Over the past year or two using MSiE 5.1.7 and iCab 2.99-3.03 on my old Power Mac 6100, I must say that I'm tired visiting many of today's websites that wind up not working on those browsers. Every day since I've upgraded the thing with a Sonnet G3 card, I've wished for some way to get at those websites with COMPLETE compatibility, I didn't care how slow it was.
There was no way I could get ANY form of Linux to work with the Sonnet G3 card, and there was also no way anybody would even consider making a better browser than iCab for this machine. And you can forget about having somebody do a back-port of Firefox for Mac OS 9 (which I'm using).
Well lately, I came accross a copy of VirtualPC 4.0 from a guy who was having a garage sale. And it came with Win98SE!!!!!! ($10!) I remembered from previous researching that BOTH MSiE and Firefox 2.0 work under Win98. So that got me thinking. Should I leave this old piece of garbage or get it and see where it takes me? Ten dollars looked too good to be true.... but I was assured that it was the whole retail version of VPC.
Well, I've decided to get it and pamper my 6100 after all its years of faithful service with a few upgrades (more ram, and a PDS video card). (~$82+S&H)
$92 altogether to add 3 new capabilities for my old mac!!!!! Not bad, considering I don't quite have the money for a new system just yet. I had to choose between spending over $4000 for a new system, without a monitor, and without the productivity software I needed (i'd have to get those separate) or spending less than a fraction of that cost to boost my old 6100 and squeeze a few more years out of it.
Now my specs look like this:
- Performa 6115CD + Sonnet G3/480MHz
- MacOS 9.1
- 136 MB RAM + RamDoubler 9 (doubled to a max of 240 MB)
- 2MB AV card with video I/O
- 4GB HDD
- 3.0Mb/384Kb DSL line (shared through a router)
So I installed VPC 4.0, and went hunting throughout the internet to find updaters for it. I managed to get it up to 4.0.2. The install went flawlessly for both the VPC app and Windows98. Then came time to get it on the internet. IT WORKED! I used the MSiE 5.0 that came with it and I proceeded to download IE 6.0 and Firefox 2.0. I installed those and tried running both.
I must say that the results are rather surprising.
- Both browsers work!!!
- Firefox 2.0 is actually slower than MSiE 6.0 in VPC....
- MSiE 6.0 on VPC actually feels faster than (if not as fast as) MSiE 5.x or iCab 3.x on the Mac side.
- ALL of the websites i've visited actually show up like they're supposed to, with EVERY Java/JavaScript/CSS and other modern features intact!
- Google Maps and Google Docs&Spreadsheets work!!!
- Yes.... even MySpace works!!! (but slower than frozen molasses)
I even tried to install Ubuntu/Kubuntu Linux on it, seeing as how its supposed to support certain Linux distros other than just RedHat 6.1. It didn't work, but at least it did get to boot off of the CD and took me to the installation options menu (if i choose to install it, the whole thing just gives me a Dos-like prompt and does nothing else).
So what was the point of all of this? I don't know, but I did enjoy pushing my Mac to its limits these past two years and giving it more functionality than I ever would've thought it could manage back in the 1990's. Hell.... I even brought it back from the dead when i thought its power supply was choked full of dust! And if nothing else, I at least can use Photoshop 6.x but this time with more space to draw on my screen now.
For more info on my 6100 experiences, just click my sig below to visit my blog.
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