First Experiences with OS 8? | PowerPC Macintosh Liberation Army

#1 Tue May 8, 2007 10:30 pm First Experiences with OS 8?

What was your first experience with OS 8?

Mine was when I was in high school. OS 8 had just come out, and I was responsible for installing it on a bunch of Macs from 5200s to 5500s. I didn't get my own copy of OS 8 until I bought a PowerMac G3 for college.

My fonder memories, though, were not of OS 8 itself but of all the promotional materials that came out about the same time. I had the Mac OS 8 Tour CD that was promoted in MacWorld magazine. I had tracked down a HyperStudio demonstration of the OS 8 multi-tasking Finder. There were bumper stickers proclaiming "I brake for 8", stickers showing that OS 8 was internet ready, etc. Heck, there were even OS 8 logo temporary tattoos! I never wore one myself, but I'm sure one of you folks did (if you'll admit it!).

So, what was your first experience like with OS 8? Was 8.0 the current OS at the time? Did you try an 8 beta? Did you come to OS 8 by way of OS 9?

Please share!
Peace,
Drew

Power to the PowerPC!

#2 Wed May 9, 2007 6:26 am

I haven't had a lot of experience with 8 and have never used it on a Mac of my own, but the first time I saw it was the first time that I had go with one of the Beige G3 systems (one of which is now mine) that they had where my dad works - this must have been quite soon after they'd got them, and I seem to remember thinking that the Platinum interface and the new icons were pretty cool, as before that I'd only seen OS7 and it was quite a big change! It was probably the first time I'd seen LCD monitors too, so compared with the Macs (and other computers) I'd seen before, these ones just felt so, well, cutting-edge! Not that I knew much about computers then; we only got our first PC at home that year (which was nothing compared with those Macs, but then one of those G3/Studio Display setups would have cost about 4 times as much as that Win95 system cost!)

Main system: custom C2D 2.66GHz tower/4GB RAM/2600XT 512 MB/500GB HD/XP Pro x86+Vista Business x64
Main Mac: Beige G3 minitower (Sonnet G4 500MHz/640 MB DVD/USB/Radeon 32 MB/OS 9.2.2+10.4.11)

#3 Wed May 9, 2007 11:02 am

I first saw it on a friend's PowerMac 7100, tabbed finder windows were great, where are they now? (here for $15.95, but that wasn't my point).

I didn't get it myself until the iMac, that came with 8.5. The new interface looked so modern, however now I think I prefer the way System 7 looked.

So this is how PowerPC dies... with thunderous applause

#4 Tue Feb 2, 2010 9:45 pm

*Digs up old thread*

My first experience with OS 8 was when my family picked up a used 7500 that came with it installed. Later we picked up a copy of it so we could reinstall it.

I used it for years on a $200 8500 I bought (in 1998) until eventually turning to OS 9 for some games and programs.

Now it is on my Powerbook 1400c and there it will stay

#5 Tue Feb 2, 2010 11:36 pm

My 9500 has 8.6 and my 8600 has 8.5. I haven't used 8.0/8.1 yet but I do have some machines running 7.5-7.6.1 that can handle them without choking like they would with 8.5 or higher and I'd like to see just what I'm missing out on with them. 8.0/8.1 are only a tad heavier than 7.6.1 and introduce a lot of new technologies and more PPC native code so I think the tradeoff is worth it.

#6 Wed Feb 3, 2010 1:19 am

I plan to try 8.6 on my 5300cs just for fun. I found a cheap source (68kmla Smile

) of a 48MB RAM card. I plan to play with Classilla and wireless on it just for S&Gs

#7 Wed Feb 3, 2010 12:29 pm

Classilla will be pretty tight in 48MB of physical RAM - I'm not sure you could get it to fit without gutting its memory partition. You might want to run it with virtual memory on first.

#8 Wed Feb 3, 2010 12:50 pm

The 5300cs does have either 8 or 16 MB of memory on the motherboard, so he would have a total of either 56 or 64 MB to work with. I think 64 MB would be OK without any other apps running. I used to run the old Mozilla 1.2 as my main browser on the 7300 and it only had something like a single 128 MB stick.

Stop being so Complicated. Take a RISC.

http://www.adoptamac.com

#9 Wed Feb 3, 2010 8:54 pm

The 5300cs has a total of 64MB of ram with the 48MB card. Since it runs very well on my 1400c with 64MB of ram, I thought it would be interesting to try it on the cacheless 5300cs, and see what the difference is.

#10 Thu Feb 4, 2010 11:34 pm

Just as an on-topic remembrance, I remember when 8 came out and being majorly impressed. At the time I had a very sour taste in my mouth from 7.5.2, and 7.6 wasn't doing a lot to allay my disgust (even though a pyramid of dancing pigs on Vaseline was more stable than 7.5.2). OS 8 did a lot to restore my interest in Macs, and faith in Apple.

64MB should be just enough. I'd strongly consider RAM Doubler or Virtual Memory, though.