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Apple Businesses

Run Mac OS X On Those Old Macs 221

Posted by timothy 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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Run Mac OS X On Those Old Macs More

Run Mac OS X On Those Old Macs

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  • Does it run on Yellow Dog G4s ?
    • Huh? It runs on your G4. It's an OS. Yellow Dog is a different OS. They don't run simultaneously. (I know about mac-on-mac projects, but those aren't working with Mac OS X yet.)

  • window compression (Score:3, Interesting)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @02:47PM (#2424766) Homepage
    The coolest thing about OS X's window compression (off by default) is that is actually *improves* performance, as well as conserving a lot of memory. Because most CPUs are limited by a RAM thruput bottleneck, compression of window data will actually improve performance by transfering far less data to and from the CPU. The compression/decompression routine does indeed consume CPU cycles, but it almost trivial with modern CPUs.

    I love simple, free little performance boosts like that.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @03:04PM (#2424808)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Are you sure about that? It seems to me that although the data is compressed, it has to be uncompressed for the software to use it. In other words, the compressed data must be read, decompressed, and then written in uncompressed form, before it can be used. I'm skeptical of performance gain claims.
      • The compression certainly takes some CPU time, but it's a lot faster than swapping to the hard drive. Hence the overall performance win.
        • Plus of course the executables are compressed so loading them off the disk to begin with is much faster. You probably already knew this but didn't think to say it as it is so obvious.
      • The claims are true. I'm guessing that the tradeoff is that the CPU can compress the data faster than the difference between writing the compressed and writing the uncompressed, resulting in less total time taken. I noticed a significant speed difference when hiding an application and un-hiding another - a gross change of 10 or so windows took about half as much time as it used to. It's a limited speed change, to be sure, that only applies in very specific circumstances, but it's there.

        itachi
    • I've heard that Nvidia cards do something very similar. I read awhile back on a games developer mailing list that NVidia's scheme has game video data compressed and sent in compressed form to the card (which does the decompression nice and fast in hardware). Supposedly this saves AGP bus bandwidth. I'm not sure if this is true, but if it is, it would explain why Nvidia refuses to open source their drivers for linux--they're trying to protect their compression algorithms needed to communicate with the card.

  • 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 :-)

    • Eh, I don't think most X desktops/window managers even double buffer all their 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?

      soloution: buy more memory.... Please. we're dying out here.
      • soloution: buy more memory.... Please. we're dying out here.

        Seriously... go to pricewatch.com, look at the bottom of the page. 128 MB of PC133 RAM is 5 FREEKING DOLLARS!!! Buy some RAM!

        What I can't understand is that if you go to Best Buy or Circuit City, all the computers that they are selling still have only 128 MB of RAM. To get more you've got to go into the $2000+ range, or upgrade it yourself. What is the problem here? New computers nowadays should have 256 MB at the very least, what with RAM prices these days. Why are they selling computers with the bare minimum of RAM and processor speeds in the GHz range?

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Consumer: Windows is too slow on my computer.

          Salesman: What [computer] do you have?

          Consumer: Ummmm. [checks crumpled slip of paper] Intel inside.

          Salesman: Is it certified for Windows ME?

          Consumer: Dunno. I think it has Microsoft.

          Salesman: There's your problem. If it doesn't have the Windows ME logo, you can't run the new fast windows. You've got to upgrade.

          Consumer: That sounds expensive.

          Salesman: No way. I can sell you a windows ME machine for $600. It's got 1.2 Ghz.

          Consumer: Is that a lot?

          Salesman: Way more Ghz than you need. You really only need one. The .2 is extra.

          Consumer: Wow. How many megs has it got?

          Salesman: 128. Windows ME needs 64. That's double.

          Consumer [to equally clueless spouse]: Sue, can you get the checkbook?

          Salesman: Don't forget about the wonderfull internet access package it comes with. Only $300 extra. If you didn't get it, you'd probably end up with viruses.

          Consumer: But I've already got AOL.

          Salesman: They put that on at the factory. There's nothing we can do.

          Consumer: Well. OK. [signs check for $900]

          Moral of the story: BUILD YOUR OWN DAMN COMPUTER.

      • I'll agree that the easiest way to alleviate the problem is to buy more RAM. However, this kinda defeats the whole purpose of innovative software engineering.

        The Mac hack discussed above makes better use of existing hardware capabilities, which (in my mind, as a developer) is a primary goal for software authors. Yes, you can usually increase performance by throwing more hardware at a problem. This leads us down a dangerous path, though... think about what today's database technology would be like if the major vendors had just taken that route instead of improving their code.

        I think all this applies especially to open source software, where we all have the opportunity to do something about problems and inefficiencies that arise. Any thoughts?

  • Other OS X tips (Score:5, Informative)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @02:59PM (#2424796) Homepage
    While there are scads of OS X "tips" sites, most of which are newbie unix introductions, I have found the following to be very useful with a wide variety of tips and other neat hacks:

    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.
  • to pick up an older Mac, put more memory on and play with OSX (and that Mac on Linux PPC thing that was up on /. a few weeks ago).

    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?

    • Macs maintain value very well. You can easily pay $800 or $900 for a machine 3 or more years old, especially on eBay. This is great if you've got a Mac to sell, but rather less great if you're looking to buy one....
    • Macs retain their value for a long time, it's not like the Wintel market with a 24-36 month optimum lifespan.

      For a new iMac preloaded with MacOS X 10.1 (& therefore MacOS 9.21 also) you'll pay $799, about the same as for an older box with a kluged MacOS X, no USB, a couple generations-ago video, etc.

    • I would highly recommend a G4/533 or better, any slot-loading iMac, or the new iBook. Macs hold their value *very* well, so you're almost always better off buying new.

      Disks are IDE, keys/mouse are USB, video/storage/etc are Firewire. RAM is common SDRAM. PCI slots are standard 33 MHz, 64-bit.

      If you can stand 1024x768, a slot-loading iMac is the way to go. Add some RAM and maybe a faster IDE drive and OS X will be zippy.

      Avoid the older tray-load iMacs, they have a much slower bus and graphics and are slow buggies when it comes to OS X.

      RAM:
      Beige G3 = PC66
      Blue&White G3 = PC100
      Slot-load iMac = PC100
      G4 = PC133
      iBook = PC100 SO-DIMM
      PowerBook G4 = PC100 SO-DIMM
      • I assume Slot Load and Tray Load refers to CD-ROM?

        I wanna thank everyone for the advice. Looks like I might have been a little optimistic (as maggard suggests elsewhere in this story, I'm thinking of PCs that quickly become dirt cheap, I'm typing this on my nearly 5 year old P200 that I probably couldn't get $100 for). So my Mac dreams might be just a littler farther off. We'll see...

    • i've got an imac dv se 500mhz G3 --about 14 months old and it runs os x 10.1 with plenty of speed I added 256 megs of PC100 RAM to bring it up to 384. New, something like this might run about $1100, used you might be able to do a little better.
    • You have a few possible routes to take.

      You could go with one of the original PCI machines and use the Unsupported route. Machines worth looking at that are the x500 and x600 lines. Smalldog http://www.smalldog.com/ has some 7500 and 7600 for sale for under $130. If you go with any of the x500 or x600 lines, you will probably want to put down the $150-$200 for a G3 upgrade. Memory for these machines will run you about $65/128meg chip.

      You could also go with an older iMac. You can pick one up for $650-$900. Most of those use standard PC100 or other DIMMs (which are running really cheap right now).

      The last is to get an older G3 machine. You can pick one up for about $500-$600. Depending on the model, they use standard PC66 or PC100 chips. Search for either "G3 beige" or "G3 blue and white" to find these machines.

      This last way is probably going to get you a pretty good machine. It depends on your other uses for the machine, but all of these, with at least 256 megs of RAM, will be good for OS X.

    • Re:Tempted (Score:2, Insightful)

      by myov ( 177946 )
      I'm using X (10.1) on a first-gen G3 (233Mhz with 352MB ram). 10.0 was slow but usable, while 10.1 is great so far.

      I found that upgrading the hard drive made a huge difference in performance. I used the original 4GB to test X, and it was slow. I found that it swapped frequently. I now use on a 7200rpm Deskstar drive, and I barely hear the HD work.

  • Now why? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by TheMMaster ( 527904 )
    Why didn't IBM think of this themselves? This sounds a bit too much like Wintel's ideas of forcing computer upgrades...
    this is in no way intended as a troll or flame just an observation

    • Re:Now why? (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by reynaert ( 264437 )
      Remember that Apple is a hardware company. They want to sell computers. MacOS X is a cool OS, but it's only reason of existence is to sell more Macs.
      • Also, remember that there are hoards of people watching breathlessly to see Apple make the slightest mistake. If a random journalist were to boot Mac OS X on his 7300 and it was unpleasantly slow, then wrote a scathing article about the speed, Joe G4-user might just skip the upgrade and continue happily with OS 9. And that's one of Apple's worst-case scenarios, I figure.

      • Re:Now why? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Jay Carlson ( 28733 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @07:48PM (#2425464) Homepage
        No way. Apple is a software company.

        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.

        • Re:Now why? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by MrBogus ( 173033 )
          One big misconception in your post --

          PReP was an IBM/Motorola standard established so that they could eat Intel's business desktop market by selling Windows NT and OS/2-based RISC workstations. For a number of reasons, this effort pretty much when nowhere and was dropped by 1996.

          The key words being "business" and "Windows". IBM/Moto's marketing efforts were so lame and such a spectacular failure, that it's no wonder that everyone has forgotten this billion dollar initiative, and laid the blame at Apple's feet.

          Apple never really gave a clear indication that they were ever going to change thier business model from being a "systems vendor" to a software-only company. They really just wanted to get in early with what was supposed to be (according to IBM/Moto) the commodity CPU of the future and got dragged into the rest of it. (At this point, with Moto in embedded and IBM in big servers and a stangent parts supply, Apple probably sees that using PPC was a gigantic mistake to begin with.)

          Furthermore, Apple had neither the marketshare nor the business users to drive the PReP/CHRP pony, so hopefully it's _obvious_ that it wasn't their idea.

          There's also was serious problems with the lack of hardware indepedance in MacOS -- the clones had to use Apple-designed boards, and Apple wasn't planning to fix this until Copeland shipped (which it didn't).

          Open PPC Hardware failing is Motorola and IBM's fault, not Apple's.
    • I agree, to an extent. I have two machines that most of my computing is done on. One is a 466Mhz iBook that would have no problem running OS X. The other is a Pentium 100Mhz desktop. It has a few things that are up to date, like the hard drives, but for the most part the machine is a bit over the hill. My point, this machine can't really run Windows XP. It shouldn't be running ME. I wouldn't run anything later than 98 on it. It's a dog running KDE. BeOS is a dream though! :)

      Operating systems move forward just like hardware. OS X is a big move forward, and Apple made a decision regarding incorporation of backward compatibility. At least Apple makes a few choice OS versions available for free on theirFTP server [apple.com]. As for the P100, it might become an MP3 server when I do the home network...

  • ... and let me tell you why.

    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)

    by TechFire ( 203886 )
    Even if an older Mac could run OSX fast enough, what about the screen resolution?

    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).
    • None of the Macs that'll run OS X are stuck at 640x480. Even the oldest of them will do 800x600 with 16 bit color.
    • When we are talking about older Macs, we are talking about the PCI machines (604/604e based, plus the 7500), not Quadras. :)
      My PM7500 does 1024x768 just fine. Would do more with more VRAM. It could do huge resolutions with a video card. Voodoo3 (Not OSX compatible), Rage 128, Radeon, etc.
    • I can do it in 800x600 happily, if I shrink the dock and the desktop icons.

      I don't know if I'd want to do it in 640x480, or smaller, but then, that's something I'll have to try. Hang on, switching resolutions (I'm in OS X right now...)

      GEEEZ!!!! THAT'S HUGE!!!! (640x480 on a 19" will do that to you)

      If I ever start to go blind, this OS will draw at such a large size that I don't think I'll have to worry-- But here's the real test- launching iMovie for OS X... (nope, it requires 800x600)

      Okay, launching Dreamweaver in Classic,
      the answer is, it uses the whole screen to crowd in it's palettes. Same as if I did 640x480 on any other screen.

      So other than, it's really easy on the eyes, I think the same maxims about screen resolution stand- user higher screen resolutions for apps that rely heavily on palettes.

      Switching back to 1600x1200...

      ahhhh.....

  • Another option, besides the Unsupported X untility is a software product by Sonnet Technologies [sonnettech.com], maker of Macintosh Processor upgrades. It only works in conjunction with their like of Processor Card Upgrades, but it's 100% supported by them, and sometimes *real* commercial support is a nice thing to have. They say that will also have the L2 chache card upgrades working very soon.

    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:Another option (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Phroggy ( 441 )
      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.

      Not only that, but RAM for certain older Macs is ungodly expensive.
  • Yep, Ryan Rempel's UUX rocks. I'd like to find a Daystar Genesis MP800+ to try OSX out on... (4 processors, woohoo!)
    • The DayStar Genesis mac clone series was wild! (For those that aren't familar, see this: http://www.lowendmac.com/daystar/ [lowendmac.com] and this: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/ULTIMATE_MAC/Elvis/inde x.html [xlr8yourmac.com]). Back in the day, it was one hellof machine. Up to four PowerPC 604e CPUs on the CPU card. 16 DIMM slots, 6 PCI slots. Not bad for 1997.

      Because Mac OS Classic's multithreading was app-dependant, only "pro" apps such as Photoshop supported the additional CPUs. But when they did, whoa, did that thing ever haul.

      But it was on the PowerMac version of BeOS that the DayStar really shined. The coolest thing was the CPU meter app in BeOS. You could click on and click off CPUs at will. Turn off two CPUs and watch the load on the other two increase. Click off all four, and poof, the OS halted! (they later fixed that "feature").

      Anyway.... yeah, the old DayStar Genesis was awesome.
    • There's one on ebay [ebay.com] right now at $400, ending tomorrow.

  • OSX on the PC (Score:1, Interesting)

    by BarakMich ( 90556 )
    Would this hack work if used under an "old mac" emulator such as Basilisk II? A cow-orker of mine wants me to try OSX, but I have no Mac, and I don't plan to buy one ever.. Thought that this hack might do the trick
  • And they call Open Source a cancer.... pffft... go figure !
  • Anyone running OS X on one of those? I gots me one lying around somewheres here and maybe that would make the thing useful: the $$ value of that thing dropped from like $2000 bucks to 50 cents as soon as I drove it off the lot.

    If'n you are runnin it, how fast does it go?

  • Olde Macs & MacOS X (Score:5, Insightful)

    by maggard ( 5579 ) <michael@michaelmaggard.com> on Saturday October 13, 2001 @03:40PM (#2424938) Homepage Journal
    One thing dampening all of this is that old Macs don't drop in price nearly as fast as Wintel boxes. Three and four year old Mac hardware (which is what is being talked about) still costs a lot more then 3 and 4 year old Wintel hardware. Indeed with a new entry level iMac [apple.com] costing $799 it's usually not worth retrofitting a whole new Mac from scratch.

    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.

    • Re:Olde Macs & MacOS X (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I gave up on my urge to buy a Mac just to play with OS X. I couldn't justify it anyway. The hardware is too expensive for anything fast enough. I can (and did) build a nice AMD 1.4GHz Athlon system for well under $1000. For that price, the best I could hope for is a subpar G3 platform implanted in a shoddy CRT monitor. On the PC side it is top end and will run anything I can throw at it.

      Apple: I don't WANT a computer built into the monitor. Why don't you release an "iMac-Lite" as a G3 cube for $500? I'd probably snap one of those up to play with as long as it had a minimum of 256MB of ram ($20 these days) and a 20 GB hard drive. Apple still seems to be trying to convince people that ram is still $200 for a 128meg stick.
      • The iMac also has a VGA out, so it is easy to add a second display and use both at once. Think of it as a computer with a secondary 15" display built in.

        The G3 is not sub-par ... it's a really great chip, very small and low-power, so no fan. I'm running Mac OS X right now on an older PowerBook with a G3/400 and it's just great. The $799 iMac has a faster desktop hard drive and a faster CPU than this machine, so it is a fine OS X machine if you give it some more RAM, which is cheap.

        > Apple: I don't WANT a computer built into the
        > monitor. Why don't you release an "iMac-Lite"
        > as a G3 cube for $500?

        Because they include a lot of stuff with every Mac. Every one has FireWire, and iMovie, and a PostScript interpreter, PDF printing, multiple languages, lots of great fonts, Java2, optical mouse, so much more. The software bundle is real software, not demos or LE stuff or stuff that you can't upgrade later. Not only will you use the bundled software, but they will become some of your favorite applications ever (iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, Mail, and QuickTime are just joys to use). Also, the machines update themselves automatically from Apple's servers, and you get free online storage and streaming servers and such, and OS upgrades are frequent and easy to install, and they add features that users have asked for. It takes money to keep the whole boat floating, though. The $799 iMac is already kind of a recession special ... Mac OS X, iMovie, AppleWorks, and an optical mouse are almost half that by themselves, when you buy them separately.

  • mmm beer (Score:3, Funny)

    by kraf ( 450958 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @03:41PM (#2424940)
    > The best release (and free as in beer)

    Will someone finally point me to that free beer
    open source people are talking about ?
  • Will it run on my LCII? That's an old machine... :-)
    • Considering that the LCII has a 68LC020 processor and maxes out at 10MB RAM, I'd have to say no. Try Linux, though!
    • netbsd.

      it's as close as you're going to get.

      i installed it on my lcII - it's nice to see the latest software version of something running on a 10 year-old low-end machine - and it's been good training on hacking on my OS X machine's BSD guts. i'd only been exposed to linux (well, and solaris and hp/ux at school) before.

      hell, it even runs X (as in X windows) at 1 bit color on the tiny 12'' apple monitor perched on top.. it's wicked slow, but it's fun to see netscape and a couple of xterms compiling things (don't bother, it takes overnight for simple programs), the little LC Ethernet card (from welovemacs.com [welovemacs.com]) going crazy, hard drive churning away... ahh

      *that's* how computers are supposed to be built :)

  • <key>BackingCompression</key>
    <dict>
    <key>compressionScanTime</key>
    <real>5.000000000000000e+00</real>
    <key>minCompressableSize</key>
    <integer>8193</integer>
    <key>minCompressionRatio</key>
    <real>1.100000023841858e+00</real>
    </dict>

    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!

    • 2 days. Sorry, if you did this in the first place, but did you ever go to your local Mac reseller or called Apple to get your copy of OS X ?
      There wd have been a chance I think. Then.

  • Works Well. (Score:4, Informative)

    by MoNickels ( 1700 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @03:57PM (#2424981) Homepage
    I'm using this hack. It seems to work well and appears to do no harm. I can see the difference on my slow PowerBook G3/300/192 just dragging windows around.

    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].
  • ... Mac OS X won't run on these old Macs, it says it is not supported. When Apple says "not supported", they mean you're on your own with any problems that come up (unlike other companies, who mean by "not supported" "may create rift in space-time continuum that would wipe out our sector of the galaxy.")

  • Forget Macs ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mihalis ( 28146 ) on Saturday October 13, 2001 @05:41PM (#2425212) Homepage

    ...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

  • Anyone know what this useful little tip is, as the bulletin board for macnn seems to have died a horrible death, and is no longer reachable? I guess UltimateBB isnt so ultimate after all....
    • for those interested, and unable to access the macnn site, visit this link. [macosxhints.com] Seems to work nicely. Mucho thanks to Andrew Welch for being the smartey man he is
  • Since the board site claims to be "under attack" (never knew "attack" meant "Slashdotted") I found a text-based version of the buffer hack in the newsgroups. Have a read.
    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 /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist

    (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

    • Did you even look at your post? You're missing vital tags!
      <BR>
      <BR>The correct item to past is:
      <BR>
      <BR>&#60;key&#62;BackingCompression&#60;/key&#62 ;
      <BR>
      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &#60;dict&#62;
      <BR>
      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &#60;key&#62;compressionScanTime&#60;/key&#62;
      <BR>
      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &#60;real&#62;5.000000000000000e+00&#60;/real&#62;
      <BR>
      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &#60;key&#62;minCompressableSize&#60;/key&#62;
      <BR>
      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &#60;integer&#62;8193&#60;/integer&#62;
      <BR>
      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &#60;key&#62;minCompressionRatio&#60;/key&#62;
      <BR>
      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &#60;real&#62;1.100000023841858e+00&#60;/real&#62;
      <BR>
      &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &#60;/dict&#62;
  • I saw macosxhints.com, but macosxapps.com was missing from the roster.

    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 /code, naturally).

    For everybody: www.macdesktops.com and desktopia.com (good site, but annoying popups recently).

    Have fun, dudes and dudettes.

    Moose.

  • Since the Macnn forums seem to be slashdotted, I tracked this down at macosxhints.com
    Now then, onto the hack! First, open up the Terminal application (found in /Applications/Utilities/) and type:
    sudo pico /library/preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist
    (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;
    /dict
    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...
  • How can you find some extra feature buffer compression like this? Running 'strings' wouldn't turn up this little tidbit, and the line in the preferences file for this is empty, how can you discover this?

  • Speed tips. (Score:3, Informative)

    by A_Non_Moose ( 413034 ) on Sunday October 14, 2001 @01:08AM (#2426216) Homepage Journal
    These Helped the subsystems more than the gui, but I highly recommend it...YMMV, of course.

    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 /System/Library/StartupItems are several things you can/shoud get rid of to reduce memory/CPU load on older macs:
    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.

  • 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..

    • Re:People doing this - HD, ram requirements? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That's the rub. You can get OS X running on old boxes, but to be useable, you need to have a few things upgraded. First, I recommend that you upgrade the processor. under 300mhz, IMHO, is just too slow, next get some memory. It is so cheap, there is no reason not to. I think 256Mb is a good place to start. (best place to find memory for older macs, see dealmac.com; search for 168-pin DIMM to find a recent deal $25 for 128MB, and dealram.com)

      That is a good start and you're not in for a lot of $$ at this point.Now depending upon your hard drive size, you might want to get a new one. Again, they are so cheap and Ebay can assist in that respect if needed. Last I would not buy a graphics card unless you really wanted to and even then, see the forums ar www.xlr8yourmac.com before doing so to see what works and what doesn't. Also see Ryan Rempel's pages too.

      So for comparatively little money, you can get an old box running OS X. Less than $200 for processor and RAM, and whatever else you choose to buy. If it is an older Mac, you'll need a carrier card. Card and processor deals I have seen recently as cheap as $129.

      To sum up:
      my personal mimimums are 300mhz, 256MB RAM and 3G HD. That is a good place to start, more is better and you can find all kinds of deals on this stuff. (Personally, I want to buy that dual carrier card and make a dual processor box.)

      Again, before you do anything see www.xlr8yourmac.com
  • test 2

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