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Installing OSX on an old 8600?

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macrumors 6502
Original poster
I received an old PowerMac 8600 because it wasnt being used anymore.
It works, I've fired it up in OS9 but it's too unstable for my taste. I made the OS lock up over 4 times in a matter of hours.
I've thought about installing OSX on it, but I dont know if it's even possible or which version would be best to install on it.

The system has a Radeon 7000 Video Card and 512MB RAM.

Any ideas? 😀
 
I know it is not officially supported by Apple for Panther, which requires built-in USB. I'm not sure about previous OS X. What version of OS 9 is on it? The most current version is 9.2.2, and if you don't have that you probably need to upgrade it.

Even if you could get OS X to run on it, it would be slower than my 90 year old grandma.
 
there's a hack for this, something you do to the installer script or something, to get X onto unsupported Macs. i can't think of the name, and i'm not nice enough to go look it up. Google it. Don't know if it supports panther tho, last i knew it was jag-- then again, this was a while ago.

paul
 
dukemeiser said:
I know it is not officially supported by Apple for Panther, which requires built-in USB. I'm not sure about previous OS X. What version of OS 9 is on it? The most current version is 9.2.2, and if you don't have that you probably need to upgrade it.

Even if you could get OS X to run on it, it would be slower than my 90 year old grandma.
Click to expand...
The most recent version of MacOS 9 that the PowerMac 8600 supports is MacOS 9.1. You can install MacOS X on this machine if you use XpostFacto.
 
I had 10.2 installed on my 7600 using XPostFacto. Worked fine but was quite slow. The 7600 had a 400mhz g3 upgrade, usb & firewire cards that all worked. I think the only problems was i couldnt use my printer through the serial port and the CD drive wouldnt work in osX, I had to install it an external CD burner. It was more stable than 9.1 !!!!! I seem to recall it taking 4 or 5 hours to install! I got a feeling you might have to have a g3/g4 card or better installed.
 
Depending on your needs, you could consider a flavor of Linux for PPC (YDL, Debian, and Gentoo all have PPC distros - I think).
 
If it's locking up that frequently with a clean OS 9 install, it's more likely hardware problems than the OS, assuming it's not some specific applications that are locking up. Malfunctioning RAM is the most likely cause.
 
Also, it could be the ATI drivers. I always seemed to have issues with OS 9 with Radeon 7000s when the ATI Graphics Acceleration extension was enabled.
 
Huezo said:
I received an old PowerMac 8600 because it wasnt being used anymore.
It works, I've fired it up in OS9 but it's too unstable for my taste. I made the OS lock up over 4 times in a matter of hours.
I've thought about installing OSX on it, but I dont know if it's even possible or which version would be best to install on it.

The system has a Radeon 7000 Video Card and 512MB RAM.

Any ideas? 😀
Click to expand...


you need a G3 or G4 upgrade first before xpostfacto will work. xpostfacto does allow osx installs on unsupported machines but osx still needs a min. of a G3 cpu to run. it will not run on a 604 or 603 or any other cpu. you need a G3/G4/G5 to run osx period, no matter what mac it is.
 
And if you're considering getting a CPU upgrade, you might rethink that. You could put that money toward a newer Mac. I know it's fun to upgrade an old Mac, but trust me. It isn't worth it when you're done.
 
dukemeiser said:
And if you're considering getting a CPU upgrade, you might rethink that. You could put that money toward a newer Mac. I know it's fun to upgrade an old Mac, but trust me. It isn't worth it when you're done.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, I didnt know I needed a CPU upgrade card. Maybe I should just load up Linux on it 😎
 
I believe the requirements for 9.2.2 were the same for that of OS X, so 9.1 would be the highest you could go. Even if you did get OS X workin somehow, it would be very slow and hardly suitable for use. I would second the recommendation for installing Linux.
 
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