Mac OS X on Umax c500...IT WORKS!!!

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gobabushka's picture
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Mac OS X on Umax c500...IT WORKS!!!

I just thought that I would let everybody know that I was able to install Mac OS X 10.1.4 on my Umax Supermac c500. I used a Mashua SCSI CD-ROM Drive to do it. (It's still doing it, when its done, i'll take a look at the model number.) I still have to get the Sonnet Crescendo G3/L2 Cache Upgrade working though. Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated!

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congrats

that's the first I've heard of OS X on an alchemy based machine. A few years back, I had jaguar running on an S900 (Tsunami based). Ran very nicely - had the Newer tech g3 275 card in it. Good times.

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does that use the same as the Powerbase?

I had OS X running on my PowerBase 200, not sure if it was an alchemy, but looking on mactracker, they are pretty close in design

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alchemy boxes

IIRC, the alchemy boxes were the 5400/5500/6360/6400/6500, PowerBase, and Umax C500/C600. The tanzania boxes are the ones that are more unknown - if only for the lack of a point - the 4400 and Motorola Starmax. Those machines took weirdo RAM that was and has always been wicked expensive, also had an insanely low RAM ceiling. (yes, i realize that it's pretty pathetic that I remember what archetecture what machine used from the mid 90's) Guess spending those wonder years of 1994-2000 reading MacUser, MacWorld, and MacAddict religously comes in handy from time to time, even if the magazines nosedived after 1998.

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well then...

I beat him by 2 years Blum 3

themike now has the powerbase, maybe he can do it himself, and upload pics, how about it mike?

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Does anybody know of how to m

Does anybody know of how to make the Crescendo G3/L2 work on OS X? I'm still waiting on a response from Sonnet.

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re: G3/L2 work on OS X?

No workie and very unlikely to ever workie, sorry.

dan k

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Powerbase and OS X

I'm currently installing OS X.3 on my Newer 260MHz G3 upgraded Powerbase and the installation seems to be going good. I tried once before with a previous version of XPostFactO with no success.

As for as the L2 G3 cards, I don't know if Sonnet would be willing to bother making OS X drivers for it. The low RAM ceiling of these clones are what really hurts, I would think.

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Yeah, it is kinda slow, but n

Yeah, it is kinda slow, but not slow enough to not use it. It actually almost works on par with os 9 with the G3 enabled.

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Re: well then...

I beat him by 2 years Blum 3

themike now has the powerbase, maybe he can do it himself, and upload pics, how about it mike?

I can try and upload some pics later.

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i never did like the 603e's

they ran like crap. The only machine that actually could use the potential of it, was the 5500. And i think that was the only machine that did not have the major bottleneck of the others.
I was so glad when the G3's came out. I mean, even the Education ones weren't crippled from the regular Power Macintosh G3's. Same way with the G3 Laptops. They didn't cripple one model from the other with weird or limited ram configs, and they didn't cripple the MLB Bus.
The 6400 and the PowerBase shared the same board chipset and design. But apple crippled the machines soo severly, that they were almost useless.

I had sooo many problems using both a Performa 6400 and the PowerBase with OS 9 BECAUSE of that bottle neck. It would frequently slow to a crawl just from a little CPU usage. The windows lagged when being moved. And MP3 barely played on them. That, and the RAM speed was limited to a slow speed, so it wouldn't take advantage of faster ram (unlike a G3 if you overclocked it) So even if you overclocked the system (which i have heard of people doing with the 6400 and the powerbase) the ram would stay the same speed.

Actually, OS X was sooo slow on it from the bus, it took about 15 minutes to get to the desktop. The only thing i liked about the PowerBase, is that the CPU mounting was a card design, and i could slap a 604ev from an 85/86/95/9600 system in it.

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Powerbase G3

http://gardens.tmanime.com/powerbase.jpg

Once I got the L2 cache enabled, things became alot smoother. Of course, no where near my B&W. I haven't really done anything else with it, as of yet.

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