Macintosh LC 575 - System 7.6 or 8.0??

[FoxMac]

I have an old LC 575 that I'm using for mostly playing games and some word processing, no internet, though. I'm wondering if I should upgrade from 7.5.5 to 7.6 or from 7.5.5 to 8.0. I'm probably going to pick up 32mb of RAM soon, so I'm ready for any OS to be on it.
Any thoughts?

 

[MacTech68]

I have an old LC 575 that I'm using for mostly playing games and some word processing, no internet, though. I'm wondering if I should upgrade from 7.5.5 to 7.6 or from 7.5.5 to 8.0. I'm probably going to pick up 32mb of RAM soon, so I'm ready for any OS to be on it.
Any thoughts?

You'll probably get different answers but my opinion would be that unless the game requires it, don't upgrade to a later system.

 

[dmr727]

You'll probably get different answers but my opinion would be that unless the game requires it, don't upgrade to a later system.

^^^ I agree with this. I'm not a big fan of running 8.x on 68K hardware.

For vintage gear, I like to stick to OS versions close to what the Mac shipped with (if it were me, I'd downgrade the 575 to 7.1). Any non-rare Mac from the G3 down can be had for next to nothing these days, so if you have an app that requires 8.0, I'd go grab a machine more suitable to run it. Then again, I'm always looking for an excuse to bring home another machine.

 

[chrismacguy]

Personally Id go to 7.6 as its basically Mac OS 8.0 without the stuff that made 8.0 slow - on 68K Machines either 7.6 or 7.1 are going to be the best systems (7.5.5 is actually pretty horrid, 7.6 is much better).

 

[velocityg4]

Personally Id go to 7.6 as its basically Mac OS 8.0 without the stuff that made 8.0 slow - on 68K Machines either 7.6 or 7.1 are going to be the best systems (7.5.5 is actually pretty horrid, 7.6 is much better).

This is why I skipped 8 all together. It did not seem any different than 7.6.1. The only reason I bothered with 9 was that one of my upgrades for a Performa 6400 required 8 or later (I forget if it was the G3 upgrade or video card). Then my G4 shipped with 9. I was also disappointed that Mac OS 8 was not Copeland which I had been reading about in the Mac publications and anticipating for a long time.

Unless you don't want another machine cluttering things up I would do as dmr727 suggested and get a PPC to run 8 and push the 575 back to 7.1.

7.1 shipped on a couple of floppies while 7.6 came on CD so there is a big difference in the bloat of the OS. Though I did like 7.6 a lot.

On a side note I think it's funny that Mac OS 10.6 is not actually 11 or 12. As the difference between 10.0 and 10.6 is far greater than 7.6 to 8 or 8.6 to 9.

 

[Surf Monkey]

I have an LC 475 that's clock chipped to 33mhz. It's basically the 575 without the built in monitor. In my experience with the box, the last really stable and useful system to run on it was 7.6. I wouldn't put 8 on it.

Now, having said that, I think the OPTIMAL system to run on a 475/575 is System 7.1.x. It's easily the fastest, most stable and most solid in terms of functional features for that hardware platform IMO. 7.6 is a great system, but I think it needs a little more juice than the 475/575 can offer.

 

[David Schmidt]

On a side note I think it's funny that Mac OS 10.6 is not actually 11 or 12. As the difference between 10.0 and 10.6 is far greater than 7.6 to 8 or 8.6 to 9.

I think the opportunity to renumber was back in the 10.4 or 10.5 range. 10.6 was little more than a performance tweak. But little by little, we drift farther and farther away from that 10.0 experience. Maybe Lion, with more touchiness, will warrant a new number. But "XI" just doesn't look as cool as "X" does.

 

[velocityg4]

I think the opportunity to renumber was back in the 10.4 or 10.5 range. 10.6 was little more than a performance tweak. But little by little, we drift farther and farther away from that 10.0 experience. Maybe Lion, with more touchiness, will warrant a new number. But "XI" just doesn't look as cool as "X" does.

True though I thought that 10.3 should have been 11 and 10.5 should have been 12. I am glad we are drifting further from the 10.0 experience there were virtually no programs supported. I tried using 10.0 and 10.1 on my G4 but stuck with 9 until 10.2 when performance was on par and most every program was available for OS X.

Though I think we are still on OS X since Jobs said it would stay that way until 2020. He'll be damned to make it XI just to prove he was right.