Mac power porforma 5300

[Simon W]

Hi there, can anyone help please? I bought a Mac Power Performa 5300 back in 1997. I used it for a year, then boxed it away when I moved house. I then got a job working with PC's and never unboxed the 5300 until today... 23 years later! Everything seems to boot up correctly, the problem is I have forgotten my password and cannot go past the login prompt. Can anybody help please?

 

[TheShortTimer]

Do you have the original discs? Unless there's anything on the hard drive that you'd want to keep, why not reinstall the operating system and start anew?

 

[theMarble]

I suggest looking on eBay for a Mac OS 8.6 disc or if you have blank floppies and a floppy writer, look on macintoshgarden for images. Good luck!

 

[TheShortTimer]

I suggest looking on eBay for a Mac OS 8.6 disc or if you have blank floppies and a floppy writer, look on macintoshgarden for images. Good luck!

Installing Mac OS 8 via floppy would require 27 disks!

The 5300 has a CD-ROM drive, so they can dispense with writing 27 floppies and instead obtain the 8.6 CD image from the Garden.

On the subject of floppies, just a reminder that Yosemite is the last macOS release that natively supports them. Annoyingly, Apple removed the driver from El Capitan and onwards.

 

[iTurbo]

Cool, I love the beige PowerMacs from that era. It probably came with 7.5, but I would put 8.6 on it as well. Don't forget to get a new battery...I believe the motherboard on those units slide out for easy access.

 

[theMarble]

@TheShortTimer Haha forgot how many floppy disc would be need, yes a CD will be a lot better.

 

[Simon W]

Cool, I love the beige PowerMacs from that era. It probably came with 7.5, but I would put 8.6 on it as well. Don't forget to get a new battery...I believe the motherboard on those units slide out for easy access.

Hi everyone, many thanks for the feedback/advice... much appreciated.
Yes, I have all the original disc so I could reinstall. I suppose I was hoping there might be another way, as (for nostalgic reasons) I'm curious to see what files I have on the computer... most will be from my final year at university. Thanks again ?

 

[TheShortTimer]

I suppose I was hoping there might be another way, as (for nostalgic reasons) I'm curious to see what files I have on the computer... most will be from my final year at university. Thanks again ?

In that case, remove the HDD and place it within an external USB HDD (IDE) enclosure, connect it to another Mac and copy off any data that you'd like to preserve.

@TheShortTimer Haha forgot how many floppy disc would be need, yes a CD will be a lot better.

That's one aspect of retro-computing that I absolutely do not miss.

 

[TheMrKocour]

There was way. Boot without extension (holding Shift) and then remove login extension from system folder

 

[Amethyst1]

That's one aspect of retro-computing that I absolutely do not miss.

If you haven't installed Windows 98 from 38 floppies, you ain't seen nothing yet.

 

[Amethyst1]

If you haven't installed Windows 98 from 38 floppies, you ain't seen nothing yet.

And it gets worse:

 

[TheShortTimer]

And it gets worse:

View attachment 1931298

46 disks… Who would want to be the one that has to sit through that?

Not to mention the unpleasant scenario where you need to restore your installation and haven't cloned the drive with Norton Ghost or Acronis Tru Image and face having to go through that all over again. Or even more unpleasant, you need to reinstall the software and one of the many disks has a troublesome sector and you have to RMA it to Microsoft just because of a solitary disk! My head hurts from merely contemplating that nightmare.

Even worse is that the professional version was supplied on 55 disks.

Microsoft Office 97 Professional edition is provided on a total of 55 diskettes. Depending on the options selected during Setup, you may not be prompted for every diskette.

You could imagine someone reading the above and breathing a sigh of relief, somewhat.

I think that I would've bitten the bullet and bought a CD-ROM drive rather than endure that ordeal.

 

[Amethyst1]

Who would want to be the one that has to sit through that?

What if you had a subnotebook with no way to add a CD drive or install from the network?

Even worse is that the professional version was supplied on 55 disks.

That would make my set of 46 images incomplete. Hm.

 

[TheShortTimer]

What if you had a subnotebook with no way to add a CD drive or install from the network?

Ok, thinking within the context of 1997, the subnotebook could have been fitted with a PCMCIA Ethernet card which would allow it to access another computer with a CD-ROM drive via TCP/IP etc. This was my preferred route for transferring files to my Sony ultraportable during the mid 2000s as it was much faster than USB 1.1. and I didn't need to install endless Win 9x drivers for USB HDD enclosures.

That would make my set of 46 images incomplete. Hm.

Is a quest about to get underway?

 

[Amethyst1]

Is a quest about to get underway?

Not really. I've got enough floppies.

 

[MacFoxG4]

If you haven't installed Windows 98 from 38 floppies, you ain't seen nothing yet.

View attachment 1931257

I remember reading in my Windows 98 manual years ago about ordering the floppy version, but I have never come across the floppies IRL. Part of me wants to find them, but part of me also doesn’t want to go through the process of installing Windows 98 via floppies.

 

[TheShortTimer]

I remember reading in my Windows 98 manual years ago about ordering the floppy version, but I have never come across the floppies IRL.

I didn't even know that a floppy version was available till this thread!

Part of me wants to find them, but part of me also doesn’t want to go through the process of installing Windows 98 via floppies.

Installing Win 9x from CD-ROM is painful enough, let alone installing it from floppies.

 

[Amethyst1]

I remember reading in my Windows 98 manual years ago about ordering the floppy version, but I have never come across the floppies IRL. Part of me wants to find them, but part of me also doesn’t want to go through the process of installing Windows 98 via floppies.

I found my set on eBay (as usual, I might add). I never got round to installing it from floppies though.

Now where's my floppy version of XP?

Installing Win 9x from CD-ROM is painful enough, let alone installing it from floppies.

I always xcopy the CD's source directory to the hard drive and install from there. Much faster and less failure-prone.

 

[Nermal]

I remember installing OS/2 Warp from a stack of floppies. I don't remember exactly how many there were, but it was a lot!

Hi everyone, many thanks for the feedback/advice... much appreciated.
Yes, I have all the original disc so I could reinstall. I suppose I was hoping there might be another way, as (for nostalgic reasons) I'm curious to see what files I have on the computer... most will be from my final year at university. Thanks again ?

You should be able to boot from one of the discs and browse the drive without reinstalling everything.