OS Suggestions - Mac Quadra 800

From: Zane H. Healy <healyzh_at_aracnet.com>
Date: Mon Oct 11 00:51:24 2004

> > Scored this from the local "cleanup week", sans monitor, keyboard and
>mouse.
>> Has the DayStar Digital 100 MHz PPC upgrade board installed. Now, what do
>I
>> do with it? I have a keyboard and mouse on the way.
>>
>> I have plenty of "standard" PC VGA monitors. Will these probably work?
>What
>> OS would suit this machine the "best". I am primarily a
>Xenix/Linux/Solaris
>> man, with a smattering of Microsoft products. Which OS will be the most
>> "usefull" I know the machine has at least 48 Meg of RAM. Not sure exactly
>> until I get it connected to a monitor.
>>
>> What are the Pros and Cons of each OS?
>>
>> Thanks for any suggestions,
>> Kelly
>>
>
>I think the 800 shipped with OS 7.1 pro. Any of the os 7.X version should
>run fine on that machine, apple allows you to download OS 7.5.3 and upgrade
>it to 7.5.5 for free if you download the disk images from the apple site.
>The unit by itself can go to OS 8.1 (last for 68k macs) but with the PPC
>upgrade you can probably do 8.x (if you like slow machines).
>
>If you are real adventuresome you can go dig up a copy of Apple A/UX unix
>and run that on the 800 (without PPC upgrade).
>
>You will need a VGA to Mac video adapter to use a standard SVGA monitor on
>your Mac.

With the Daystar 100Mhz PPC Upgrade his options might very well be
limited. I believe such things of that era tended to require 3rd
party extensions. Mac OS 8.x if it will run it, is a nice choice, I
ran 8.6 for several years on my G4/450, finally upgrading to get
iTunes. With the proper software the system will be good for email
and general office apps, however, surfing on it would be painful. I
still have my PowerMac 8500/180 (180Mhz 604e PPC) and surfing on it
has been painful for years, even on my G4/450 it isn't the most fun,
though finally installing Mac OS X 10.2 and using Safari made surfing
on the G4 much better.

I'm guessing A/UX is *totally* out of the question, and that even
NetBSD or Linux wouldn't run either, but I might be wrong about the
last two.

                Zane

-- 
--
| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh_at_aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
|                                  | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
|     Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing,    |
|          PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum.         |
|                http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/               |
Received on Mon Oct 11 2004 - 00:51:24 BST

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