Ultimate OS9 Design Machine? - Macintosh Garden

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2010, July 3 - 8:31am

themacmeister

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Joined: 2009 Oct 26

Ultimate OS9 Design Machine?

I was thinking that my laptop was the ultimate OS9 design machine - it includes Adobe InDesign 2.02, Photoshop 7, Illustrator 8, Acrobat 4, MultiAd Creator 6.5, Lotsa Type1 fonts, Suitcase 9, Adobe Type Manager, and plenty of plugins for Illustrator/Photoshop.

I just realised that my 384MB RAM, 600MHz G3 would be easily beaten by an Dual-G4 running OS9, with a lot more RAM.

So my question is: What is the Ultimate OS9 Design Machine?

(I am talking stock machine - NO add-in PCI cards for ethernet/USB2.0 etc.)

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2010, July 3 - 8:43am

bertyboy

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Joined: 2009 Jun 14

Mmm, Dual 1GHz or Dual 1.25GHz MDD. Up to 2GB RAM and 4 internal hard drive bays, 2 optical drive bays. I have one and so do 1 or 2 others. Of course OS9 can only address 1.5GB of the 2GB. In laptop form, the last Titanium PBG4 was a 1GHz. Very fast for OS9.

But to be honest, if you can live with Classic under OSX the sky is the limit, I recently switched from my MDD (still got it) to a dual 2.5GHz G5, up to 8GB RAM and 2x 1TB drives. But it runs Scarab of Ra just fine - although the thieving monkey appears to be just that little bit faster.

2010, July 3 - 10:42am

Bolkonskij

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Joined: 2009 Aug 3

I agree with bertyboy regarding the MDDs. As you may remember, I bought one a couple of weeks ago and I'm still very happy with it. It's a wicked fast OS 9 machine and even runs 10.4 Tiger very well. Only downside is the legendary noise of the MDD. However, if you're doing processing intensive works, the PowerMac G4s are really great machines. Same goes for the PowerBook G4 867 Mhz / 1 Ghz models (model no. A1025) that will still boot natively into OS 9. Their only downside for me is the limitation to 1 GB RAM if I recall it correctly.

Other than that, OS 9 runs nice even on real low end Macs. Some time ago had one of those 333 Mhz iMacs with 256 MB RAM from a friend here for exchanging the hard disk (she still uses it to write letters and e-mails). While 10.4 is painfully slow on that machine, OS 9 gets the job done swiftly & nicely.

2010, July 3 - 1:51pm

bertyboy

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Joined: 2009 Jun 14

Yeah, the fan noise can be disconcerting when your working away, but remember the well-known phrase - "you're playing with the big boys now". It's not just a games machine, nor just a serious desktop Mac, it's the most powerful Mac server available at the time.
Anyway, when my PMG5 is flat out, it's fan rev up too. Never managed to get the Mac Pro to go flat out, for more than a few minutes anyway.

2010, July 4 - 12:37am

themacmeister

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Joined: 2009 Oct 26

heh @bertyboy,

I can just see you playing Scarab of Ra - Do you know the trick for getting a LOT of gold? My friend discovered this (way back on his NEW IICX) - I believe you need to go into negative values in a store(?) and when you leave the store, you have like 25,000 gold... something like that. Anyways, it's a real cop-out cheat - It was the only way you could get me to play it for more than a few minutes...

2010, July 4 - 12:39am

themacmeister

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Joined: 2009 Oct 26

Yeah, my 1.25GHz G4 eMac would certainly qualify as a candidate too, but doesn't boot OS9. It runs Leopard 10.5.8 sweetly!

2010, July 4 - 3:28pm

iBib

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Joined: 2009 Sep 15

Power Macintosh G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors)

[END OF DISCUSSION]

http://apple-history.com/?page=gallery&model=g4_mirror&sort=family&perfo...

2010, July 5 - 9:34am

themacmeister

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Joined: 2009 Oct 26

@iBib, that looks totally sweet. Can OS9 use both the processors with most software tho?

A few of these have come up at a local auction house, but both were completely stripped of RAM, HDD and Graphics Card - too expensive to rebuild!

A friend bought a 500MHz polka-dot iMac around today (slot-loading CD-RW) but with an entire electron gun (blue) broken. It was barely usable, with only a 20GB Drive, OS 10.3.9, and 512MB RAM. Nothing really worth salvaging.

2010, July 5 - 4:23pm

bertyboy

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Joined: 2009 Jun 14

No, only one CPU is usually used by OS9. But the Design apps that are listed at the start that could benefit from dual processors, particularly Photoshop 7, have optional installs that allow the app to use both processors.

It's a shame most have been gutted. In the UK, expect about £100-£120 for a basic dual 1GHz with its original 64MB video card, 80GB disk, original DVD-R SuperDrive, 512MB RAM, keyboard, mouse and original discs. Up to about £160 for the dual 1.25GHz, 2GB RAM, 2 or 3 large hard disks, etc.
Subtract £10 for missing original discs and another £10 for missing keyboard or mouse.

The reason they're gutted is because the video card can sell for £40-£50 by itself to a QuickSilver owner, RAM £20, Hard Disk £20 each, DVD-R SuperDrive £10 and £50 for the shell of the MDD.

2010, July 6 - 1:30am

#10

themacmeister

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Joined: 2009 Oct 26

I used to use an MDD for design work, and (at the time) it was the one machine in the building that had a queue of users waiting to use it. It was spectacularly good (single processor model). I have never owned one tho...