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[Canned Brain]

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen,

I'm new to this forum and would like to introduce myself.

My name is Joe, I'm a 1990 vintage German citizen who grew up in Hungary and lives in Vienna, Austria now. I'm attending University. In my spare time, I like to do creative writing, I make appearances as a solo entertainer, magician, and ventriloquist, I do astronomical observations, and of course I'm collecting vintage Macs.

It were my parents who made first steps in the world of computers. That was with a 486 IBM PC with Windows 3.1 back in 1994. This computer was our working iron right until 2003.

The first time I saw a Mac consciously was in 2005. It was a Power Macintosh (don't remember which one) with OS 9 at my Middle School for Arts down in Hungary. Quite funny, because, albeit the OS was in Hungarian, it lacked support of its Hungarian keyboards. (The same applies for my current OS 8.6 machine; it has no option to set keyboard layout to Hungarian, nor does it correctly display the Hungarian diacrit letters in Word 2001 -- maybe anyone can help me out with that?)

I quickly began saving my money, and in September 2007 I bought our family our first Mac: The 1st-Gen Aluminum iMac Intel 20". It cost me € 1,124.40. My parents use it until today, and it has never undergone repair.

Sooner or later, I felt missing the beautiful UI of the Classic OS.

The sorryness was over in 2008. I got an untested Power Macintosh 9600 for free from a local Mac negotiator in Vienna, Austria. I loved it from the first moment. I've been looking for a compatible Apple display (i. e. a 1710AV), with no success (again: anyone who can help maybe? Thank-you!).

I hope I'm in the right place in this forum, albeit my Mac's OS is 8.6, not 9.

What I'm proud of is the fact that I successfully installed a USB card in the 9600. However, some month ago, optical and floppy drive made their last breath. I will try to let it get fixed in our town's only Mac service partner in the coming days.

My favourite Classic apps are Office 2001, Adobe InDesign 1.5.2, and The Secret of Monkey Island.

Let me get my first question set up.

From 2006 through 2015, I'd been working as a newspaper editor. I had good relations to several guest authors. One, an older gentleman, was so diligent that I'd like to say a small thank-you to him by giving him an iMac G3 with Mac OS 9.

Can you give me any recommendations which model to choose and which not? It shall be all-German (OS and keyboard), and work flawlessly (he's a senior so he shouldn't be hassled by error messages during startup). To get to the point, I need a vintage office for him:
an iMac G3, complete with keyboard and mouse and
a compatible printer with classic support. Of course it must have its install files on CD or download, since the iMac lacks floppy support. Furthermore, it should do its services user-friendlily, and print for a couple of years without running expenses that culminate to infinite. (I remember my parents' computer's printer, a HP DeskJet 560C, that had cartridges being similarly expensive as a tankful gas for a Bentley Bentayga.)

Thank-you so much in advance for your help. I hope so much I will find a likeable place of like-minded here!

[devils_advisor]

i would try a laserjet, even apple had some. advantage fully compatible and drivers are a part of the os. a laserjet can crank several 1000 pages with one toner a inkjet wont. so unless you need color i would check for one of the lasers

[Canned Brain]

i would try a laserjet, even apple had some. advantage fully compatible and drivers are a part of the os. a laserjet can crank several 1000 pages with one toner a inkjet wont. so unless you need color i would check for one of the lasers

Thank-you very much for this advise, however, I looked up already for an Apple printer, and such are simply not available in Europe. Even eBay has none. All I could do is order from the US of A, but how should I use one of them with a European power supply?

I also believe Apple laser printers have the downside of being extremely heavy, making them almost unaffordable to ship (the office should be a present and therefore sent by post).

[nhoffman]

Was running Sheepshaver on my macbook and it kept locking up.  I had a G3 in the basement with a xcelr8 g4 processor running osx 10.4 i thought why screw around with a virtual machine when I run os9 on real hardware.  Long story short it stopped working and a new motherboard didn't fix it.  Ordered another board with a cpu and it turns out that both the old cpu and motherboard where bad.  So I started using 0s9 on my old Blue and White G3 but was not happy with the performance.  Found a good deal on a Quicksilver with a studio display on Craigslist and just got os9 running on it and it runs great.  Its been a long time since i ran it (8-10 years) so i am just now relearning how to do things with it.   

[kharm]

Hi everyone from another new member!

I've been keeping a little home studio DAW going using OS9 on a G3 'Indigo' iMac for over a decade now. What a great resource this site appears to be. It's so heartening to find that others are persisting with 'classic' systems, unable to accept that just because of the rate of change of technology we should fork out large sums of money on new gear just for the privilege of throwing away old gear that still functions so well.

I've observed for a while now that newer technology can often do more - but many times it's not actually 'better'.

Long live MacOS 9!

Kharm.

[ams099]

Hello,

My first PPC Mac was a PowerBook 1400-which I bought in 1998 and used until 2004.

Now I use a iMac G5 and Power Mac to run Logic.

[Hjalti]

Hi guys. Really appreciate the effort! Got an old G3 of my dad's. And hopefully will be able to incorporate it into my little studio since I want my workstation to be offline and preferably from another age.

[SlantedFloors]

Hello everyone. I've been a Cubase user since the Atari days (and still use it on Atari to this day). I'm also interested in other DAW software and hardware and it seems like this community has a wealth of information. I have used various classic and modern Mac computers over the years but never in the studio.

I hope to be able to contribute regardless.

Cheers everyone

[sosumi]

Hi, everyone!

Not an audio guy, unfortunately, but I'm in the process of restoring a G4 iMac to run OS 9 and ran across your awesome community while looking around for resources. Looking forward to digging in, reading through all you guys have collected, and talking with some fellow vintage computer geeks

[lazlopanaflex]

Ey up everyone (yes I'm a northerner)

So, by a quick way of introduction, I stumbled on this forum looking for a way of getting access to some old Cubase files. I've just managed to get OS 9 working on an old G4 (i tried it on a G5 but killed it  ).

So my next job is to get hold of an old cubase (the tracks were laid down in the 90s) and hopefully a driver that will make my Novation impulse work with it from a midi interface point of view - i think that might be a bit unrealistic!

Anyway - cheers for having me onboard!

[djweb]

Thanks for confirming my membership here on MacOS9Lives.com

Just a quick introduction of myself:

I'm a hobby musician, starting with guitar lessons when I was around 6 years old.

At the age of 23 (in 1991) a friend of mine showed me around his home studio which at this time was basically an 8-track tape recorder, an Atari 520ST and a bunch of keyboards.
Immediately intrigued by the idea of recording my own music I decided to start building my own studio thus combining my hobbies music, computers, and DJing into one.

Fast forward to 2017: Not only will I turn 49 this year but my studio has meanwhile also developed quite nicely.
Starting with Ataris (520ST, STE4) using Notator and later Logic I soon changed to PCs (Logic Audio) but discovered quite early that REAL studios would of course use Apple machines.
Short Mac/software history: Quadra 700 (SampleCell II), G3 (PT5.x MIX TDM), G4 (PT6.4LE / DIGI001), G5 (PT8LE / DIGI002) and finally Mac Mini i7 (PT10/11/12 / DIGI003).

Although I love my current setup (two Mac Minis i7 running OSX 10.8 and Windows 7) I still miss the old days of OS9 when system crashes were only seen on Windows machines and software would run rock-solid (i.e. Logic Studio and SoundDiver, the BEST software combination to run your studio with).

By accident I was lucky enough to find MacOS9Lives.com and now hope to find soul mates who can understand why someone refuses to move his Korg Legacy Collection from a PowerBook G4 to a Windows 7 machine …

Thanks again …


While writing this I am reminded of a short story:
The friend who showed me around in his studio in 1991 offered me his old drum machine for free as he was not using it any more but the sounds were so 'unnatural' that I turned down his offer and instead bought a Yamaha GM synth (I think it was a TG100) with WAY better drum sounds. 
As you might have guessed, it was a Roland TR-808 he was offering me for free and I guess he is still thankful that I turned down his offer … 

[Andydy321]

Greetings from Croatia. I'm looking forward to finding a new use for my old PowerBook G4 so I'll be downloading a DAW and see how it goes. Thank you!

[mrhappy]

Excellent!

[IIO]

I am fighting with my mac mini's internal DVD drive for years now.

that´s an interesting hobby.

most people would just get a new one for 3 euros - but i have never looked at it as a feature to spend time with.

[alehan]

Hello all,

name is Alessandro and i was lucky to get two old TiBooks from a benefactor, to use with my os 9 Nord Modular editor...

While at it, i figured i'd install all the goodies i used back in the day....this was my first "make music wherever" laptop so it definitely feels interesting to be typing on it / holding one after 15 years or so...
maybe i will use it to make music again? only time will tell

Thanks for the community!

A

[spacej]

Hi Everyone,

Like lots of you here, I don't believe in obsolete when it comes to my old faithful G4.

I really love OS9. It's amazing today, almost 20 years later, how the ecosystem still makes the grade despite the obvious short comings. I believe we all can say that the system has aged super fine.

Thank you very much for reviewing my request to join the community and accepting it 
cheers!

[fisherbkoke]

Hello, I've been fan of old macs.Have an old ibook g3 clamshell.Would like to learn more about it.

[piexil]

Hi guys!
I've always been interested in older apple products and finally got my hands on one!

I got a 700mhz iMac G4 with 384 megs of ram. I also have a powerbook G4 in the mail!

[LillyOmegaWolf]

Hi everyone and thanks for letting me join this community.

A word to anyone who is interested in this here Mac fan and unofficial Apple technician.
I’m a 26 year old film maker who is glad to return to the classic Mac OS at last.

I got started in 2000. I was 10, I got a abandoned Mac at primary school up and running with its system 7 (it may have been 7.5, but its too long ago to remember and I wasn’t allowed to take it home with me). It had a few games on it and the interface fascinated me. I wanted one, but 'modern' computers were beyond the family budget in my house. The best I could do with for years was an old 80s machine from my stepdads work running DOS and I didn't really like it, but it was a computer so I tinkered on it, then killed it by accident.
The OS7 Mac I used seemed to be so much faster than any PC I touched in those days, including the in the primary school library PC running bindows 98' (see my 'love' for PC... I started early...)

They had the coloured iMacs running OSX 10.1 and then 10.2 at my intermediate school. Those were awesome. I could have taken one of them home. From there, every film I saw with a Mac in it was a Mac I would have happily have taken and used myself. But it was a dream. I remember all the iMac models and occasional Powermac and Mac laptop that I saw on the big screen (Independence Day and the mighty Mac portable that took out a vastly more advanced alien system anyone?). Those Mac experiences left me wanting one of my own and it took me a long time to get used to the PCs running windows Xp at high school. Mac OSX 10.2 seemed much nicer to my eyes than XP.

2007, near the end of my high school days, I tried to acquire the music departments old dual G4 powermac as it had replaced by an iMac. I was informed that they would be using it as a secondary machine

My Mum told me that if I wanted a Mac, I could go out and get a job so I could buy it myself.
So I got a job in one of the local supermarkets and stayed on just long enough to afford some games and my 2008 white MacBook 2.4ghz running 10.5.2

Programming class in the final year of high school became so much more fun for me on a Mac and I had to decide between going to film school or studying computer programming (with my interest in making Mac apps and games).

A year later I attended film school, focusing on editing and writing. I began converting the class from PC to Mac and everyone, even the staff got to know me as the Mac guy (I succeeded in converting almost everyone in my class of 45 film students by the end of the 3 year course and even personally sold Macs to two of them. I was dedicated…). Snow Leopard came out in my first year there and I jumped on it on its first day of release. It blew 10.5 away on both my MacBook and the 2006 17" MBP I had been given, fixed and now owned. As a Mac gamer, I also spent many a day playing UT2004 on my MacBook Pro in theory class with a friend who also had a MacBook Pro.
Also while at university I toyed around with 10.4.11 on my 2006 17" MBP but found Snow leopard preferable as the 'classic' mode on the intel Macs didnt seem to work so I figured Tiger offered me nothing compared to Snow Leopard. I also picked up and held onto the 2g iPhone 1 and I still use it because its a mighty classic (and it now runs features of ios7 too)

I then bought the 2011 17" MacBook Pro as soon as that came out, stuck two 750Gb hard drives in it in Raid to make sure it could handle my editing work and I have loved that Mac right up to this day (it now runs 2x2tb Iron wolf drives and still runs like new).

I enjoyed hearing the stories of those who used to run the hardware and software from last century as thats something Ive long felt I missed out on as I was only a kid back then. Apples earlier years and how their software and hardware have changed over time is something that fascinates me. Ive done a lot of reading into how Mac OS and Final cut Pro have become what they are and the impacts Apples decisions have made. It annoys me to hear that Apple killed off a potential 9.2.4 (probably because of Steve Jobs coming back and pushing OSX super hard, although now that he's sadly not here anymore, anyone think we have a chance of asking Apple really nicely to release that update?)

Despite my interest in the G4 powermac line and OS9, I couldn't justify spending money getting some cool old hardware because of the kind of work I was getting into (and as I was always buying my own gear, I remained poor for a long time). It all revolved around Final Cut Pro 7, and FCP X (once it hit 10.0.3). This meant I could only work on powerful Intel based hardware as the powerPC Macs can’t run Final Cut Pro X. As someone who still works as a DOP, editor and writer the turning point for me as a Apple advocate of their new hardware happened first when they killed off the 17" MacBook Pro.

I lost a lot more faith in Apple’s pro hardware when they brought out the trash can and my 2010 Mac Pro with a Sapphire HD 7970 had more power per graphics card and could run 6 drives internally. When I came to upgrade, I still wanted a Mac I could play around with, hence… Xeon in a hackintosh and a second Sapphire 7970 to match the 2013 Mac Pro. Its annoying when my ‘Mac Pro’ doesnt want to work, but largely feels like a real Mac and looks badass. Unlike apples offering, I have 16.5Tb in this monster without the need for a lot of external drives.

The release of the 2016 MacBook pros prompted me to begin looking for alternatives to my ageing server Mac that is from 2011 and thats when I stumbled upon a dual 1.42ghz G4 on TradeMe (the New Zealand local equivalent to eBay). Despite it being at the end of 2016 and therefore quite a old computer, I snapped it up as it reminded me of the Dual G4 in my high school, then put Tiger and some old Mac OSX games on it. Playing with Tiger made me want to go older and more classic. I was disappointed to find out I couldn’t put OS9 on my dual G4. Still, its now my fileserver for my newer Macs and my hackintosh to utilise and I’ll be installing some Sata drives (as big as I can fit, hopefully 4+Tb) on it and beefing it up as much as I can. I’ll be shooting then editing my third movie this year and it will be my pleasure to hopefully see cool old macs running alongside my hackintosh to get the job done.

Reading online, I found this site. It initially surprised me that you could still do professional audio work (or for that matter, any work at all) in OS9 and that gave me confidence to at last look for a Mac that would run Mac OS9. Sadly, editing in OS9 is defiantly out. I don’t think theres anything system 9 able that will handle 4k+ raw footage from my cinema cameras.

So this year I have at last taken the plunge and I went out hoping I wasn’t too late for me to get started. I found the best iBook G3 clamshell (a mighty 466mhz!) as I’ve wanted its unique design on my desk for a while. It looks so cute and unique! I want to test run the most up to date version of OS9 I can on it. Thanks to the universal installer on this site for 9.2.2, that page made me want to sign up here and thank the die hard OS9 team for such amazing work getting that together. I look forward to running one stable OS9.2.2 for writing and some classic games and one other partition can host a test OS9.x for me to play around and hopefully one day use as my main OS if we can get some kind of OS ‘9.3’ or ‘9.4’ going.

I didn’t stop there and I now also have a G4 466mhz digital audio Mac too and it runs 10.2.8 and 9.2.2 (thanks again to the universal installer on this site for 9.2.2).

Starting up OS9 brought back some serious memories and made me wish I had been lucky enough to get a Mac running it when I was younger as its a truly special OS.
The universal installer that is pinned on these forums got my Radeon 9000 Pro going but I hear there is a newer ATi driver?
I’ll happily take suggestions for what I can use OS9 for as anything I can get my older Macs to do, I’ll happily do on them. Things such as my writing of fan fiction on my G3 iBook clamshell. But aside from PDF viewing of scripts and some old games, I don’t know what else to do with it as of yet.

Its a bit weird going to a mostly greyscale interface with a very simple finder, when I’m used to Sierra on my 8core Xeon hackintosh and Path finder with its all its extras and custom colours, pink finder!    
Im sooo used to column view in OSX finder. Is there any way to get that in OS9? Also networking OS9 and a fairly modern OSX?

I look forward to properly learning Mac OS9 and all its features and oddities as despite its similarities to Mac OSX (A finder, the Apple and menu set up top etc) it is different, I can tell It thinks differently and runs a bit differently. First time running OS9 again, I didnt even know how to shut the thing down! (Thats sad considering I use my Macs every day and know the interface and shortcuts so well I could operate any 10.4+ Mac in my sleep…)

And if I'm honest, Im kinda tired of the continual upgrade cycle. It was fun going from Mac to Mac in the Snow Leopard and even Mountain Lion days. Its something that as a editor using FCPX its hard to move away from, especially when mountains of 4k footage in a movie can claim 50+Gb of my ram. But ever since Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion (forget Lion...) Ive not felt like the Mac has really moved forward in a way that suits me as pro user. Theres been more and more for me to turn off or disable with each new version of OSX.
And this is where OS9 and the ideals I see on this site has extra special appeal to me. Its awesome seeing successes can be had 15+ years out of that constant upgrade cycle that most people are caught up in. And even if my main editing rig can't have in on the fun, I would at least like my older Macs to do what they can with optimised OS9 on them.

I got a G5 sitting around which I would love to one day run OS9 on too.
If I can find the time, I wouldnt mind trying some OS9 coding too… 
So yea, I’m here to stay as long as this site keeps going as a lot of what goes on here has me excited.

[IIO]

First time running OS9 again, I didnt even know how to shut the thing down

keyboard commands (but you obviously dont use them much in OSX either) are pretty much the same than in OSX.
ott, for a list current open apps, just drag the application menu off the menubar.

the one main thing you have to learn is that in OS9 you can not just force quit your program after a hard chrash and continue your work. most of the time problems will son back to you so you ae better advised to reboot the OS, especially after the usual error #2 and error #3 warnings.