A few weeks ago, I did something crazy and shelled out 50 Euros for a G3 iMac. It was a 333Mhz G3 iMac with 96MB of RAM. It came with a copy of MacOS 9-- and that was what I bought it for. I wanted to experience first hand what OS9 was like. I did not expect I'd use the machine much. However, I was in for a rather pleasant surprise. Note: Read more on the meta blog about the new Sunday eve column!
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basilisk II or sheepshaver, your choice ;-)
http://www.gibix.net/projects/basilisk2/
http://www.gibix.net/projects/sheepshaver/
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I am quite suprised that you found Outlook Express on OS9 a very satisfying email client - not because it isn't good, but because I'm pretty sure that one of the OS9 apps that Mac users miss the most is the legendary Claris Emailer. I still consider it the best and most elegant email client ever, although I ahve to admit that it is fading in my memory. 
In any case try to find a copy and make sure you give it a go!
I still enjoy working in OS 9 just to remind me how different it was from everything else. I just wished for memory protection...
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I had tried much the same thing, except mine had a ton of ram added to it (512 I think). Ran it for a while, but the dog slowness of the thing, particularly if you try to do more than one thing at a time, got to be a rather much. Plus, I found it would just lock up on a number of occasions. I ended up not long ago putting debian on it instead, and while not lightning fast by any means, is much more usable.
I realize it's an old system of course, but I don't recall windows 98 on my old k6 being that slow...
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I set up Mac OS X 10.3.9 Panther on my old iMac G3 233 160MB ram and gave it to my Dad. This baby just keeps on getting better, each release of Mac OS X makes this thing prettier.
Although it is a bit slow when running multiple apps but just for simple browsing and email it is perfect. There are no viruses or spyware so my dad has no complaints.
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BBEdit
Carracho
DiskWarrior®
PlusOptimizer™
DivX Doctor II
DragThing
Eudora
File Buddy™
Goliath
Hard Disk Toolkit™
iCab
icWord
iTunes
JustOgg
mAC3dec
MacMPEG2Decoder
Mactracker
MT-NewsWatcher
NetFinder
SoundApp PPC
Toast Titanium
WhatRoute(Classic)
Windows Media Player 7
xRes™ 2.0 S.E.
yEnc TZ Classic
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I am sold on OS X. I could not stand OS 9 one bit. Sure it did have some neat things, such as cool system icons (and damn easy to use custom ones), Extensions Manager, and easy to install and uninstall apps.
But OS 9, on all machines I have tried it on (quite a few), was so keen on crashing with the fatal bomb (equivalent ot Blue Screen of Death, i.e. total crash) with no need at all of any user input. You could boot the computer, leave it still for ten minutes and still have the bomb just because. If one app crashed, you had 95% of possibilities of it taking the system down with it, and the "Force quit" dialog was a complete joke, and only worked 1% of the times.
And what about memory management. What an utter crap! Say you had 512MB of RAM, 90% of it unused. You had to tell the f--king apps how much they were allowed to use, and so you found yourself many times with loads of unused RAM, and the stupid apps telling you they did not have enough of it (because their default behaviour did not allowed them to take more). In order to be able to give them more you had to quit the app!
Take the opposite case: you tell one app to be able to use 400 MB of RAM, although it is only using 30. The rest of the system cannot access all that wasted RAM. The swap file's size was fixed, wether you had plenty of hdd space or not, and if you wanted to change the fixed size (which you wanted to when your apps started to complain about not having enough RAM), you had to reboot; probably not the best moment to do so. Calling that "memory *management*" was a bad joke.
OS 9, although damn pretty and fast, was a complete pile of shit in a supposed-to-be productive environment, IMHO.
Edited 2006-02-12 22:59
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And I tried to tell people this back in the OS 9 days, but the Mac zealots screamed that OS 9 was more stable and used memory better than any version of Windows anyway.
Ahh, the about face. They were saying the same thing about PPC vs. x86 up until recently as well. :-)
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Well no need to be a zealot to ignore contradiction: Windows or Linux users tend to do it also.
I remember having seen (in the Linux word but I expect Windows to be the same):
- hey you don't have feature XXX
- who cares? Feature XXX is stupid, etc.
And some times later, everyone is "Hey someone created feature XXX, cool!"
Windows is the same about security for example: Windows is only insecure because it has the highest number of users.
Ignoring that they are basically forced to run with admin rights.. (I've had to use restricted rights and it's painful)
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In the days of OS 9 I GREATLY preferred it to Win2000, which I was using at work. But OSX is so far beyond "Classic" I've never looked back. I even have a certain feeling of "freshness" because my fairly new "Mini" is Classic-free. The only thing I don't like about OS X is that certain aspects of the UI are more Windows-like. Specifically, Finder windows these days are too busy, with al that useless clutter up the left side.
By the way: I thought 9 was plenty stable if your were VERY careful about only using well-behaved apps. I agree that the multi-tasking capability was fairly limited.
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There's one feature that iTunes on OS 9 gets from the OS that OS X doesn't provide for newer iTunes: It knows disks by names.
Scenario:
I burn my mp3 collection to a series of CDs/DVDs.
Then I add every disc to my iTunes collection, one by one, without copying it to the iTunes library (there's an option in the prefs).
Then I double-click a random file in the iTunes Library.
Result on OS 9:
iTunes asks me to insert the disc that contains the mp3 I selected, telling me the name of the disc.
Result on OS X:
iTunes tells me that it couldn't find the file and asks me if it should remove it from the library.
Reason:
OS 9 knows what a disc is, that it's not a folder, knows that discs can be removed from the computer, and remembers them by name.
OS X, being everything-is-a -file-even-if-it-isn't-UNIX has no idea whether the file iTunes asks for was in a folder, on a CD, a network drive or a keyboard (it would even accept /dev/null).
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Those old G3 iMacs are nice, but rather than OS9, try a nice new modern linux install. Ubuntu or Fedora Core run rather nice on old G3 iMacs. I use FC4 on mine. You'll find yourself happier with the selection of available software, and you have all the modern features OS9 lacks.
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Those old G3 iMacs are nice, but rather than OS9, try a nice new modern linux install. Ubuntu or Fedora Core run rather nice on old G3 iMacs. I use FC4 on mine. You'll find yourself happier with the selection of available software, and you have all the modern features OS9 lacks.
Yeah sure, run a modern Linux distribution on a 333Mhz G3 with 96MB of RAM... And all the crap that comes with managing a Linux install on anything else than an x86 machine.
Linux ain't the answer for everything-- esp. since there is no problem to solve in the first place. Did you read the column? This machine is mostly used as an emailer, I do not NEED 'modern' stuff.
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I'm not one to push Linux on anyone who doesn't want it, however in his defense I will say that you were asking around for a way to get Firefox.. This is one way...
That said I'm happy to read how smooth your experience with MacOS 9 has been. It gives me hope that I'll still be able to use the older hardware with its recommended OS for my parents once their Win98SE install dies again. Although to be honest I may just spring for something more recent if the price is right...
--bornagainpenguin (who has been eyeing the Xandros and Linspire as well as the Ubuntu Linux OSes as possible replacements on my parent's box, with the downside being the need to ensure their modem works with Linux..)
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I run linux on a 250mhz G3. If you use a lean window manager it runs much better than OS9. Like 'elmimmo' said, the bomb problem always sucked -- it just wasn't a stable operating system. Managing linux on something other than an x86 machine is simple, I don't see a problem. This way you also get recent packages. He could've used gaim or amsn, any number of e-mail clients, and firefox without a problem. You may not 'need' modern stuff, but it sure is nicer, IMO.
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Hi Thom,
I've been installing Xubuntu on old iMacs, and I'd definitely characterize it as a "pleasant surprise." Xubuntu is a version of Ubuntu that uses the XFCE desktop-- like a fast version of GNOME with fewer features. We've been running Xubuntu next to OS 9 in our computer lab, and Xubuntu has come out the winner.
I notice that you say you don't need modern stuff. I think that's reasonable, but I also haven't found a browser for OS 9 that doesn't crash hard on an hourly basis. The best I've found is Netscape 7.0, and that locks hard on Gmail is less than 30 seconds.
Anyway, enjoy the OS 9.
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I don't think that he was neccesarily responding to your "problem" (or lack thereof), but saying that an old iMac might be better used with linux, than OS9. Sure OS 9 seems nice through the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia, but see the post on memory management. Some parts of OS 9 truly sucked.
I am typing this on an iMac G3 400 Mhz (admittedly with 350 mb RAM) running Ubuntu Breezy. It is really nice, sure it's too slow for a few things and has no 3d acceleration. But for browsing/email/word processing/music, it's a great little machine.
So I think your response was possibly a little harsh seeing as I think the original poster was just trying to give some good advice.
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I run GNU/Linux on much older machines. Once I helped to set it up on a kitchen-cooler-sized Apple Network Server. But rather than flaming about the operating system, I'd like to point out that you can put WindowMaker/GNUstep on it and feel like at a NeXT again :-)
No modern software, ok, but if you want an emailer, I'd expect you to want a Bayesian spam filter and security updates for your program, too.
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No modern software, ok, but if you want an emailer, I'd expect you to want a Bayesian spam filter and security updates for your program, too.
As if someone will go through the trouble of creating a virus or something similar to infect my OS9 machine. And my spam is all filtered at my ISP's, using about 25 different filters. They are nicely tagged with a {SPAM!} prefix and redirected on all my machines to /dev/null. Metaphoricaly speaking.
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I agree with Thom on this one, and also more generally.
When it comes to Linux, particularly non-x86, you need to have a pretty fast, RAM-supplied machine, because there's so much stuff that has to be built (or rebuilt), not to mention needing to play around with lots of different versions of various packages to get things working. Much as I like Linux, rebuilding X on 600MHZ PowerBook is just no fun at all, especially once the fan kicks in. And all that just so that I don't get screen corruption each time I exit X.
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When it comes to Linux, particularly non-x86, you need to have a pretty fast, RAM-supplied machine, because there's so much stuff that has to be built (or rebuilt), not to mention needing to play around with lots of different versions of various packages to get things working.
Incorrect. Many linux distros don't do any building at all. Both Fedora Core and Ubuntu don't do any building - you just install from binary repositories. These same repositories make it considerably easier to install whatever you need to run.
I run a plain FULL install of Fedora Core 4 using the Gnome DE on a 128MB 450MHz iMac G3. It runs at a speed similar to OS 9.2, and faster than OS X 10.3.9 (also installed in a separate partition on the same machine).
I'm not saying everyone should be running linux on older iMacs, but it you need newer software like the latest Firefox or Thunderbird or many other packages, don't be scared to try linux. It might just surprise you.
By the way, OS 9.0.4 was the last version of MacOS Classic that I'd reccomend. Changes were made to later versions to allow them to run inside of OSX which made them run slower. 8.6 was the fastest version of Classic OS. If you REALLY need the best speed from your old PowerMac/iMac, try to get 8.6.
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What's even MORE fun is getting OS X to run on oldworld Macs
(I got a Powermac 7600/120)
Although with just 2.5 GB allotted to it, it can be a bit painfull, since it doesn't even want to update itself.
Maybe one day I should write an article about multibooting Macs..
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I was one of the guys chanting "Emperor's new clothes" when OSX first came out (I'd doing it louder about XCode / x86 nowadays, but I've pretty much stopped developing for Mac anyway.) I moved fulltime to OSX when it first became usable (10.2.8) and I do enjoy using it, but more for the software available (particularly unix utilities; I don't use any IM, and iLife very rarely) than the advertised reasons.
I have Windows at work Linux at home: OSX is overwhelmingly better in pretty much every area for daily use. I really can't say there's any way in which I prefer it to OS9, though:
- It took a dual G5 to finally match the speed (in most areas) of an 800Mhz Powerbook running OS9;
- I generally still prefer the OS9 interface, especially the Finder, and most of the few good OSX changes can be added to OS9 with system extensions (a fair number of which I used to write);
- I've never had a problem with OS9 stability: e.g., writing software on OS9 means more reboots, but CodeWarrior's debugger is so much slower on OSX that I found I could work faster overall on an OS9 machine. I always used to do as much Carbon development as possible on OS9 and then test on OSX for that reason.
OSX is not just a new OS: it's a completely new attitude at Apple. It's good for stockholders (I am one) but the fun aspect is just not there any more. The machine I used to love and evangelize is now the one I prefer to use for practical reasons, made by a company I don't really feel good about. Other than product quality (which I willingly pay extra for) why are they better than Dell other than not being stuck with Windows?
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I have an old G3 mac I use it on too.
I found OS 9 to be VERY stable if you simply turn off virtual memory. Of course some apps require it, but I just always avoided those ;-) then with VM off and a buttload of real memory, even multitasking ain't that bad (and it boots a lot quicker).
Hell, if it had a more modern browser and could use a newer version of Quicktime, I'd use it A LOT more.
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Thom, why not run an IMAP mailserver (courier, whatever) on one of your machines, do all your filtering with procmail, then just use your favourite mail client's IMAP mode? That way you don't have to keep re-setting everything up every time you use a different machine for email. My desktop fetches my email from various accounts, filters it through procmail, then servers it out via courier-imap and the squirrelmail webmail system - that way I can access my nicely filtered email with a full mail client from any machine in the house, and via a simple web interface from anything with an internet connection and a web browser.
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2005-07-06
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Alot of old machines out there can do pretty good job if we dedicate it to limited jobs (1 or 2). You can make such machines for internet browsing, or documents reading or folder sharing or other simple jobs. So don't trash such machines, and use it to the last drop.
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2005-07-06
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I liked the OS9 interface, and I liked it even more in Rhapsody, especially when the added tear-off menus - an oft-used menu item which had no command-key equivalent, was just a click away. OS X Cocoa menu objects are just Carbon front-ends now (used because of other more robust features), and I doubt we will ever see them again. (here's a good screenshot: http://graphics.stepwise.com/StepwiseGraphics/DR2SneakPeek/admin.jp... )
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Kudos for the screenshot. Beautiful stuff. Really wish NeXTSTEP/OpenSTEP survived as OS X in that form.
Ah well.
I remember OS 8 and 9 being quite zippy on the old 333mhz machines (someone above mentioned they remembered it being slow) and rarely had crashes. But I used it mostly for surfing and email only. I remember my bondi blue iMac fondly. We still have a "snow" iMac. My daughter (2 yr old) uses it. It is running OS X 10.4 very nicely, or at least nicely enough for her.
My wife and I have iMac G5's, and my son is the black sheep of the family with an IBM NetVista. My wife wants me to get him a mac as well because of the "child mode" accounts for kids in OS X. You have very good control over what apps they can see, and how they access them. I am not sure yet, he seems to be doing well enough with GNOME/Edubuntu. But it could be just the excuse I was looking for to pick up a core duo.
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one of my all time favorite OSes..
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Mac OS X is a great OS, but OS 9 was very fast on limited hardware and in a lot of ways the UI was more refined and elegant than anything around today. It's just a shame that the underlying OS was so primitive and unreliable. I'd have been very happy with classic Mac OS if they could have made it more stable and capable of better multitasking, but I can understand why switching to a UNIX based OS with a new UI was the best option for Apple at the time.
I think older computers like that are capable of a lot more than people give them credit for today. Don't forget that people were doing high end professional DTP and graphics even on the old 68K Macs that are far, far slower than a G3. With mature software (i.e. not beta tests of web browsers, or bug ridden games and multimedia apps) it was quite stable. I don't remember many crashes when running mature apps like Photoshop and QuarkExpress on Mac OS 8/9, and I found 604/G3 harware perfectly usable for very complex work.
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Cute story, but I don't know how he's web browsing happily. IE for OS 9 can't render anything now without freezing the machine for seconds at a time. Netscape Communicator 4.8 is also unstable with rendering problems. The now 3-year old Mozilla build renders correctly, but unexpectadly quits every 5 minutes. Not to mention all these browsers take 2 minutes to render a page, if it does. Good use for e-mail though, I guess.
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I think there were some excellent Mozilla builds for 9, if I remember correctly. Stable and fast.
Fast? Mozilla 1.2.1, the last build for OS 9 was a mandatory to have app, just because the next browser any decent at rendering web pages was Internet Explorer (which was heaven at that compared to its main competitor, Netscape 4, which should have never existed).
However, no one in their right mind would choose Mozilla over IE on their daily browsing basis. IE was fast, and considering the alternatives, quite standards compliant. Mozilla beat it on the latter, but crawled like shit compared to whatever other OS 9 app you can think of.
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That must be a typo. Mozilla 1.3.1, AFAIK, did not exist (publicly at least) for Mac OS 9.
Slow is a subjective term. However you put it, though, IE flied compared to Mozilla 1.2.1, the last build I knew for OS9, and considering the alternatives by the time, the former was a fairly good browser. If you got used to its speed, switching to Mozilla was simply unbearable (note: wether or not its rendering speed was faster than IE's did not really matter if you did not have a powerful enough machine for Mozilla, being the resource hog it was, to feel at ease, and an iMac G3 333MHz with 96 MB of RAM surely was not).
BTW, I am not sure that yours is a reply to my message. I did not state that Mozilla crashed (I could not know, since, as I said, could not stand it feeling like a resource hog and did not use it very often).
Edited 2006-02-15 20:47
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2006-02-11
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I bought a beige G3 desktop on eBay last year and upgraded it to 512MB of RAM and a G4 processor. I'm running OS 9.2.2 and it's very fast in my opinion. It has the personality card installed with all the audio/video inputs and outputs so I'm using it as an entertainment center. I can play DVD's and music but more importantly emulators for all my favorite old consoles like the NES. They are still nice little machines and I much prefer the classic Mac OS interface to the candy-a** OSX interface.
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I miss the simplicity of it. It seemed that you could fully understand your directory tree and the files in it and that you could randomly choose any file from your filesystem and you would know exactly what it was for. As a matter of fact, the directory tree was so simple that spatial browsing made perfect sense, since you weren't really nesting more than three levels deep. I miss that.
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I haven't tried it (don't have an Intel Mac nor any personal interest in running Classic), but this may be useful for people interested in OS 9:
http://www.gibix.net/dokuwiki/en:projects:sheepshaver
Edited 2006-02-13 04:24
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2006-02-05
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I can understand that a lot of people think "back to the old days" and remember OS9 with a smile for the sake of nostalgy.
On the other hand I think OS X is much much better, more stable and easier to use in every respect. I would never recommend using OS9 to anyone, either a new switcher or a mac user.
OS9 is last century, it's like recommending Win 95. Mac OS X runs fine on any iMac G3 with more than 256 MB RAM. OS 9 is dead, non-supported and NOT recommendible for anything other than OS freaks.