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Run Mac OS X On Those Old Macs
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Oct 13, 2001 02:43 PM
from the x-on-the-cheap dept.
from the x-on-the-cheap dept.
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."
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YD (Score:1)
window compression (Score:3, Interesting)
I love simple, free little performance boosts like that.
Re:window compression (Score:4, Interesting)
Back in the day of 286's, 386's and gasp, the occasional 486, I remember being shocked then mystified then impressed with myself when I realized that on my old machines DoubleSpace/DriveSpace would significantly *increase* performance. The drives on those old dawgs (MFM, ESDI, RLL, the occasional IDE) were so slow that the tradeoff in CPU cycles was well justified. I remember timing my old 286 PS/2 and the performance was nearly doubled for loading and starting apps.
Anyways, these little performance hacks are surely nice when you are trying to get maximum performance.
Regarding the tidbit... (Score:2, Interesting)
about how to enable buffer compression, is there anything comparable built into X these days? I'm *not* even close to well-acquainted with the source, so I have no idea.
This seems like something that would work well to help achieve faster GUI performance and lower memory usage under Linux/BSD. Among my friends who've tried both Windows and Linux (mostly using KDE) on semi-older hardware (350-500 mHz boxes), the usual comment I hear is something like "very nice, but the GUI's a bit slower than in Windows...".
I know the GUI "snappiness" gripe is a minor one (hey, I'm posting this from KDE 2.2.1), but the memory usage issue is a big one to me. What sort of mechanisms already exist (or are planned) in X to accomodate this sort of thing?
BTW, to the author of that little hack, VERY NICE
Other OS X tips (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ResExcellence.com/osx/index.shtml [resexcellence.com]
Some of the more low-level hacks are probably pretty obvious to NeXT [peak.org] vets and Darwin [apple.com] & GNU-Darwin [sourceforge.net] users.
Tempted (Score:2)
For me, it would be useful to check web pages on the mac browsers. With Dreamweaver available on Mac OS, I've got quick and dirty page design program. With Linux or OSX I've got a *nix that will handle the LAMP platform rather well, I can host all the vanity pages and toys and development stuff I want.
So how much would I pay for a used Mac that would run OS X respectably? Or what model numbers should I look for if I were to surf Ebay for used gear? How much memory would I need to upgrade to so that OSX would run respectably? Are there many Macs that have expensive memory upgrades?
Now why? (Score:1, Insightful)
this is in no way intended as a troll or flame just an observation
Re:Now why? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
I run Linux/BSD/Darwin on old macs... (Score:2)
Cost. My old PowerPC 604-based Macs are still good performers, but in my mind are not worth the $80 - $130 cost of Mac OS X. Even though OS X has no CD key and no activation, I wouldn't feel right about pirating it. Especially since my business is audited enough for other things the way it is.
Some of my oldest PowerMacs are running mkLinux, LinuxPPC, and YellowDog Linux. But I think I may start using Darwin or GNU-Darwin on my old PowerMac 9600s and G3s. Why? Straight binary compatibility. If it runs in Darwin, it'll run in Mac OS X. (The other way around is somewhat true, but keep in mind that Darwin does not contain the higher-level components of OS X... such as Aqua).
But that's just me.
Screen Resolution? (Score:2, Interesting)
I run OSX in both 1600x1024 (my cinema display) and on my widescreen TiBook. It works great.
However, I would think that you would run out of space trying to run it in 640x480 resolution (which are what some older Macs are stuck at).
Another option (Score:2)
However there is a problem that can happen here: No matter what, you can't get around the fact that OS X needs a bucketload of memory, and many machine, like my 6400, max out at laughable amounts like 128mb, which is the bare official minimum for OX X.
.
Re:Apple LIED to you. (Score:5, Informative)
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/ [applefritter.com]
(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 [bozosoft.com]
http://www.macworld.com/1995/04/news/550.html [macworld.com]
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.
Daystar Genesis MP800+ (Score:1)
OSX on the PC (Score:1, Interesting)
See... (Score:1)
PowerTower Pro 225 (Score:1)
If'n you are runnin it, how fast does it go?
Olde Macs & MacOS X (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
mmm beer (Score:3, Funny)
Will someone finally point me to that free beer
open source people are talking about ?
Hrmm... (Score:1)
hmm, magic numbers (Score:2)
Can I round that last number off? :-)
Not that I can try, I bought a new Mac *2 days* before they announced OSX would come with new Macs (and would send it cheap to anybody who bought a Mac after that day) so if I want it I have to buy it full price. Bleh!
Works Well. (Score:4, Informative)
If you want to improve your Finder experience further, run the app ShadowKiller [unsanity.com]. 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 [macosxhints.com].
Apple doesn't say that ... (Score:1)
Forget Macs ... (Score:3, Funny)
...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
Useful little tip??? (Score:2)
Under attack? A small text mirror... (Score:2)
Here's a great tip by Andrew Welch, of Ambrosia Software :
The window server has a cool feature in OS X 10.1 that isn't enabled by
default (though it will be in an upcoming update, as I understand it): window
buffer compression.
A little background. Under OS X, the contents of each window are saved in a
buffer, so that they can be updated instantly, and also so that the cool
transparency effects in Aqua are possible. This is a good thing, to have a
fully buffered window manager -- however, it uses a lot of memory.
In 32 bit mode ("Millions" in System Preferences), a window that is 800
pixels wide by 600 pixels high uses up 1.9mb of RAM. When you consider that
there are usually over 100 windows open when you're using OS X (not all
windows are visible), you start to realize that this can start to add up in
terms of RAM usage.
The more windows you open, the more RAM they use up, the more that virtual
memory will have to page in and out while you use your applications to do
work. This can cause slow-downs as the disk grinds to do the virtual memory
paging.
So what Apple did was they implemented a compression mechanism into the
window server. When a window's contents haven't changed for a given period of
time, the window server compresses them, so they take up less memory. Since
it uses a compression method that doesn't require the buffer to be fully
decompressed to do compositing (dragging a window around, updating the
screen, etc.), you won't notice a slowdown with this compression turned on.
In fact, because less memory is being used up by the window buffers, more RAM
will be available for your applications, with will mean less virtual memory
paging, and may in fact result in speeding up your machine. Additionally,
since less data needs to be read (it is compressed, after all!), things like
updating windows may be faster as well.
If you are a power user who has lots of windows open, you might consider
giving this hack a shot. I'm using it, and getting compression ratios of
about 8.5:1 (in other words, my window buffers are using 8x less RAM than
they normally would).
Now then, onto the hack! First, open up the Terminal application (found in
/Applications/Utilities/) and type:
sudo pico
(you'll need to enter your admin password in order to proceed)
Move the cursor down below the first tag, and paste the following text
in:
BackingCompression
compressionScanTime
5.000000000000000e+00
minCompressableSize
8193
minCompressionRatio
1.100000023841858e+00
Then hit Control-X to exit pico (hitting the Y key to save the changes before
exiting when it asks you), then log out and back in again, and ta da!
Compressed window buffers. Enjoy...
If you want to verify that your window compression is working, install the OS
X 10.1 developer tools, and run the QuartzDebug app
(/Developer/Applications/), then click on the "Show window list" button.
Windows that have compressed buffers will have a C next to the size of the
window's buffer in the kByte column of the window list.
Some people are a bit concerned that enabling this compression might slow
things down; that's actually not true. It will actually be faster, for the
two reasons I mentioned. First, less swapping (which will happen somewhat,
regardless of how much RAM you have).
Secondly, consider that most modern CPUs are memory bandwidth-bound. When you
need to update a window with a 200K buffer, you have to read in 200K of data,
then write out 200K of data.
The vast majority of the time spent doing this copying involves the CPU just
sitting and spinning waiting for data. If you use the compressed buffer, and
a reasonable 10:1 compression ratio, you only need to read in 20K of data,
running it by a simple algorithm, and write out 200K of data.
Since your are 10x less memory bound, and since you're using CPU cycles that
would have been wasted anyway, you are faster. This is the same principle
behind RLE blitters, etc.
--
Regards
Roo
I'll chip in too... (Score:2)
Let's see:
Macosxapps.com
macsurfer.com (best place for links to other mac news sights)
www.osx-zone.com is good for filtered "quickies".
www.securemac.com for obvious reasons.
www.greasydaemon.com for *any* *BSD based os.
arstechnica.com (Mac, PC, Linux forums rock, IMO).
And for the PC side.
www.98lite.net (98se running the 95b shell...fast as all get out for windows. Need USB support of 98? Slow computer...get this.)
www.winguides.com for info on all the Win OS's
arstechnica.com, redundant, I know, but the sight and forums rock...mac or pc, don't matter. If you don't waste a full day at that site on a first visit...you ain't a tech
www.tech-report.com decent site, some like, some don't. cool, check it out just in case.
Agnostic type sights (always refreshing).
slashdot.org (chuckle, you knew it was coming)
www.osopinion.com
www.osnews.com (just found it recently, no opinion, yet)
Oh, and for all you Mac ppl out there, don't forget macslash.com (links are good and news too...based on
For everybody: www.macdesktops.com and desktopia.com (good site, but annoying popups recently).
Have fun, dudes and dudettes.
Moose.
The Hack (Score:1)
Now then, onto the hack! First, open up the Terminal application (found in
sudo pico
(you'll need to enter your admin password in order to proceed).
Move the cursor down below the first dict tag, and paste the following text in:
keyBackingCompression/key
dict
keycompressionScanTime/key
real5.000000000000000e+00/real&# 062;
keyminCompressableSize/key
integer8193/integer
keyminCompressionRatio/key
real1.100000023841858e+00/real&# 062;
Then hit Control-X to exit pico (hitting the Y key to save the changes before exiting when it asks you), then log out and back in again, and ta da! Compressed window buffers. Enjoy...
OS X on BeBox? (Score:1)
I'm thinking that this could add some extra life to a few dual-PPC BeBox machines out there. Is it feasible?
Another set of tips. (Score:1)
E.g. Hold down the option key and scrolling is twice as fast.
Hold down option key and click anywhere in the scroll bar and it takes you there.
Option backspace deletes whole words.
Command+Shift and click a link in IE and it opens the new window behind the current one.
RAM for older macs (Score:1)
How could you find this? (Score:2)
New version available (Score:1)
Speed tips. (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Relative performance to iMac 500MHz (Score:1)
The iMac was smoother than the 8500 in almost all respects. This smoothness and quickness was especially evident when I launched Apple System Profiler, selected the Extensions tab and paged up/down this list. The 8500 would wait a while before it displayed the next page while the iMac did the same thing without any hesitation. Bus speed may also contribute to the performance difference--the 8500's bus runs at 45MHz.
People doing this - HD, ram requirements? (Score:2)
I think there's a few suitable old boxes lying around at work, and I'd love to fire up OS X and give it a shot.
To the people who are already doing this - any idea what I'd be needing in terms of RAM and hard drive capacity, to run OS X in an almost-sane fashion? (read: I can bring the OS up and load a text editor without waiting 5 minutes for the text editor to load)
I'd go read the side of the OS X box, but given the CPU/system requirements are only half-true, the rest of it probably is as well..
Darwin on old PPC's (Score:1)
-Chris
Not such an improvement (Score:1)
Both Work, But... (Score:1)
The compressed windows thingy works! However, use the copy & paste from the MacNN forum link in the original story above. the ones listed above have errors due to Slashdot's html. ***Very Important***
Thanks for the tips links guys!
Old macs? (Score:1)
Apaprantly, the submitter of the tidbit and me have different views of what an old Mac is...
To me, an old Mac is the SE/30 (the last Mac that I owned, and that I was very sad to let go of, it was a really Good Computer). A new Mac is one of those PowerPC thingies.
test (Score:1)
test 2 (Score:2)
Re:Performance? (Score:1)
Cool hack none the less.
Re:Will this work on my Apple //e Platinum Edition (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Will this work on my Apple //e Platinum Edition (Score:2)
:)
Re:Old news.... (Score:1)
Re:Performance? (Score:1)
Re:Will this work on my Apple //e Platinum Edition (Score:1)