Is the Lombard a NewWorld and the Wallstreet an OldWorld then, as I think that's when the logo changed on the PowerBooks? Yes, a lot of things identify a NewWorld Mac for me, not just the Rom architecture - I tend to associate NewWorld with the whole colours/roundedness/translucency etc revolution, as well as the death of the rainbow logo and the transition from the old ports to USB/FW, though of course the PowerBooks don't fit in with that if the later G3s are NewWorld.

For some reason I also associate NewWorld with OS X, I guess because that is the other part of the "new Apple" as well as the move away from beige, although of course some of the NewWorld came with as old an OS as 8.1. I suppose I think of all NewWorlds today as running OS X - if I saw a B&W or something like that I would kind of expect it to have X on it. The Platinum interface of OS 9 also fits better with beige-cased Macs, and the rainbow logo still features, whereas OS X looks more at home on the NewWorld designs, whose cases are kind of Aqua-ey

Most of the Intel Macs are in identical cases to the older ones (except the MacBook), so they presumably use the same logos as the older models.

Perhaps this is cheating, but I tend to be convinced that a Mac is New World when the Document Mac OS ROM appears in the System Folder of OS 9 ... and, conversely, that a Mac is Old World architecture when, having got a Mac to take OS 9.2.x on board, I find OldWorld Support 1.0.1 in the startup splash screen ...

But, Siriusly, I think that Drew has hit upon a nice overt sign of the difference.

de

Technically, those Macs that have a software-based ROM, aka "ROM on RAM" (basically all of the ones that can successfully go to OpenFirmware on your monitor when you press Command-Option-O-F) are New World. Old World Macs have a hardware ROM that fits into a slot inside the computer. While even the earliest PCI Macs did have a very early version of OpenFirmware, they were not complete (on some Macs/clones, OF was viewable only through the serial port if it worked at all). Because of this, they still used the hardware ROM to boot the Mac OS.

Visually speaking, any Macintosh that has a built-in USB port on the logic board is considered a New World Mac.

Ah I see So this OldWorld Support is coming from OS9 Helper, it's not an Apple thing? I've never used OS9 Helper - it looked from their site as if it doesn't work with the 6100, though quite why it wouldn't I'm not sure, considering that 9.1 is pretty similar and works.

Yep, I'll second (and have said it for a long time) that the easiest way for a newbie to distinguish an OldWorld from NewWorld is the presence of on-board USB. Also, nothing Beige is NewWorld.

(if its a newbie) you got to tell them the difference between a PCI USB card and actually having USB on the motherboard itself.

If the person is a total idiot (no pun intended) on Macs or computers in general the person might think that a computer with a PCI USB card as having onboard USB.

cause if that person has a Beige G3 that came with a pre installed USB PCI card (from ebay or another 3rd party source) and you describe to the person the way to tell a new world Mac from a old world Mac via the USB method, they will think that the Beige G3 is a new world machine.

in combination with the USB method you can add that only new world Mac's are the ones with the colored cases.

i think it would be safe to say that all original G4 Macs are all new world. the only confusion would be with the G3 systems, For that you could say that all of the platinum/Beige colored Mac's are old world. and all colored cased G3 systems are new world.

i think the B&W was the only new world Mac that used the ADB port for a KB and mouse. so saying a new world Mac lacks that port would almost be useless to help describe a new world Mac from a old world Mac.

this is a great topic alk