Just Updated 9/27/2002

OS 9.2.1 and OS 9.2.2 install app for old world Macs!: Christophe sent me a link to a web site named OS9 Forever.com and they have a utility named OS9 Helper that will automate the install of OS 9.2.1 and 9.2.2 on your old world Mac. Thanks Christophe! Basically you will need OS 9.1 installed and they suggest you have at least 2 partitions because modifying the OS 9.1 install while booted to it may cause trouble? This is true of many OS installs though. Apple always suggests booting to an install CD for OS upgrades. The 5400-6500 are all listed as compatible so hopefully this will help others that have been having issues with the hacks I have posted. Please email me if you try this. Thanks.

Just Updated 9/26/2002

Jobless in AZ!: Update. Well I haven't found much yet :( I work in the semiconductor industry and there isn't much going on there right now. I even applied for jobs out side of AZ and haven't heard anything yet.

I would like to thank all of you that have written in response to my situation. Thanks for all the support! It also hurts me to hear about all of you that are jobless now as well! I sure hope that the economy gets turned around soon.

Also, thanks to all who purchased a 6400 Zone Archive CD :) In case you didn't know, I now accept credit cards through PayPal as well as checks and money orders mailed to me.

TW Computing: I would like to say that my business has been going well but it hasn't. I haven't had the response I would like to see. For those that have looked into it, are the prices the only thing stopping you from signing up or are there other issues? I feel I can trust comments from you guys since we have all been together for so long! So don't harp on me, just give me some constructive suggestions to make the service better and I'll see what we can do :) Thanks!

Just so you know, we have WebDAV support so all you OSX Jaguar users can use it for iCal to publish your calendars.

New boxes on my site. I'm practicing making boxes around items like the text on this page and the images at the bottom. They are designed to grow and shrink with the size of your browser window. Please let me know if you have any trouble because of this. Thanks.

MacRaffle web site down?: If you haven't noticed, the link for the MacRaffle web site to the right is broken. I went to their web site to see why and the entire site is down! I wonder why?

More OSX install info: Keven wrote to say that he was able to get the OSX install to boot but he cannot get any of his HD partitions to show available for install. I asked him to make sure that at least one of them was completely within the first 8G of the HD or OSX will not install. This is an issue for all old world Macs. Not just the 6400/6500. Please email me if you have any other suggestions for him. Thanks.

[Hello!
My name is Keven
I was recently inspired by your website, zone6400, to get OS X to install on a 6400.

I am, right now, In the OS X installer, BOOTED from OS X, on my Powerbase 200. This system is only a 200mhz 603e machine, however, it does compare to the 6400 in almost all aspects (same motherboard, etc). It works rather fast, too!

Unfortunately I just got hitched up here- all my HD's for installation are greyed out- would you by chance know why they are all greyed? I can't seem to select any for installation?? :-(. Oh well.

I have, however, gotten OS X to boot. That is a small step.
It involves patching XPostFacto's NVRAM Settings with the Alvhemy.R file from one of the guys on your website- someone by the name of Pierre's Page.. He had gotten Darwin to work so far.

I can't tell you much more then this, but I did land up copying the installation CD to my HD, and running it from there, along side with the patched Openboot Firmware files from XPostFacto (my XPF will ONLY work on a 6400 now due to the way I had to patch it). I noticed that I could have booted from the SCSI drive, however, due to the Stock 8x drive, well... I don't have the time to have the kernel sitting around waiting for my SCSI CDRom drive to fumble around and fetch the files.

I will e-mail you later once OS X is fully running- so far, things are looking good. The NVRam patch is something almost anyone can do- and since it over writes the same values (almost the same) from XPostFacto- you just have to use the XPostFacto the way you would normally- just to disable Throttle, however, Autoboot works just fine if the input/output is set to keyboard/vid card. Later today- I should be able to send you my patched XPostFacto to fiddle around with- it'll be around- oh, 600-700kb, in a SIT format.

So. I will e-mail you with the details later to OS X on my 6400.

Thanks,
Keven]

OSX minimum specs: Phil notes the minimum specs that OSX could be installed with on the 6400/6500. Thanks Phil.

[Hi Thomas
I was reading on your site about minimum specs for OS X. As I have a G4 Cube as well as my trusty 6400, I thought I would try an experiment.

I swapped out my 256M dimm for a 64M dimm in my Cube and OS X started with no problems, but I wouldn't recommend running classic within OS X this amount of memory.

I also read on Other World Computing that XPostFacto 2.2.2 - updated Sept 12 (http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/framework.cfm?page=XPostFacto.html) now provides support for 3400 laptops, which I also have and will try to see if OS X installs.

Even though you can install OS X with 6400/6500 it states that OS X 10.1.5 is the only version that will run on a 603 or 604 processor.

Regards
Phil]

Note that only being able to install OSX 10.1.5 is related to issues with XPostFacto and not the 6400/6500. They are working on OSX 10.2 support right now. He notes that you could run it with only 64MB of RAM but his Cube has much faster system bus and HD bus so virtual memory swapping is not as bad as it would be on the 6400! The Cube is a G4 CPU so that also makes a huge difference! I will try myself someday but I am pretty busy with job hunting and being the stay home Dad right now. My son really loves that part :)

CDROM drives set to SCSI ID=0 bad!: Brian wrote to say that he had a lot of issues with his new CDROM drive and they did not go away till he changed the SCSI ID from 0 to 4. Thanks Brian.

[I just recently picked up a Yamaha 200SZ CDRW from OWCX to put in my 6400/180/Sonnet G3/300 ... It came with no drivers, no instructions so I assumed it was a straight forward installation.

First of all I must thank you for your website. It had been three years since I had opened up my 6400 and the step by step instructions were a great refresher. And thanks to the pointer to Proline where I picked up a sled and bezel to cut up for $8!

Well, I go the drive into the upper bay and tries it out. The machine took forever to boot and it took three reboots for it to come all the way up (OS 9.1). Then when it did Apple System Profiler showed the drive but it wouldn't read ...

I went home to ponder and the next day I brought in a jumper and set the drive from SCSI address 0 to address 4 and added the Toast Reader Extension to the extensions folder .... all problems went away. Just for chuckles I shut down and set it back to 0 and the sluggish boot came back .... for some reason even though it does finally boot from the ATA bus, it seems to prefer and want to make a good try at booting from SCSI 0 ...

Will OS 9.2 run on a 6400/G3? When I try to install it says it won't go on this machine.. Is there any reason to want to move up from 9.1 and if so how?

Thanks ... Brian]

At first I thought it may have been the Toast extension that fixed it but he says he tried making it ID=0 again and it still had issues. I asked him if he thought that the reason this was a problem was because it was trying to boot to the CDROM even if there wasn't a CD inserted. SCSI ID=0 is the first location Macs look for a boot device after checking for a floppy disk. He wrote back.

[Yes, indeed, that is what appears to be happening, its looking to boot something on SCSI 0 ... once I put a jumper on to make it SCSI 4, all was well in Mudville! Thanks for the reply ... I will check out the 9.2 stuff as well]

So when installing a new CDROM, CDR, or CDRW drive, make sure to make the ID some other number besides ID=0.

Parts for Macs in Japan: Gordon wrote with some info on buying older parts in Japan. Thanks Gordon.

[Dear Thomas,
thanks you for your wonderful website. Thanks to you my 6420 is alive and kicking.

I had some trouble getting hold of parts in Japan, so I would like to share with other 6400 owners in Japan two outlets that I found.

First, I found that you can still get the Farallon FastEther TX10/100 Commslot2 Ethernet board from http://www.ditshop.com/ Part number: JPN998-TX, price: 18,000 yen. They also have the Farallon PCI ethernet board, but that doesn't seem to be in such short supply in Japan.

Second, I was looking for a TV/FM tuner and found one (price: 2,800 yen!), along with several other second-hand boards and parts, at http://www.mac-s.co.jp/useditem/u_naibuparts.html

I should mention that I am not commercially connected to either of these two sites. I don't receive any commission for recommending them. It's just that it took me a lot of effort to locate them, and inspired by the mutual-help theme of the zone6400 site, I wanted to help others in my position.

best regards
Gordon]