I'd like to get back into using Mac OS 9, if for no other reason than nostalgia. After 10 years of my old G3 233MHz desktop sitting and collecting dust, I turned it on yesterday. The first thing I did was image the drives to back them up—so that data is safe now.
Configuration and modifcations:
233MHz Power Macintosh G3 Desktop - M6141LL/A
120 GB IDE Spinning disk
20 GB Barracuda internal SCSI Spinning disk
Replaced power supply fan with quieter one
Added small internal fan to fold-out chassis
6MB VRAM
768 MB RAM
Radeon 7000 64MB PCI graphics card (PC-card flashed to be a Mac card)
Firewire and USB 2.0 PCI card (with internal firewire connector)
M-Audio USB Quattro (4 in 4 out + MIDI) audio interface
Mac OS 9.2.2 and OS X 10.4 Server with XPostFacto installed
So I have one PCI slot left and I need to choose what to use it for. I’d like to replace the spinning drives with an SSD since I’m not sure how long they’re going to last (and they’re noisy). The IDE interface on this Mac is pretty slow, however. Also, the built-in Ethernet is only 10-base-T half duplex.
I can think of several options for my remaining PCI slot:
- Install a 100-base-T Ethernet card. Replace my disks with an SSD and a PATA-SATA adapter and put it on the slow IDE bus.
- Buy a USB 2.0 100-base-T Ethernet dongle (not sure if any have OS 9 drivers) and try to find a SATA Sonnet PCI card.
- Use Firewire networking to my Mac Pro (use it as a Firewire-Ethernet bridge/router). I know OS X supports Firewire networking. I’m not sure if OS 9 does.
- Put a Firewire drive in the Mac itself. I don’t think I can boot from it, though, so I’d still need to connect the boot drive to the slow IDE bus.
My Mac Pro acts as my file-server. I’d prefer to store my data there since it’s automatically backed-up with Time Machine.
Any advice?
I’m interested in Mac OS 9 because I fear that old software and data is disappearing every day—software that people spent years of their lives making. We need to preserve it. I consider computer games to be works of art in their own right. It’s sad to loose art just because hard-drives, CDs, and floppy disks get old and fail. As a teenager, I worked paper-routes for two years to save enough money to buy that 233MHz G3. For me, running old hardware and software brings back memories.
My background is Computer Engineering with a specialty in embedded software. Eventually I’d like to learn how to write drivers for Mac OS 9. I don’t have Metrowerks CodeWarrior yet, but I do have Symantec’s C++ compiler along with many of the Apple Developer Connection CDs.