“Not everyone uses modern Macs. I spent a day with a friend who still runs 1997 and 1999 Macs 20 years on,” Simon Royal writes for Low End Mac.
“I am not as low end as I used to be and it has been a long time since I had any major dealings with Mac OS9 and the computers of that era. However, a friend still runs 20 year old machines for connecting to older serial and SCSI peripherals or an almost daily basis,” Royal writes. “Keeping these machines running is no easy task at times and not many people still have knowledge of such an age – so I am on hand for support when something goes wrong. I have been on the end of the phone numerous times, but this week got to meet them face-to-face.”
• PowerMac 8600 ‘Kansas’ – 250Mhz with 448MB RAM, running OS 9.04 with a third party USB/firewire card installed
• PowerMac G4 ‘Sawtooth’ – 450Mhz with 1.25GB RAM running OS 9.1 and an Adaptec SCSI card installed
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Mac OS 9.2.2 was a joy to work with and wonderful to look at, too!
And, yes, that “448MB RAM” is not a typo. Here’s a shot of a Mac packed to the gills with 672 MB RAM:
I disagree on the MDN take.
When you had worked with NeXTSTEP in the early 90s MAC OS 9 neither was a joy to work with nor was it wonderful to look at.
Yeah, but how many of us could afford one 🙂
I have seen one and played with it during visits to our customer’s site, but OS9 on a daily basis.
Wrong. NextStep may have been powerful but it was a kludgy mess of an interface. All the creative professionals doing amazing work with Mac OS 9 back in the 90s were doing so completely joyfully. Even with occasional crashes.
Used most of the Macs since the 512K Mac and I got great use of them for my work and I never thought I was getting something with a “bad” user interface.
All I cared about from the mid 80s on was running my CAD programs efficiently.
However, to think of making old Macs continue to run today makes me shudder. I simply could not do productive work on the Mac, not even counting the lack of running Parallels or Boot Camp.
I still have a G3 desktop Mac that I fire up and run from time-to-time. It still runs fine, and most amazing is that I have a web browser that still kind of works. Can’t connect to any devices, it does not even have a USB port. Still keep it to see how long it will live.
Love MacOS 9.2.2
Started on 6.0.8 and still have a PowerBook 3400c that works. I never do anything with it. Loved that machine. Used it when I was part owner of a VAR. Miss those days.
Fortunately everything on Macs that old can be much better repaired and replaced. I shudder to think of how many Macs released in the last few years will be working in another 20…
I had a 8600 and then a G4 powermac…
Bring back Aaron! (but this time for OS X)