Mac OS vintage (was: Re: Sun E450 server officially vintage)

[Mark Tapley]

At 15:24 -0600 1/3/07, Zane wrote:
>Consider this, it's been nearly 10 years since a Mac containing a 68000 CPU
>was even able to run the current version of the operating system.  I forget
>if support was dropped with System 7.6, or Mac OS 8.0.
>
>		Zane

	To elaborate on what Cameron said:

	Last OS *my* 68000 Mac Plus has run is MacOS 7.1. MacTracker 
claims 7.5.5, I can't dispute that as I haven't tried it but I expect 
it might not do much good (no RAM left for applications). Same is 
claimed for the Mac SE and Classic and PowerBook 100. MacTracker 
doesn't report the Outbounds (Jeff?) but since (I think) they used 
motherboards from the above systems, I would be surprised if they ran 
later versions. I'm not aware of any later 68000 Macs (or indeed, any 
others excepting the 128k/512k/fat Mac series, none of which went to 
OS 7.x).

	If the question was whether 680x0 processors support OS 8, 
the answer to that should be yes. Quadra 950 is claimed to run MacOS 
8.1, as is PowerBook 540/c and others, again per MacTracker (which is 
a reasonably useful resource for these machines).

	The Mac OS category in the same program says the same thing, 
giving requirements as follows:

7.1	68000 or later, 2 MB RAM, 4 MB hard drive
7.5	68000 or later, 4 MB RAM, 21 MB hard drive
7.6	32-bit clean 68030 or later, 8 MB RAM, 40-120 MB hard drive
8.0/1	68040 or later, 12 MB RAM, 195 MB hard drive
8.5	PPC, 16 MB RAM, 150-250 MB hard drive
8.6	PPC, 24 MB RAM, 190-250 MB hard drive

	Wow. Looking back, it's amazing how fast requirements shot 
up. I'm really glad I sort of sat out that period as far as buying 
computers. Our main home system was a Mac Plus until we leapfrogged 
to a Powerbook 3400 (which is still our current system). Nice to go 
from on-topic to brand-new machines - gives us a while to save up our 
computer-buying budget.

FWIW, hit http://www.mactracker.ca/  if you want to grab the 
(freeware) program I'm looking at. Gotta love these guys, there's a 
version which runs on MacOS 8.5 still available, as well as one for 
(spit) Windows and (grin) *iPod*. Not affiliated.
-- 
                            Mark Tapley, Dwarf Engineer
                        (I haven't cleared my neighborhood)
                  210-379-4635 Dwarf Phone, 210-522-6025 Office Phone