[MrktMind]

I have several Macs but they are from an era gone by. I would, however, like to set up the newest one to use as a web surfing machine. My newest one is a Power Mac 8500 (bought it new - $3500 - grin) . The problem is that I'm not sure I remember enough about the system to get it online. I remember from the old dial up days that I had some kind of box (an Apple product) that I had to plug the phone line into - it was some kind of software modem type of deal. I know the machine came with an ethernet port so I'm wondering what I would need to get it on my broadband???

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks
Greg

[Suikolove]

Was it, by any chance, called a microfilter? My Telus internet uses those. If they're not attached to the phone jacks, none of the phones in the house will work.

From what I remember of Macs from the late nineties and early 2000's, though, it was one hell of an unattractive OS to use and look at.

[reader50]

Apple Spec for an 8500.

The 8500 will take OS 9, and you can just plug the ethernet into your router or switch. You can use XPostFacto to install Jaguar. Panther & Tiger will not work unless you upgrade the CPU - the 604 is limited to 10.2 max. Without a CPU upgrade, any version of OSX will be terminally slow.

If you go the OS9 route, iCab still offers an OS9 download. I'm not sure about any other modern browsers.

Plan on at least 64MB RAM for OS9, preferably 128MB. Double those for Jaguar. These are minimums, the HD will be terribly slow compared to modern HDs. Throwing more RAM at the problem will help conceal other bottlenecks.

[himself]

I have an old 8500 as well... back in 2001 I upgraded it to a G3, added a Radeon graphics card and a bunch of ram... it screams in OS 9, but it runs 10.3 horribly. If you don't upgrade the processor, stick with OS 9. You should probably stick with OS 8-9 even if you do upgrade the processor.

For browsers, iCab is a good choice. I pretty sure Mozilla for OS 9 is available somewhere, possibly the Mozilla Project's website archives or something. But don't expect it to be Firefox.

[bowwowman]

all old browser versions are belong to us

find 'em here: Old Version Downloads - OldApps.com

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by Suikolove 

Was it, by any chance, called a microfilter? My Telus internet uses those. If they're not attached to the phone jacks, none of the phones in the house will work.

No, I think the OP may be referring to the Geoport modem - a terrible fake-modem product Apple came up with, although it's strange because no one should have been using GeoPort in the 8500's era.

Anyway, that isn't required to get an 8500 online. Power Macs of that vintage have two types of built-in Ethernet ports - AAUI (an Apple proprietary Ethernet port) and standard 10BASE-T. In other words, the 8500 accepts a standard Ethernet connection - just connect an Ethernet cable from your router to the Mac.

[Sherman Homan]

Ditto the above, install System 9.1 or 9.2.2, plug an ethernet cable in, go to your TCP/IP Control Panel set it for DHCP and surf away on iCab! I wouldn't try any flavor of OS X...

[vasu]

Originally Posted by MrktMind 

... Power Mac 8500 (bought it new - $3500 - grin).

Ooh i got ya beat! Not knowing any better (there weren't any mac rumor websites in those days), I got a PowerMac 8100/100 for $5000 just a month before the 8500 was launched! 12 years later .. it stills burns. That 8500 had a 604, dimm memory, faster bus, and last but not least PCI. Since most/all upgrades from that point were PCI and not NuBus, my upgrading my 8100 was pretty much a dead end.