Powertower 200 and OS X

see the XPostFacto compatibility page.

I forget it that's a 604 or 603 based system . . . with the stock processor you're limited to 10.2, but upgrade to a G3/G4 CPU and you can use up through Tiger (so far.)

dan k

I think its a 603e...any idea what the performance for 10.2 (thats Jaguar, right?) would be on this machine? And how much ram do you think I need?

EDIT
No, its a 604e. I also was reading on the xPostFacto page that the built in video won't work with OS X, so I'm going to have to find a PCI video card I guess. Is OS pretty good about supporting random video cards?

i ran 10.1 on my umax c500, its got a 240 mhz 603e with 144 mb ram. it did the job ok. but i would stick with classic mac os on it.

Thanks for the info. I think at this point I'll put os 9 on it if I do anything at all. I don't have much these days I need to keep a classic machine around for.

Which is it?

It might make a slight difference. PowerCenters are based on the 7200 motherboard whereas PowerTowers are based on the 9500 motherboard. The 9500 has pretty decent support in OS X, but I don't know how well Catalyst (7200) motherboards are supported...

Peace,
Drew

Its a PowerTower, sorry I confused that. So far as I've found there isn't an actual difference, though, where did you find that out?

I was thinking of the PowerTower Pro which uses the Tsunami board (9500). The PowerTower does indeed use the Catalyst board (7200) which is the same as the PowerCenter.

That makes me wonder a bit about PCC. For their high-end line, they had the PowerWave which was based on Tsunami, and they replaced that line with the PowerTower Catalyst boards only to go back to Tsunami with the PowerTower Pro. That's a little strange...

Peace,
Drew

A place to "find that out":

Mac Clones info

The Catalyst and the Tanzania motherboards--them's were strange days. Apple's attempts at economical. Thankfully Steve Jobs came back and cured Apple of such self-defeating, near fatal behaviors--mostly.

AFAIK, PCC never used Tanzania. That was mostly Motorola. PCC's low end was Alchemy based. Alchemy was a strange beast with its heritage back in the Quadra 630. Valkerie video kicked butt back in the day, but by the time the 6500 came it, it was handily beaten by ATI's Rage II chipset...

Catalyst wasn't a bad design, either. In fact, PCC showed that Catalyst had a lot of headroom in it's design. But Tsunami had the expansion that Catalyst didn't. So it surprises me that PCC would go back and forth between the two in their high-end line instead of extending one or the other.

Peace,
Drew