I had eagerly anticipated the (twice-delayed) date for several months. This was the day that Sonnet made the world of Mac OS X accessible to my G3-upgraded Power Mac 8500. The installer was available as a $29.95 download from Sonnet's web site. It was posted for all of 24 hours before I decided to take the plunge.
Early on in the development process, Apple had announced that their next-generation OS would only work on "native" G3 or higher machines. At work I have a Power Mac 8500 accelerated with a Sonnet G3/400 card; my home machine is a Power Mac 7500 with a 604e/233 processor upgrade, and my notebook is a PowerBook 3400c. Things did not look promising for my migration to OS X.
My Network Administrator has a 333 MHz iMac on his desk, so we did have an opportunity to look at OS X upon its first release. We were both quickly impressed at the sleekness and stability of the new OS. In fact, we installed OS X on his iMac less than a week after it was released, and it has not crashed even once! If this represents the future of computing, count me in.
Fortunately, Sonnet committed to bringing OS X to machines which had been upgraded with most of their G3/G4 accelerators. I had been monitoring their web site almost daily, keeping a keen eye out for the latest news on their efforts. On June 20, my patience and diligence was rewarded.
Sonnet highly recommends that you install OS X onto a clean hard drive or partition. In fact, they so highly recommend it that they don't give you instructions for doing it any other way. This "clean" disk requirement immediately presented a problem. The 8500 has a single, 9.1 GB SCSI hard drive with about 2 GB used. I had previously installed a Sonnet Tango USB/FireWire PCI card in the 8500, so I was able to use an external FireWire hard drive to back up my information. As a footnote, I believe one of the greatest tributes to the Mac's ease of use is the fact that all I had to do to back up my hard drive was to plug in the FireWire drive and drag the "Macintosh HD" icon onto the "FireWire HD" icon on my desktop. I went to lunch and when I returned my drive was completely backed up. I then reinitialized the internal hard drive, creating two equal 4 GB partitions. I booted with the OS 9.1 CD that comes with OS X, opened the FireWire hard drive and drug the "Macintosh HD" folder back to the second partition. An hour or so later, my system was completely restored and in perfect working order. Now I also had a clean 4 GB partition to begin my OS X installation.
OS X requires OS 9.1 to have been previously installed. Apple recommends (and my experience confirms) that the version of OS 9.1 on the CD included with OS X be used. I installed OS 9.1 on my clean partition without a hitch. After installation, I had to do a software update to get the latest version of Startup Disk, which is necessary to switch the boot device between OS X and 9.1. I also had to rerun the Crescendo PCI installer for my Sonnet G3 upgrade card. Now I was finally ready to install OS X!
At this point, the installation method diverges from a standard OS X install. You have to put the OS X CD in the drive (note that USB and FireWire CD drives are not supported for installation purposes) and then run the downloaded Crescendo X Install 1.0. The Crescendo X install only takes a few minutes and primarily consists of selecting proper source and destination disks. When the installation routine is finished, your Mac will reboot using the OS X CD.
From this point, OS X installs pretty much as it would on any native G3/G4. Just be sure not to select the option to "Erase Destination" as necessary files have already been placed there by the Crescendo X install.
I was finally ready for the big moment! The installer finished and I dutifully clicked on "Restart." I was shortly rewarded with a quick and (thankfully) uneventful boot into OS X. I poked around, a bit cautiously at first, but soon took on the enthusiasm of a kid in a candy store. The first thing I noticed was the speed. The Power Mac 8500, in addition to the Sonnet G3 upgrade card, has 256 MB of RAM. It was at least as fast as the iMac 333 on which we had previously installed OS X, despite the 8500's slower bus speed (50 MHz vs. 66). Web surfing was a joy using, first, Internet Explorer 5.1 Preview edition. IE was surprisingly stable; in fact, this "preview" edition was more stable than any "final" versions of IE I have used on the PC. Is Redmond more adept at writing software for the Mac than for their own OS?!? I downloaded what quickly became my favorite web browser, OmniWeb. After a while, I decided to test OS X's "Classic" mode, the 9.1 subsystem which exists with X to run applications not written in Cocoa or Carbon, the native tongues of OS X. This is where I struck my first pothole in the OS X road.
For my test, I installed a previously downloaded version of Nisus Compact, the free version of the venerable word processor. I double-clicked to run the program and waited...and waited...and waited. Classic should have launched automatically. It didn't. Rather, it started to launch, and hung. I tried it several times with the same result. I even rebooted the Mac (knowing from my previous experience with OS X that this was not likely the problem). After a little more poking around under the hood, I discovered the problem. In System Preferences, there is an icon for Classic. This allows you to modify certain parameters for Classic mode. For some reason, OS X was trying to boot from my original 9.1 installation (on the other partition) for Classic. I knew, also from previous experience on the iMac, that this would likely not work. I selected the version of OS 9.1 on the same partition as OS X and it worked perfectly. I also chose to have Classic start automatically when the Mac boots.
All things considered, the installation of OS X was remarkably easy. However, if I had not had ready access to the external FireWire drive for backing up and recopying my existing information, the process would have been significantly more complicated. There are also a couple of results that you might not expect. OS X does not support internal floppy drives. This is true even on older G3's with internal floppies, not just on G3 upgraded Macs. This is an OS X issue that is not likely to be remedied. In fact, given the architecture of OS X, it is possible that it can't be fixed. Serial printers are not supported. This is also an Apple issue that likely won't or can't be resolved. OS X is less tolerant of improper SCSI termination than previous OS's. You should verify proper termination of all SCSI devices prior to installation. The USB ports on the Sonnet Tango PCI card no longer function. The FireWire ports continue to work, however. This is a Sonnet issue that I hope will be resolved in the future since this disables the primary method of adding a floppy drive once the internal one no longer functions. Finally, should the installation not finish for any reason, you basically have to restore the Mac to its previous state and start over. Although I did not have an opportunity to encounter this particular problem, it would certainly be a very frustrating state to find yourself in!
I continue to be impressed with OS X. Its stability is unrivaled by any other mainstream OS. The new "Aqua" GUI takes a bit of getting used to, but since most familiar commands are still present (although some are, maddeningly, in different locations), it should not be a big adjustment for the experienced Mac user. I have since purchased the same Sonnet G3/400 upgrade for my Power Mac 7500 at home. Although I will probably wait for more software to become available in native OS X mode before installing OS X at home, I am glad that Sonnet has stepped up to the plate and given those of us with "Low-end Macs" the option!
MY LAWYER MADE ME POST THIS: 8-/
The Macs Only! web site is for informational purposes only. No one associated with Macs Only! assumes any responsibility for its accuracy. The information is subject to change without notice. Any use of, or actions taken based upon any of the information contained on this web site is done entirely at your own risk. Mention of any products or services is for informational purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation. Macs Only! and those associated with Macs Only! assume no responsibility with regard to the selection, performance or use of these products.
Apple, Apple Logos, Macintosh, and Mac OS Logos are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned belong to their respective owners.
