In about 1997, Apple promised that all Macs made then would be
able to run Mac OS X. However, when X was released many people
were somewhat disappointed to see that it requires a G3 processor
to install.
In reality, Mac OS X doesn't require a G3 processor; it can work
on older PCI Power Macs. But is yours compatible? Currently,
OS X can be installed on a 7300,
7500 (with an upgraded processor;
it's not compatible with the 601 processor), 7600, 8500,
8600, 9500, 9600, and
several clones.
How do you do this? Other World Computing hosts the free
XPostFacto program, which lets you install OS X from
an unmodified install CD.
Before you run out to OWC and download the application, you
might want to think of a few things. First of all, do you use your
pre-G3 Mac for any important work? If so, you probably don't want
to install X on it. Second, do you have a lot of legacy
peripherals? No USB or FireWire card? Forget printing out a
document - the serial port doesn't work with older non-laser
printers.
Planned to play a CD in your Mac? Oops, it seems that some
CD-ROM drives won't play audio CDs in OS X. However, there
does appear to be a patch that may fix the problem. Still, if you
need to play an audio CD on your Mac, you may be better off
sticking to OS 9.
What about performance? We already know that OS 9.1 on a 200 MHz
604e runs at a reasonable speed. On a 132 MHz 604, it runs slightly
slower, but it is still tolerable. We also know that OS 9.1 runs
amazingly well on a 300 MHz G3. It has been found that OS X
decreases that performance dramatically.
You think you could tolerate your 200 MHz 7600 feeling about 100
MHz slower?
It's not only the processor that will slow things down. It's the
bus speed as well. Remember that these Macs run with bus speeds of
around 50 MHz. Compare that to the 100-133 MHz bus speeds we have
today.
This brings us to G3 upgrades. Even though, as I said, it's not
just the processor that's slowing performance down, a faster
processor will help compensate for the slow bus speed. A 400 MHz G3
card will not feel as fast as a 400 MHz G3 computer from Apple, but
it will make OS X feel faster.
I'd like to hear from anyone who has successfully run OS X
on a pre-G3 Mac, especially with the stock processor. I'd be
curious to know how the speed compares to that of an actual G3 or
G4 (especially in application launching times and startup time).
Perhaps I will include some sort of graph in a future article if I
get enough responses to do that with.
