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[garyglitta]

Hi there,

I'm an electronics engineer by trade, and one of many hobbies is retro computing. I was born at the beginning of the 80's and so I've experienced computing through the ages - starting with an XT, 286 AT, 386, 486, etc... but my introduction to Apple has been fairly recent. I live in South Africa and simply put, they were not common here at all until fairly recently. My first intro to Apple was an iPod 5th generation and then a string of iPhones and an iPad.

My first mac was an old Mac Pro 1,1 - I bought it cheaply second hand and spent ages and considerable cost upgrading it to dual quadcore 3GHz processors and maxing it out in every way I could - I bought a AMD R9 280x graphics card and spliced the EFI from the ROM from a mac edition 7970 to get the boot screens working. I couldn't believe that all this time I'd been missing out on Macs - I always liked Linux and OSX seemed to me to be much like it but with everything actually working properly.

Anyway - my interest in Macs has brought me to acquire an old PowerBook G4. Sadly, though, it only has 10.4.11 on it with no classic support, so this brings me to the site. I am hoping to install OS9 on it natively if possible and learn about another chapter in the history of pre-intel Macs.

Thanks for listening

[devils_advisor]

Hi there,

I'n electronics engineer by trade, and one of many hobbies is retro computing. I was born at the beginning of the 80's and so I've experienced computing through the ages - starting with an XT, 286 AT, 386, 486, etc... but my introduction to Apple has been fairly recent. I live in South Africa and simply put, they were not common here at all until fairly recently. My first intro to Apple was an iPod 5th generation and then a string of iPhones and an iPad.

My first mac was an old Mac Pro 1,1 - I bought it cheaply second hand and spent ages and considerable cost upgrading it to dual quadcore 3GHz processors and maxing it out in every way I could - I bought a AMD R9 280x graphics card and spliced the EFI from the ROM from a mac edition 7970 to get the boot screens working. I couldn't believe that all this time I'd been missing out on Macs - I always liked Linux and OSX seemed to me to be much like it but with everything actually working properly.

Anyway - my interest in Macs has brought me to acquire an old PowerBook G4. Sadly, though, it only has 10.4.11 on it with no classic support, so this brings me to the site. I am hoping to install OS9 on it natively if possible and learn about another chapter in the history of pre-intel Macs.

Thanks for listening

welcome to the forum, give a little bit of detail about the g4 and we can get you up and running quicly

[garyglitta]

welcome to the forum, give a little bit of detail about the g4 and we can get you up and running quicly

Thank you, great to see that there are folks putting so much work into keeping this platform alive.
I have a 17" PowerBook G4 from 2005 - with the 1.67GHz chip and 1 Gb RAM. I'd be very grateful for any information going that might help me get it up and running.

[Lombard]

I've been using Apple products since 1999 when I was working in film and video.  On a lark, I recently picked up an old digital camera at my local thrift store, a Polaroid PDC-2000.  This was Polaroid's first attempt at breaking into the digital camera market (launched in 1996).  Here's a link to an image + some information if your curious about it:

http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/pdc-2000

I discovered after my purchase that the Polaroid PDC-2000 required a SCSI connection + OS 9 to run the necessary software and download its digital photographs.  Well, one thing led to another and I ended up buying a 1999 PowerBook G3 (400MHz) Lombard / Bronze Keyboard so I could successfully use the Polaroid PDC-2000.

I've been working on setting up the Lombard over the past week or so and was able to download my first photos from the Polaroid this evening!  Working with this old PowerBook and OS 9 has been a blast!  It really has brought back some memories from that time period in my life.  I'm looking forward to continuing to reacquaint myself with OS 9, using my new to me Polaroid camera, and having fun. 

Naturally, I appreciate the wonderful people and resources here at macos9lives.  macos9lives has been a big help to me.  Thank you!

[mrhappy]

That's kind of different than why most people find their way here but very cool!!!

[NamelessPFG]

I've been lurking for a bit, but I might as well make a more formal introduction.

Unlike most people here, I've always been in the IBM PC-compatible world my whole life, DOS and Windows and all that. The only time I touched Macs were in elementary school; the computer labs were full of 'em, roughly around Mac OS 8-era from what I recall and loaded with stuff like the usual Super Solvers games, Kid Pix Studio, SimCity 2000, The Amazon Trail, etc.

Well, some time around... geez, it must've been a decade ago by now, but what I do remember is that some of my neighbors were having a yard sale. I took a look, and this old beige Apple ImageWriter printer caught my eye. Where there are vintage Apple accessories, the matching computers aren't far behind.

I was right, but I didn't realize how right until I saw their massive collection of old Mac software in those classic big boxes and a few old machines - a Macintosh IIcx, a Power Macintosh 6500/250, an indigo iMac G3 350 slot-loader, and a PowerBook G3 (which unfortunately turned out to be the infamous "MainStreet" variant, garbage DSTN passive-matrix LCD and no L2 cache and 32 MB of RAM and all), with their main machines at the time being a small fleet of 14" iBook G4s and a plastic Core 2 Duo MacBook. They'd even tell me about old stuff like HyperCard and how far ahead of its time it was.

To me, this was like a museum of computing, a whole new world to learn, and what better opportunity than dabbling with some of this stuff? I started off with the MainStreet, nice keyboard and all, but the LCD irritated me far more than the lack of CPU cache, so I ordered a Pismo off eBay. Nice little machine for what it was. It was on that Pismo that I did my initial reaping from a certain Garden, so to speak.

Well, the MainStreet went off to relatives in the Philippines I've never met (my mom insisted on it and probably didn't realize how hopelessly obsolete it was), and we held our own garage sale where the Pismo sold. I didn't have any Macs for several years after that, having opted to pursue my gaming PC interests instead.

I did revisit the good neighbors a few months back, though, and talked them into giving me the Power Mac 6500. It was rough to set up, though - no modern interfaces out of the box, CD drive doesn't read CD-RWs, and my only Mac OS 9 installer disc as a holdover from the PowerBooks was 9.2.1, too new for a pre-G3 machine. However, it's a champ for early/mid-1990s games, complete with ADB port for those pre-InputSprocket games that expect to talk to a Thrustmaster FCS/WCS/RCS setup directly. Late 1990s releases hit pretty hard because they want a G3, though, and it shows. Even my Voodoo2 doesn't help much in it due to the CPU bottleneck.

This would not stand. I needed something more powerful, ideally the MDD Power Mac G4. I knew you guys got the FW800 machines to boot OS 9 natively, so I tracked down a 1.42 GHz system on eBay for a price I was willing to pay, planted a bid, and got it - already loaded with 2 GB of RAM, three working hard drives (and a failed fourth drive, ironically the Apple factory option), and two of those drives had Leopard Server and Tiger pre-installed. How convenient!

There were also two extra add-on cards: a SCSI controller (which I have no real use for at the moment, but it's nice to have in case I run into more SCSI stuff outside of the 6500) and a Sonnet Tempo Trio, the latter of which I moved to the 6500 just so it has USB and FireWire for a change. When you've only got two PCI slots to work with, make them count!

After a bit of HDD shuffling, I gave the Unsupported G4 image a shot here. Sure enough, it works like a charm - who says that you can't boot OS 9 on a FW800 MDD now? I just need to get all my OS 9 apps and stuff onto it, and with the 6500 bearing the Tango Trio with FW400 now, I think I can work something out with Target Disk Mode.

So now I'm here, typing up this post on that MDD G4. I still need to do a few more tweaks for this machine to fulfill its purpose of being the one-stop-shop for PowerPC-era Mac gaming - for starters, AGP card with Core Image (was going to use a spare Radeon 9800 Pro 'til I saw how badly it artifacted during POST despite being in storage for years), PCI card with full QD3D RAVE/OpenGL acceleration under OS 9. It might not result in the absolute best OS 9 gaming performance that way, but my outlook is that anything that needs a faster graphics card is going to also run on OS X, and better to boot.

And yes, I did just put the words "Mac" and "gaming" next to each other. It's a subject that gets overlooked due to Apple having historically overpriced and underpowered hardware, alongside most computer games only getting Windows releases. Well, there's a few Mac OS exclusives out there, surprisingly, and some of the ports like X-Wing/TIE Fighter are said to be the best versions overall (in that case, high-res graphics while keeping iMUSE dynamic MIDI music). Someone needs to document all this!

Also, about OS X macOS today... I've also fiddled a bit with Hackintoshing my main desktop (a powerhouse i7-4770K 4.6 GHz/32 GB DDR3-2400/GTX 980 build that serves as my primary computer), and it surprisingly works! Helped me burn some functional OS 9 CDs for my 6500, too - something I wouldn't dare try under Windows.

But El Capitan and Sierra... argh, they don't feel like the Mac OS X I knew at all. Too many questionable iOS-esque design decisions, like fullscreen apps that get treated like a separate virtual desktop and thus don't show up in Expose Mission Control like other windows, a Launchpad where opening the Applications folder in the Finder should've been sufficient, etc. To me, they're OSes I can run for the modern Mac experience, but it just feels pointless when I can do just about everything better in Windows, particularly the purpose for which that system was built. Yeah, go ahead, call me a heretic if you want, that's just my preference.

And that's why I have the 6500 and MDD G4 now - they actually provide something that my fleet of Windows PCs can't, that being compatibility with a long legacy of old Macintosh software. Some might say that SheepShaver is good enough, but for me, it's not even close. Classic Mode is lightyears ahead of SheepShaver, and even that's still not as good as booting OS 9 natively!

Hey, maybe I'll make a DAW out of it eventually if I ever find myself so musically inclined. This forum at least tempts me to try.

[devils_advisor]

I've been lurking for a bit, but I might as well make a more formal introduction.

Unlike most people here, I've always been in the IBM PC-compatible world my whole life, DOS and Windows and all that. The only time I touched Macs were in elementary school; the computer labs were full of 'em, roughly around Mac OS 8-era from what I recall and loaded with stuff like the usual Super Solvers games, Kid Pix Studio, SimCity 2000, The Amazon Trail, etc.

Well, some time around... geez, it must've been a decade ago by now, but what I do remember is that some of my neighbors were having a yard sale. I took a look, and this old beige Apple ImageWriter printer caught my eye. Where there are vintage Apple accessories, the matching computers aren't far behind.

I was right, but I didn't realize how right until I saw their massive collection of old Mac software in those classic big boxes and a few old machines - a Macintosh IIcx, a Power Macintosh 6500/250, an indigo iMac G3 350 slot-loader, and a PowerBook G3 (which unfortunately turned out to be the infamous "MainStreet" variant, garbage DSTN passive-matrix LCD and no L2 cache and 32 MB of RAM and all), with their main machines at the time being a small fleet of 14" iBook G4s and a plastic Core 2 Duo MacBook. They'd even tell me about old stuff like HyperCard and how far ahead of its time it was.

To me, this was like a museum of computing, a whole new world to learn, and what better opportunity than dabbling with some of this stuff? I started off with the MainStreet, nice keyboard and all, but the LCD irritated me far more than the lack of CPU cache, so I ordered a Pismo off eBay. Nice little machine for what it was. It was on that Pismo that I did my initial reaping from a certain Garden, so to speak.

Well, the MainStreet went off to relatives in the Philippines I've never met (my mom insisted on it and probably didn't realize how hopelessly obsolete it was), and we held our own garage sale where the Pismo sold. I didn't have any Macs for several years after that, having opted to pursue my gaming PC interests instead.

I did revisit the good neighbors a few months back, though, and talked them into giving me the Power Mac 6500. It was rough to set up, though - no modern interfaces out of the box, CD drive doesn't read CD-RWs, and my only Mac OS 9 installer disc as a holdover from the PowerBooks was 9.2.1, too new for a pre-G3 machine. However, it's a champ for early/mid-1990s games, complete with ADB port for those pre-InputSprocket games that expect to talk to a Thrustmaster FCS/WCS/RCS setup directly. Late 1990s releases hit pretty hard because they want a G3, though, and it shows. Even my Voodoo2 doesn't help much in it due to the CPU bottleneck.

This would not stand. I needed something more powerful, ideally the MDD Power Mac G4. I knew you guys got the FW800 machines to boot OS 9 natively, so I tracked down a 1.42 GHz system on eBay for a price I was willing to pay, planted a bid, and got it - already loaded with 2 GB of RAM, three working hard drives (and a failed fourth drive, ironically the Apple factory option), and two of those drives had Leopard Server and Tiger pre-installed. How convenient!

There were also two extra add-on cards: a SCSI controller (which I have no real use for at the moment, but it's nice to have in case I run into more SCSI stuff outside of the 6500) and a Sonnet Tempo Trio, the latter of which I moved to the 6500 just so it has USB and FireWire for a change. When you've only got two PCI slots to work with, make them count!

After a bit of HDD shuffling, I gave the Unsupported G4 image a shot here. Sure enough, it works like a charm - who says that you can't boot OS 9 on a FW800 MDD now? I just need to get all my OS 9 apps and stuff onto it, and with the 6500 bearing the Tango Trio with FW400 now, I think I can work something out with Target Disk Mode.

So now I'm here, typing up this post on that MDD G4. I still need to do a few more tweaks for this machine to fulfill its purpose of being the one-stop-shop for PowerPC-era Mac gaming - for starters, AGP card with Core Image (was going to use a spare Radeon 9800 Pro 'til I saw how badly it artifacted during POST despite being in storage for years), PCI card with full QD3D RAVE/OpenGL acceleration under OS 9. It might not result in the absolute best OS 9 gaming performance that way, but my outlook is that anything that needs a faster graphics card is going to also run on OS X, and better to boot.

And yes, I did just put the words "Mac" and "gaming" next to each other. It's a subject that gets overlooked due to Apple having historically overpriced and underpowered hardware, alongside most computer games only getting Windows releases. Well, there's a few Mac OS exclusives out there, surprisingly, and some of the ports like X-Wing/TIE Fighter are said to be the best versions overall (in that case, high-res graphics while keeping iMUSE dynamic MIDI music). Someone needs to document all this!

Also, about OS X macOS today... I've also fiddled a bit with Hackintoshing my main desktop (a powerhouse i7-4770K 4.6 GHz/32 GB DDR3-2400/GTX 980 build that serves as my primary computer), and it surprisingly works! Helped me burn some functional OS 9 CDs for my 6500, too - something I wouldn't dare try under Windows.

But El Capitan and Sierra... argh, they don't feel like the Mac OS X I knew at all. Too many questionable iOS-esque design decisions, like fullscreen apps that get treated like a separate virtual desktop and thus don't show up in Expose Mission Control like other windows, a Launchpad where opening the Applications folder in the Finder should've been sufficient, etc. To me, they're OSes I can run for the modern Mac experience, but it just feels pointless when I can do just about everything better in Windows, particularly the purpose for which that system was built. Yeah, go ahead, call me a heretic if you want, that's just my preference.

And that's why I have the 6500 and MDD G4 now - they actually provide something that my fleet of Windows PCs can't, that being compatibility with a long legacy of old Macintosh software. Some might say that SheepShaver is good enough, but for me, it's not even close. Classic Mode is lightyears ahead of SheepShaver, and even that's still not as good as booting OS 9 natively!

Hey, maybe I'll make a DAW out of it eventually if I ever find myself so musically inclined. This forum at least tempts me to try.

wow thats a nice story. Welcome to the community.

[UFO]

Greetings from Spain! Another new member here

I arrive to this forum to find out more and learn about the "new" iMac G3 DV I recently purchased and the one I'm posting from. It is a great machine! CPU is a 400 MHz and I've upgraded it to 512 MB RAM (waiting to get 512 more) and a 80 GB disk. When I upgraded it I discovered how beautifully and well built are these machines.

About my background, my first computer was an IBM Aptive back in 1.996 and been a PC&WIN user but I've always been fascinated with Macs. This "professional" halo they had back in the 90s had me drooling all over computer magazines. Now is the moment to discover them and what a better place to start researching than this community.

Hope to learn a lot from you, guys.

Cheers!

[DesertMac]

Can't figure out how to put a post up about myself.

[Borg]

Hi,
Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dave and I have been a Mac user since my 1986 Mac Plus. Sometimes wish I still had it. I have a mirror door G4 (along with a few Mac books) that I will add an OS 9 partition so I can use some of my older software (mostly games). It has been a while since I have worked with the system tools so I will likely need help.

[Roman78]

Hello everybody.

Time to introduce myself. My name is Roman, 39 Year young and from Germany.

I stumbled over this forum on a search for a quiet G4 Quicksilver, as I'm just installing one for some Audio digitalizing. Have a lot of old radioplay's from my childhood that I planned to digitalize. Also have some other G3's, G4's, G5'S, Intel and older Apple Computers, oldest one is a Apple ][c and an Europlus.

I studied IT in the Netherlands and started using Macs in the early 2000's. Just to achieve the largest possible variety of knowledge about hard and software. And I'm a collector of old computers from the early times till the mid 90's.

[cnaa]

Hello good people, and greetings from Finland. I found my way to this forum after picking up a Power Mac G4 Sawtooth in bad shape at a thrift store - my first PPC Mac ever. I've kinda taken a habit of "rescuing" old and semi-old computers, game consoles, Hi-Fi etc. at thrift stores, yard sales and whatnot and trying my best to restore them to working original state. These colourful-plastic-clad Macs were always something that I was really curious about as a kid, but never even had a chance to actually try them. Guess this hobby is a way to somehow relive those times and finally get the feeling of fulfillment, and hopefully managing to preserve some of these pieces of computer culture. Anyway I'm a complete newbie when it comes to these real Macs (non-x86) and real Mac OS (non-Unix) environments, and that's also what intrigues me... it feels like I'm learning about computers again! And it seems I'm not alone, judging by the existence of this website and forum ;^) But yeah that's why I'm here - finally getting to know (and/or troubleshoot!) this machine after all these years. :-)

[hiro]

Hi all.
I'm a Japanese OS9 user.

I have been using MacOS since about 1998.First I had black Performa 5420 for create music.
Soon later I had get Opcode Vision 3.5,AKAI S1100 and Roland VS-880.Just 1st "Bondi blue" iMac had selling around then.
At that time Speaking of a Computer, have a CUI on DOS. I only known about it. So I was fascinated by GUI on Mac completely.
A few years later, bought G4(AGP)machine for Photoshop and Illustrator.
After many years,had took interest in MS Windows Machines.

A few years ago,got DA and MDD Machine.Because I felt sad that was sell too cheap.DA and MDD active even now as for the create music.
When I am using MacOS9,have a peaceful mind.Then feel very nostalgic like Came back to the hometown.
Anyway,I think that Classic Mac had many Innovative softwares.It's useful a lot for me even now.

I'm glad to see still be presence Classic MacOS9 users around the world.
I'm grateful this site.I want to contribute something If I can.

[Philgood]

Welcome Hiro.

I remember mentioning Japanese sites in this forum having supposedly valuable information but we were lacking a good translator. Maybe someone can help finding the threads and you could help with it translating them.
Or you could help with contacting Japanese developers who maybe will be willing to make available some great software for our vintage Macs.

Good to see you here around.

Also I welcome all the others New members who came around recently.
It's great to see that community rising.

[dr bu]

When I am using MacOS9,have a peaceful mind.

[IIO]

[someofmystuff]

Hi, I'm Chris. My first Mac was an LC III. Actually that was my first 'proper' computer, I had an Amiga 600 before that. Mostly PC based just now due to work and computers being so linked. I've got two or three old Macs back in my parents loft that I need to dig out and dust off.

I also love messing with old synths and samplers (Emu Emax and ESI 2000).

[mrhappy]

I've got two or three old Macs back in my parents loft that I need to dig out and dust off.

Start digging and dusting!! 

[Canal Noises]

Hey all, my name's Isaac. I started using a Mac as my primary computer in 2007 after originally being introduced to them when I was in elementary school in the mid '90s. Once I was firmly intrenched in OS X, I found a Power Mac G4 Sawtooth on the local classified ads and started tinkering with OS 9 and earlier versions of OS X. After working at an Apple Authorized Reseller for a few years and now supporting Macs in a media production environment, I'm finally getting back to OS 9. I have a dual 800 MHz Mirror Drive Door G4 and a 700 MHz graphite iMac G3 now, and I'm finding I actually really like OS 9. Looking forward to learning more about what these great machines can do!

[WillyWonka]

Hello all, my name's Enrique and i'm from Spain.


My first Mac was a then-powerful Intel iMac bought at home. I wanted a laptop before college so I bought a Titanium PowerBook at eBay, and that was my first contact with Mac OS 9. Now I got a Sawtooth PowerMac G4 at a second hand items shop. I'm using it side-by-side with my 2013 MacBook Air. I learned FreeHand when I was younger so a PowerPC Macintosh or Snow Leopard is a must, and none of them are options in my Air.

I'm trying to get everything I need for OS 9 for that PowerMac, meanwhile I have to stick with Tiger... 

I'll try to contribute some spanish OS 9/X software I have lying around.