I'm purdy excited over here.. this old Mac is the newest Mac I've ever had. I had a 25MHz IIci and 20MHz IIsi <-- I think those were it. Mac OS 7.xish was on them 😀

It lives..

Getting some random freezes, stalls on reboot -- then I hear the hard drive spin up and it boots. So I think the drive is failing. Maybe the second one can replace it OK.

I wouldn't necessarily point to a bad drive just yet... Mac OS can be a bit finicky to get working smoothly.

The stalling on reboot may just be the memory test... under the Apple Menu ->Control Panels, find the 'Memory' option and hold down the command and option keys when you click it. That'll open the memory control panel with a hidden option that'll let you disable the startup memory test. Try that and see if it speeds up the boot process. Also, while you're in that control panel, go ahead and disable virtual memory if it's turned on.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

I wouldn't necessarily point to a bad drive just yet... Mac OS can be a bit finicky to get working smoothly.

The stalling on reboot may just be the memory test... under the Apple Menu ->Control Panels, find the 'Memory' option and hold down the command and option keys when you click it. That'll open the memory control panel with a hidden option that'll let you disable the startup memory test. Try that and see if it speeds up the boot process. Also, while you're in that control panel, go ahead and disable virtual memory if it's turned on.

It locked up on me too when I was under the HDD part of System Profiler twice. I'm currently installing on the other drive, but it would be cool if they both worked fine.

The drive was not spinning after the freezes.. It eventually would spin up and everything worked normally.

OK after the other drive crashed.. I changed both settings you mentioned and it seems much more stable. Going to try on the original drive I was using now..

Going to test a little longer.. but that appears to have cured the instability issues I was having. Thank you so much for your expertise!! Any other tips you suggest?

Also I was thinking of dual-booting with Ubuntu or some other Linux distro. Do you have any experience with this.. maybe suggestion of a good compatible distro for my hardware.. thanks.

Linux is truly awful on old-world Macs. Really, really bad. Don't even bother.

I guess first things first, is to get the thing updated. There were a fair number of bugs and performance issues fixed in 9.1 and 9.2, so that will iron out some more of the little problems you may encounter. I guess probably the easiest route would be to collect the files you need and burn them to a CD from your PC. You will need: this, this, this, this, and, to make things a bit easier in the future, this. You'll also need Stuffit Expander, but that should already be included somewhere with OS9, either in the Applications folder or the Utilities, assuming you didn't use a modified install disc or something.

All those things are pretty straightforward, so I don't think you'll have too much trouble getting 'em installed.

Thanks for all the really good info.. for some reason OS Helper is freezing the system on me, not sure what I'm doing wrong

I updated to 9.1 w/o much hassle.. I did have to skip 2 files for some reason.. one was a help.bin file I think

Well, 9.1 should be fine for now... 9.2 is a bit more stable, and there's some newer software that requires it too, but there's nothing that's really a showstopper for a stock PM 8600.

I'll do a bit of looking into OS9 Helper... now that you mention it, I may have had a similar problem on one of my machines, but I'll have to see if I can figure out what I did about it.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

Well, 9.1 should be fine for now... 9.2 is a bit more stable, and there's some newer software that requires it too, but there's nothing that's really a showstopper for a stock PM 8600.

I'll do a bit of looking into OS9 Helper... now that you mention it, I may have had a similar problem on one of my machines, but I'll have to see if I can figure out what I did about it.

Thanks again.. I really appreciate all your help.

I just found out this beast can take 8 x 128MB RAM heh!

Still can't find much detail on the SCSI interface.. wondering if 7200RPM would even register with the current chipset/cables if I got an adapter... or if I must do a PCI SCSI interface. I was thinking all SCSI was 7200RPM minimum, but can't remember.

simbin wrote:

Also I was thinking of dual-booting with Ubuntu or some other Linux distro. Do you have any experience with this.. maybe suggestion of a good compatible distro for my hardware.. thanks.

I was going to suggest BeOS but the 8600/300 is probably not compatible...

I just found out this beast can take 8 x 128MB RAM heh!

If you can find eight 128MB buffered 5V EDO DIMMs, then yes it can. Those are not particularly easy to come by, though.

The RPM of a hard drive has nothing to do with compatibility. You can stick a brand new 15K RPM Ultra320 drive into that machine with an adapter, and it'll work. It'll still be slow as balls since the onboard SCSI is only 10MB/sec, but it'll work.

And SCSI does not a imply a minimum of 7200RPM. The drives run a range depending on their age and market segment, same as IDE drives do, although the fastest SCSI drives are faster than any ATA drive. They can be anywhere from 3000RPM for the really old ones, up to 15000 for newer high-end ones. Most of the drives that came in the PowerMacs were 5400RPM, I believe, which was pretty much standard for the mid-late '90s.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

You can stick a brand new 15K RPM Ultra320 drive into that machine with an adapter, and it'll work. It'll still be slow as balls since the onboard SCSI is only 10MB/sec, but it'll work.

That's what I was wondering.. if the onboard SCSI would cause a bottleneck.

Speaking of drives.. I think one of them did finally croak on me. I'm trying a copy of 9.1 I found online.. in case there was a problem with my 9.0 disc. Not sure if that will make any difference with loading the updates or not.

It's a lot quieter with that other drive not creating a worm hole!! That thing was crazy loud..

The advantage of Mac OS 9.1 is MMU, and it seems to be more stable than 9.0.4. Mac OS 8.6 is also an excelent choice, it's rock stable.

filipetolhuizen wrote:

The advantage of Mac OS 9.1 is MMU, and it seems to be more stable than 9.0.4. Mac OS 8.6 is also an excelent choice, it's rock stable.

I'm trying to get to 9.2.2 to install ATI drivers.. The OS Helper isn't freezing now that I got a new 9.1 ISO.. must've been a problem with my disc.

It acts like it's installing the 9.2.1 update but then says it's incompatible.. maybe I need a US update and not an International one.. looking to see what I can find.

I don't know if I keep getting bad files or what. Apple has decided to not support legacy hardware anymore, so I have to resort to third-party sites.

My last attempt got me halfway thru installing 9.2.1 update when the computer says "It's not my fault!" before reading a lengthy error message in Hal 9000s' wife's voice.

I got some sort of Shrinkwrap error uncompressing. I've only burnt 5 discs of updates lulz.

....
tired going to try again tomorrow.. maybe my other drive has errors too?

You'll only be able to update to 9.2 if you use a non-official update since Mac OS 9.2.x requires a G3 to install.

Alright, to answer some questions:

IDE Cards: They don't work right on these machines. For some reason the 50Mhz system bus timing causes problems on the PCI bus with IDE cards, at least the ACARD ones. You will get broken/studdering audio and video playback on any connected drive. The onboard 10MB SCSI bus or PCI SCSI cards do NOT have this issue. I have no experience with the Sonnet PCI cards to know if they have the same bug. More info here: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/stuttering_aud … _audio_fix.html

RAM: This machine can take up to 1GB of 5V EDO or FPM DIMMS, it is NOT 3.3v SDRAM.

Running BeOS: You must kickstart BeOS using MacOS 8.5, anything newer will NOT work thanks to Apple. Otherwise it is 100% compatible with this machine. I have run it on my 8600.

Running MacOS X: You must upgrade to a G3/G4 CPU card to run anything newer then 10.2. XPostFacto fully supports this machine for installing up to 10.4. It is highly recommended to install OS X first before upgrading 9.1 to 9.2.2. At least it used to be the case, I don't know if the cache detection problems in XPostFacto with 3rd party accelerators in 9.2.x was ever fixed.

Running MacOS 9.2.2: You must install MacOS 9.1 from an official installation CD. Retail copies of 9.1 exist and were including with the original shipment of MacOS X 10.0. After that you must use the downloadable MacOS 9.2.1 and 9.2.2 installers from Apple with OS9Helper. Detailed instructions are included with OS9Helper. Do not attempt to use a retail MacOS 9.2.1 CD, it will not work!

I finally managed to get 9.2.2 installed, but not w/o errors and freezes along the way. I'm not sure, but I suspect the 15 yr old drives are bad, SCSI controller or PSU. I got a warning a couple times about the drive having errors in Mac OS.

If I can find a cheap 50 -> 68 pin converter I may try that first, since I have a couple drives sitting here already.

If that fixes the problems I'm having and I can get it running stable, I'd like to upgrade the video to a Radeon 7000. Maybe even up the RAM some.

I wasn't able to find much on converting to a G3. If it's an expensive upgrade.. I'd probably just stick with a stock build.