kmla and i paid him about 15-20$ for each card i think i ordered 2 from him i wish i had ordered more tho because he refuses to make them anymore as hes worried about legalities of it.. and its a bitch to resolder the chip the guy was a soldering pro but yes the cards he made were basically exact replica of the tempo sata card

back to the ide card
the reason i suggested this acard 6880m card to u is
a) guaranteed compatibility with os8.6
b) u could put 4 drive ports instead of 2
c) all drives would be bootable under os8.6
d) having enough ports for your cdrom/dvd drive
e) price + Availability, i gave u the link to the ebay auction i think? i got mine in like less then 2 weeks shipped frm taiwan for 20$ with no extra ship cost! i was really impressed i think they had companies that used these in large quantities and now they are liquidating old hardware etc
check the pic - the manual states compatibility with os 8.5
f) how i envisioned using this myself... u can have port 1 for cdrom/boot drive and port 2 used for a raid0 array (for double the read speed to load samples) the speed coming from the fact that two drives can read faster then 1 drive..

the same as knez has experienced with his DOM module on the ATA-66 bus
the access time of the drives is largely whats important ..
ata133 is not much slower then sata150 (150-133, do the math 18 rating pts slower)
but this wont matter on a 9600 that was made originally with a scsi bus or ata-33 bus? (whatver it is)
another reason

the 4 ports is the biggest benefit tho... to get the same using sata card would take 2 pci slots right
like i have the acard 6290m which is sata raid with 2 ports. i wish there was one for sata raid with 4 ports like the 6880m but sata. but i dont think there is.. theres the seritek cards that have 4 ports but they are 64bit pci and the 9600 doesnt take 64bit pci.. + the seritek cards dont have raid controller integrated..  this acard is true hardware raid..  which would let u have raid under mac os 8/9 which would otherwise require software raid

[DieHard]

This may be a good solution for the Money ($19 with free shipping)...but no Hardware RAID on the 6280M.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Acard-AEC-6280M-PCI-Ultra-ATA-133-IDE-Controller-Card-For-Apple-Mac-G3-G4-/261206382868?pt=US_Computer_Disk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item3cd11d1914

Wow... did not know this was addressed, I remember this sucked back in the day...

Frame dropping and loss of audio sync was a problem with some earlier ATA/33 and ATA/66 PCI controllers, especially when used on older Power Macs (7500, 8500, etc.)

The Tempo ATA100 comes with a Tempo AV Firmware Flasher (technologies provided by FirmTek, LLC) that includes options to tweak the firmware settings to optimize it for Video or Audio applications. Reports are already coming in from consumers that purchased the Tempo ATA100 testifying that, with the help of the tweaks, their frame dropping and audio sync problems went away.

The Acard folks have their own "tweaker" to deal with "stutter" which they call "AV Optimizer." It works with the 6260M, 6280M, 6860M, and 6880M.

This compares the 6280m with the 6880m
http://www.barefeats.com/hard21.html

Also good info:

And in case you are wondering, the Miglia Alchemy ATA-133 PCI cards are just relabeled Acards for Europeon distribution. So what is true about Acard ATA-133 cards are also true of the Alchemy.

[Syntho]

I read this same thing about the Sonnet Tempo SATA card. I wonder if that was fixed.

[Syntho]

I haven't read any reports of the SIIG card working (and booting an OS) in a 9600 but it's only $12. I may try it since it's cheap.

Now I'm just concerned about audio dropouts. I read that even iTunes does it.