Upgrading a Power mac from OS 9.2 to 10

[Dunstaffian]

I have a now ancient Power Mac still running 9.2. It is a brilliant work horse, but increasingly modern software, browsers, etc are not working with it.

Is is possible to upgrade this to system 10 and onwards?

We do have another old power mac that is running 10, but I would rather like to keep this one. It does, after all, have all of my info on it.

We also have another of the latest Macs running leopard, but that has been taken over by my other half.

There is not very much space left on the hard drive, so is it possible to install system io on an exterior hard drive? There is already one attached.

 

[Sun Baked]

You should have enough space inside to add 2 to 4 internal HDs.

These would be cheaper than an external since you don't have to pay for the case.

However, if you plan on buying a new machine like a Mini .. an external might be worth the cost. Since the IDE drive would need to use a case on the new machines.

---

If you get a copy of OS X 10.4 tiger, you should be able to keep the OS 9 install intact, the os will just add a file to that OS the first time you run classic. This would mean you do not have to restart to run an old app, or use an old device.

You can add OS X 10.5 Leopard, but you will need to reboot the machine to run OS 9 apps.

You won't be able to run the newest OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard on that machine ... no PPC support.

However ... you would need to read the box to see if you have a fast enough CPU and enough memory for any OS X version, and make you choice that way.

 

[spinnerlys]

I have a now ancient Power Mac still running 9.2. It is a brilliant work horse, but increasingly modern software, browsers, etc are not working with it.

Is is possible to upgrade this to system 10 and onwards?

We do have another old power mac that is running 10, but I would rather like to keep this one. It does, after all, have all of my info on it.

We also have another of the latest Macs running leopard, but that has been taken over by my other half.

There is not very much space left on the hard drive, so is it possible to install system io on an exterior hard drive? There is already one attached.

It depends what kind of PowerMac it is. There are models with a G3 PPC CPU with 233MHz to 450MHz, the last coming with Mac OS 8.2; then there a G4 models having CPUs with 400MHz to 1.42MHz (coming with OS 8.6 to OS X 10.2.3) and models with a G5 CPU, going from 1.8GHz to 2.5GHz.

A lot of those machines are capable of running 10.4.11, which would be the best bet.

 

[Eric S.]

Here's an article that may be of interest to you:
What's the Best Version of OS X for My Mac?

 

[Dunstaffian]

Upgrading 9.2. mac

Thanks for all of that advice and help. very valuable and much appreciated.