[Mac Write]

It just clicked this evening that anyone with a Rev A Beige G3 (me) and who has added a slave drive and plans to install Panther using XFacto, won't be able to use there Slave drive.

The slave drive will not work in Panther with XFacto, since the ROM patch for slave drive support on Rev A Beige G3's won't be in Panther since Apple won't be supporting the Beige G3.

Will the XFacto developer be able to fix this and have it work 100%?

If I can't get my Slave drive to work, I won't be able to upgrade to Panther, and it's critical I upgrade to it. As for a new Mac, I won't be able to get one until at least next summer, and that will be a Dual 3GHZ G5.

[Moonray]

It would probably be less work for Apple to leave all the G3 stuff in than to take it out, but it's a marketing decision anyway.

-

[Mac Write]

Originally posted by Moonray:
It would probably be less work for Apple to leave all the G3 stuff in than to take it out, but it's a marketing decision anyway.

-

I completely agree. I really hope I can have slave drive support, then I will be getting Panther.

[Taipan]

Hi!

Where did you get a version of XPostFacto that supports Panther? As far as I know it hasn't been released yet, has it?

[Mac Write]

Originally posted by Taipan:
Hi!

Where did you get a version of XPostFacto that supports Panther? As far as I know it hasn't been released yet, has it?

no it hasn't. but XFacto 3.0 will support Panther on the Beige G3, but I am not sure if XFacto will support slave drives on Rev A Beige G3's or not.

[Powaqqatsi]

Why is it "critical" that you upgrade to Panther ? It's not that your apps stop to work all of a sudden.

[Moonray]

Originally posted by Powaqqatsi:
Why is it "critical" that you upgrade to Panther ? It's not that your apps stop to work all of a sudden.

It is "critical" for example because Apple (other than Microsoft) does not support an old operating system any more after they released a new one. The only exception was OS 9 support for a while when OS X came out.

-

[Mac Write]

I also do Mac consulting and need to know Panther so I can support my clients, along with writing articles on Panther for my website, and being able to run the latest version of Safari (which will only be Panther from now on).

Also X11 will ship with Panther, and no more PHP/Apache/security updates will be offered for Jaguar. I need Panther to survive the next year on this Mac. and I can't afford a new Mac period. Someone is having to buy a Sonnet G4 500mhz CPU upgrade for me.

[Gul Banana]

The thing is, if you actually make money from using and supporting Macs, you /have/ to keep up to date, hardware and software. Think of it this way: if you don't upgrade to a machine that can run Panther, you won't earn any money from supporting people with Panther. If you don't earn enough from supporting it to afford the hardware to use it, it's not a sustainable business. I'm not just making assumptions, either - I run the same kind of business as you, a very useful part-time job while studying. Some good news is that you get massive tax claimbacks on purchasing things essential to your business.. like, say, computer hardware. I don't know the American system, but in the last few months I've saved about $2000 in tax I would have otherwise had to pay by buying hardware that I need, or even just want.

tl;dr - You need to make enough money to buy the stuff you need to make the money, or it's not worth it. + look at tax stuff.

[Mac Write]

I am just getting started, and with not being able to run Panther using XFacto is serious. I have no other job. I am on permanent disability.

I really do smell a lawsuit against Apple for this. They support a 233mhz G3 while not supporting a 333mhz G3 with a faster HD, video card, and so forth. That makes ZERO technical sense. this old vs New world rom is complete BS.

[Powaqqatsi]

Originally posted by Mac Write:
I also do Mac consulting and need to know Panther so I can support my clients, along with writing articles on Panther for my website, and being able to run the latest version of Safari (which will only be Panther from now on).

Also X11 will ship with Panther, and no more PHP/Apache/security updates will be offered for Jaguar. I need Panther to survive the next year on this Mac. and I can't afford a new Mac period. Someone is having to buy a Sonnet G4 500mhz CPU upgrade for me.

OK I understand, sorry if it sounded offensive.

[diamondsw]

Originally posted by Mac Write:
I really do smell a lawsuit against Apple for this. They support a 233mhz G3 while not supporting a 333mhz G3 with a faster HD, video card, and so forth. That makes ZERO technical sense. this old vs New world rom is complete BS.

People with their damn lawsuits. Suck up and deal - the machine is 6 years old, for crying out loud! Should we start lawsuits because Mac OS 9.2 isn't supported on the Mac Plus? "Well, they SAID you could upgrade, so if at any point for any reason they decide to drop support, we'll sue!".

You have a BUSINESS that depends on your ability to support people on the latest systems, so you better be able to run said systems. What if your application (for whatever reason) doesn't like new hardware, or conflicts with someone's USB peripheral - how are you going to test that?

If you really rely on this as much as you say and you HAVE to run Panther as soon as it comes out, Apple has some very nice loan programs and payment plans - buy yourself a new G5, sell the G3 for what you can get for it on eBay, make the payments as fast as you can, and move on.

NEXT.

[Arty50]

Originally posted by diamondsw:
People with their damn lawsuits. Suck up and deal - the machine is 6 years old, for crying out loud! Should we start lawsuits because Mac OS 9.2 isn't supported on the Mac Plus? "Well, they SAID you could upgrade, so if at any point for any reason they decide to drop support, we'll sue!".

You have a BUSINESS that depends on your ability to support people on the latest systems, so you better be able to run said systems. What if your application (for whatever reason) doesn't like new hardware, or conflicts with someone's USB peripheral - how are you going to test that?

If you really rely on this as much as you say and you HAVE to run Panther as soon as it comes out, Apple has some very nice loan programs and payment plans - buy yourself a new G5, sell the G3 for what you can get for it on eBay, make the payments as fast as you can, and move on.

NEXT.

Exactly.

[OptimusG4]

Originally posted by diamondsw:
People with their damn lawsuits. Suck up and deal - the machine is 6 years old, for crying out loud! Should we start lawsuits because Mac OS 9.2 isn't supported on the Mac Plus? "Well, they SAID you could upgrade, so if at any point for any reason they decide to drop support, we'll sue!".

You have a BUSINESS that depends on your ability to support people on the latest systems, so you better be able to run said systems. What if your application (for whatever reason) doesn't like new hardware, or conflicts with someone's USB peripheral - how are you going to test that?

If you really rely on this as much as you say and you HAVE to run Panther as soon as it comes out, Apple has some very nice loan programs and payment plans - buy yourself a new G5, sell the G3 for what you can get for it on eBay, make the payments as fast as you can, and move on.

NEXT.

[Moonray]

It does not matter how old a computer is, it is certainly doing what it's supposed to do, runs well with Jaguar and will run as fine with Panther.
The reason why Apple cuts support for it is just that they do it as a (in my opinion not very effective ) means to push their hardware sales. It's has been about the same when they did not support other SCSI drives in old macs where was no technical reason for that either, and is about the same with the current situation about the support of other DVD writers.
And contrary to what some people tell it is almost no work for Apple to keep these machines supported, cause the drivers for that hardware are already written and won't need much changes as the hardware does not change (or you don't understand that a driver provides an universal interface to a specific hardware). And then XPostFacto shows how easy it is to have OS X run on machines where Apple never wrote any OS X specific stuff for.
So it's a more a greediness on Apple's side than the age of a G3.

-

[Mac Write]

since I am on goverment assitance, I am not elgable for loans of any kind. I live on less then $200/month so I wouldn't be able to pay it back.

I only just started advertiisng and am not getting any response. XFacto will let Panther run on my Mac, the problem is Apple has a software patch in OS X right now to support slave drives on Rev A beige G3.'s. the problem is we don't know if XFacto will have that patch or not. That's the problem.

[diamondsw]

Originally posted by Moonray:
It does not matter how old a computer is, it is certainly doing what it's supposed to do, runs well with Jaguar and will run as fine with Panther.
The reason why Apple cuts support for it is just that they do it as a (in my opinion not very effective ) means to push their hardware sales. It's has been about the same when they did not support other SCSI drives in old macs where was no technical reason for that either, and is about the same with the current situation about the support of other DVD writers.
And contrary to what some people tell it is almost no work for Apple to keep these machines supported, cause the drivers for that hardware are already written and won't need much changes as the hardware does not change (or you don't understand that a driver provides an universal interface to a specific hardware). And then XPostFacto shows how easy it is to have OS X run on machines where Apple never wrote any OS X specific stuff for.
So it's a more a greediness on Apple's side than the age of a G3.

-

It's tempting to write you off as a troll, but I really think you believe what you just wrote, which is sad.

Okay, first off - lack of SCSI support? What lack of SCSI support? If your Mac has built-in SCSI, they supported it. If it didn't, your SCSI card manufacturer had to supply it - what is so "greedy" about that?

Second, DVD writers. Yes, Apple disables DVD+R in their drives. They do this for a few simple reasons:
They have multiple drive suppliers. Some supply "+" capable drives, some supply only "-" capable drives. Rather than be locked into a single supplier (and have product shortages when that supplier has problems) or have support nightmares (why do two seemingly identical Macs have different DVD burning capabilities?) they simply hard code the firmware to make all of their drives uniform. Remember, Apple was doing DVD-R before DVD+R was out (thanks, Microsoft/Phillips), and introducing DVD+R later would add confusion (some Mac users can buy DVD+R media, some can't, Apple has to stock them both, deal with tech support for people who bought the wrong media, etc). So Apple has very good reasons for limiting the DVD burners as they have.

Finally, back to your complaints about OS X dropping support for hardware when drivers "are already done". If you haven't noticed, OS releases generally improve their features. This involves rewriting a lot of code, a lot of code that a lot of *other* code depends on. Apple added CUPS printing in Jaguar, which made it really easy to support a huge number of printers - but it broke compatibility with existing 10.1 printer drivers. Or, if you've been following threads on MacFixit about mice which don't honor the "ignore trackpad when using mouse" setting, it's because the older drivers (which are "already written") don't support the current USB HID driver. As these subsystems are upgraded and improved and related code has to be supported and rewritten as well, Apple has to weigh whether it's worth the engineer's time and effort to do so. The have now decided to start dropping some G3 support. What is simpler, faster, and easier to maintain? Code that has to only deal with systems that have USB, FireWire, AGP/PCI graphics and a common motherboard architecture, or code that has to deal with that, *and* support serial ports, SCSI, onboard video, older motherboard architectures, different chipsets and firmware, etc.

And if you don't think Apple's doing much code upgrading, look at the speed increases in Panther, the preliminary support for the 64-bit G5 and all of its related chipsets, HyperTransport, USB 2.0, etc. You think those enhancements can be dropped in without changing surrounding code a fair amount? Those changes then will cause other things to be changed, and it ripples through the system. Eventually impacting your "already written" drivers. Or at the very least, being hindered by your legacy drivers.

You obviously do not do large scale programming. You have shown that you don't understand the interdependencies in a complex system or the development costs and trade-offs involved in any project like this.

NEXT.

[sniffer]

Mac Write:
If you get stuck, you could always switch it with a low end but supported "New world" mac in the worst scenario? Just until you get up and running economically..

I must agree with the others that a law suit might sound a little hash, but I see your side of it as well due to the situation you are in.

[Moonray]

Originally posted by diamondsw:
It's tempting to write you off as a troll, but I really think you believe what you just wrote, which is sad.

Maybe you are the troll, but I'll answer you anyway.

Originally posted by diamondsw:
Okay, first off - lack of SCSI support? What lack of SCSI support? If your Mac has built-in SCSI, they supported it. If it didn't, your SCSI card manufacturer had to supply it - what is so "greedy" about that?

I was refering to the time where Macs ran with SCSI drives and had no IDE/ATA buses, maybe that was a time where you never owned a Mac. In the Apple HD drivers drives which were not models used by Apple were blocked. A simple patch of the driver skipping the model check would help that and you could replace your CD-ROM. Annoying but true.

Originally posted by diamondsw:
Second, DVD writers. Yes, Apple disables DVD+R in their drives. They do this for a few simple reasons:
They have multiple drive suppliers. Some supply "+" capable drives, some supply only "-" capable drives. Rather than be locked into a single supplier (and have product shortages when that supplier has problems) or have support nightmares (why do two seemingly identical Macs have different DVD burning capabilities?) they simply hard code the firmware to make all of their drives uniform. Remember, Apple was doing DVD-R before DVD+R was out (thanks, Microsoft/Phillips), and introducing DVD+R later would add confusion (some Mac users can buy DVD+R media, some can't, Apple has to stock them both, deal with tech support for people who bought the wrong media, etc). So Apple has very good reasons for limiting the DVD burners as they have.

I agree that there's a lot going on with the different DVD formats, but what you explain doesn't exactly hit my point. There are many recorders which support both + and - formats and which I can use to burn only with Toast or any other burn software with own drivers but not with Apple's own drivers. If you see it as reason Apple wants to protect their customers from getting confused about formats, I still see it as a very obvious try to sell the own 'superdrive' instead of having people order a Mac without and buy their own burner for half the price somewhere else. So you think twice if you want DiskCopy or iTunes to burn files or not (and getting iDVD).
People in the Microsoft and Linux world do everything to get all hardware supported. And guess why? Right, because they don't sell hardware themselves (and because they think their users are mentally grown up enough to not get confused by different DVD formats).

Originally posted by diamondsw:
Finally, back to your complaints about OS X dropping support for hardware when drivers "are already done". If you haven't noticed, OS releases generally improve their features. This involves rewriting a lot of code, a lot of code that a lot of *other* code depends on. Apple added CUPS printing in Jaguar, which made it really easy to support a huge number of printers - but it broke compatibility with existing 10.1 printer drivers. Or, if you've been following threads on MacFixit about mice which don't honor the "ignore trackpad when using mouse" setting, it's because the older drivers (which are "already written") don't support the current USB HID driver. As these subsystems are upgraded and improved and related code has to be supported and rewritten as well,

That CUPS printing broke 10.1 drivers is something within OS X and not related to low level hardware drivers. And a mouse will not send different signals to a beige G3 than to a new G5. What causes problems is intermediate system software but not that piece that reads the mouse signals from a gossamer board and provides them to any OS subroutine that might ask for them.

Originally posted by diamondsw:
Apple has to weigh whether it's worth the engineer's time and effort to do so. The have now decided to start dropping some G3 support. What is simpler, faster, and easier to maintain? Code that has to only deal with systems that have USB, FireWire, AGP/PCI graphics and a common motherboard architecture, or code that has to deal with that, *and* support serial ports, SCSI, onboard video, older motherboard architectures, different chipsets and firmware, etc.

Apple is not only dedicted to write software but also to make money. And if you keep in mind that they not only sell their soft- but also their hardware you might agree that the more hardware they sell the more profit they make. Now they wouldn't sell much hardware if their new software would run on all old systems. So they are in the lucky position of a monopolist for their own system software and can just drop support for G3s, your or my Mac at any time they want.
The guy who does XPostFacto shows you that it does not need that much engineering power to get OS X run on pretty old machines where the only restriction is the speed but not the functionality. Now Apple has a few 100 times more manpower than him and don't you think they could show a bit more loyality to their customers?

Originally posted by diamondsw:
And if you don't think Apple's doing much code upgrading, look at the speed increases in Panther, the preliminary support for the 64-bit G5 and all of its related chipsets, HyperTransport, USB 2.0, etc. You think those enhancements can be dropped in without changing surrounding code a fair amount? Those changes then will cause other things to be changed, and it ripples through the system. Eventually impacting your "already written" drivers. Or at the very least, being hindered by your legacy drivers.

Oh where you mention USB 2.0, something else what Apple blocked a long time to favour the own FireWire (USB 2 support is abit overdue now anyway). But ... I don't ask to code all these enhancements in these old "already written" drivers, I just say it would not hurt anyone to keep these things alive, and it *won't* slow your Mac down.

Originally posted by diamondsw:
You obviously do not do large scale programming. You have shown that you don't understand the interdependencies in a complex system or the development costs and trade-offs involved in any project like this.

Yes, I only do small scale programming, but I understand more than just the "interdependencies in a complex system and the development costs and trade-offs". And managing a company of Apple's size includes more than some of those considerations. Just believe that the 'development' of one of these new eye candies takes more engineering power than the support of some older G3s, and that some higher manager guys at Apple believe to attract more new customers with those than they lose with dropping that beige G3 support.
Money is not made by developing operating systems but by managing them.

Originally posted by diamondsw:
NEXT.

Yes please.

-

[Mac Write]

I don't want to sell this Mac. it works great, it/s slow in certain areas. I have a G4 500mhz Sonnet that will be installed this week. I am just worried now that my slave drive won't work with XFacto. The only none USB/Firewire thing I use is my keyboard. I no longer use the internal video card also.

If I can get Panther to work on here support my slave drive, then I got an excellent computer.

Panther should have been the last OS to fully support all G3's and G4's and Apple should then have made that public.

There are people who haven't even hads there Beige G3's for 4 years brand new from Apple. and same with Wallstreet Powerbooks which weren't discontinued until May 99"

[goMac]

Rhapsody supported the pre-G3 machines. When it morphed into OS X they dropped pre-G3. Technically it could still run perfectly on a pre-G3 as shown by XPostFacto. I loaded 10.1 on my 200 mhz 604e and it ran fine. However, the floppy drive didn't work.

Do you see me complaining that OS 10.1 doesn't work with the floppy drive on my 7300? Heck, it was nice that 10.1 even loaded at all.

Apple has to draw the line somewhere. It is now technically impossible to run 10.2 on my 7300. I'm guessing it won't be long until the OS will no longer run on the beige G3 without XPostFacto.

[grumpy]

I understand that my hardware will eventually be unsupported by the latest software releases. Apple appears to be supporting its own hardware for at least five years after its initial release, and I have no problem with that.

The problem I have with OSX and my beige G3 is Apple's own advertising claim of full support when OSX was initially released. I could handle that 10.3 will not support the beige G3 if _any_ of the previous releases provided this advertised support.

10.0 through 10.2 omit support for too much of my Apple supplied hardware to be useful for why I purchased the G3 and later OSX including: audio in, audio out, video in, video out, dvd decoder, video hardware & floppy drive.

[Moonray]

Originally posted by grumpy:
I understand that my hardware will eventually be unsupported by the latest software releases. Apple appears to be supporting its own hardware for at least five years after its initial release, and I have no problem with that.

The problem I have with OSX and my beige G3 is Apple's own advertising claim of full support when OSX was initially released. I could handle that 10.3 will not support the beige G3 if _any_ of the previous releases provided this advertised support.

10.0 through 10.2 omit support for too much of my Apple supplied hardware to be useful for why I purchased the G3 and later OSX including: audio in, audio out, video in, video out, dvd decoder, video hardware & floppy drive.

Now that's a complete different and old story. You can get your money back.

-

[diamondsw]

Originally posted by Moonray:
Maybe you are the troll, but I'll answer you anyway.


I was refering to the time where Macs ran with SCSI drives and had no IDE/ATA buses, maybe that was a time where you never owned a Mac. In the Apple HD drivers drives which were not models used by Apple were blocked. A simple patch of the driver skipping the model check would help that and you could replace your CD-ROM. Annoying but true.

Well, THAT was an obscure reference to toss into an OS X discussion. And having used a Plus, Classic II, LC III, 7500, B&W G3, Pismo, and now a 2002-iBook, I'd say I've been around a while and seen a lot of system revisions. Who remembers the bitching about System 7 requiring a whole 2MB of RAM, or how keeping System 7.5 running all the way down to the Plus was killing Apple in the mid 90's?

Originally posted by Moonray:
I agree that there's a lot going on with the different DVD formats, but what you explain doesn't exactly hit my point. There are many recorders which support both + and - formats and which I can use to burn only with Toast or any other burn software with own drivers but not with Apple's own drivers. If you see it as reason Apple wants to protect their customers from getting confused about formats, I still see it as a very obvious try to sell the own 'superdrive' instead of having people order a Mac without and buy their own burner for half the price somewhere else. So you think twice if you want DiskCopy or iTunes to burn files or not (and getting iDVD).

Okay, I buy that. I thought you were referring to the built-in drives. Again, it probably comes back to Apple not wanting to add extra support costs. If you hook up a firewire DVD burner and iDVD has a problem, is it Apple's fault, the firewire case's fault, or the DVD writer itself's fault? Or the media? Apple has limited these to avoid support issues.

Originally posted by Moonray:
People in the Microsoft and Linux world do everything to get all hardware supported. And guess why? Right, because they don't sell hardware themselves (and because they think their users are mentally grown up enough to not get confused by different DVD formats).

No, they do it because the PC market is so fragmented, that unless you support a huge amount of hardware, most users' systems won't work. Think of how many combinations of processors, motherboard chipsets, strange video/sound cards, etc there are on that side. Apple deliberately limits these things to ensure the best experience possible. Back in the pre-Amelio era, Apple also had a myriad of motherboard designs to support. Afterwards, they started work on unified motherboard designs and they dropped support for lots of old systems. What we got as a result was a lot of new features (OS 8, primarily) and speed boosts with each OS release (until OS X). We're now back in the mode of getting new features and speed. Most of this is lots of code work and optimizations, and along the way hardware support is going to be dropped.

Originally posted by Moonray:
That CUPS printing broke 10.1 drivers is something within OS X and not related to low level hardware drivers. And a mouse will not send different signals to a beige G3 than to a new G5. What causes problems is intermediate system software but not that piece that reads the mouse signals from a gossamer board and provides them to any OS subroutine that might ask for them.

But CUPS printing DID break all of the 10.1 drivers. How can you say it's not related? And the USB architecture changed in 10.2 - some devices don't offer all the functionality they could because their drivers weren't updated. System upgrades frequently require driver upgrades. The more hardware support you have, the more time you spend doing that instead of writing new features and improving other code.

Originally posted by Moonray:
Apple is not only dedicted to write software but also to make money. And if you keep in mind that they not only sell their soft- but also their hardware you might agree that the more hardware they sell the more profit they make. Now they wouldn't sell much hardware if their new software would run on all old systems. So they are in the lucky position of a monopolist for their own system software and can just drop support for G3s, your or my Mac at any time they want.
The guy who does XPostFacto shows you that it does not need that much engineering power to get OS X run on pretty old machines where the only restriction is the speed but not the functionality. Now Apple has a few 100 times more manpower than him and don't you think they could show a bit more loyality to their customers?

Apple made the decision to spend their time elsewhere. And given the amount of flak they've gotten for OS X through the years, can you imagine if they had put all of this time into driver support and we were saddled with the original OS X, today, but with great driver support? Also, remember that someone who is great on GUI developent may not be the one to write a driver, so just because they have more manpower doesn't mean they can apply it all to driver support.

Originally posted by Moonray:
Oh where you mention USB 2.0, something else what Apple blocked a long time to favour the own FireWire (USB 2 support is abit overdue now anyway). But ... I don't ask to code all these enhancements in these old "already written" drivers, I just say it would not hurt anyone to keep these things alive, and it *won't* slow your Mac down.

Agreed on their overdue support on USB 2, but I still disagree on the matter of legacy code's effect on a large system. I still assert it slows down the code (more conditionals and branching) and limits flexibility.

Originally posted by Moonray:
Yes, I only do small scale programming, but I understand more than just the "interdependencies in a complex system and the development costs and trade-offs". And managing a company of Apple's size includes more than some of those considerations. Just believe that the 'development' of one of these new eye candies takes more engineering power than the support of some older G3s, and that some higher manager guys at Apple believe to attract more new customers with those than they lose with dropping that beige G3 support.
Money is not made by developing operating systems but by managing them.

Yes please.

-

And it's Apple's decision. But again, those guys developing eye candy (really good math/OpenGL guys) may suck at driver and hardware support (assembly, timing, synchronization, etc).

Or their managers just told them "We want a genie effect - do it". Who knows?

[diamondsw]

Originally posted by grumpy:
10.0 through 10.2 omit support for too much of my Apple supplied hardware to be useful for why I purchased the G3 and later OSX including: audio in, audio out, video in, video out, dvd decoder, video hardware & floppy drive.

The last three I fully agree they should have supported, and as other posts indicate, go get your money back. As for the first four, weren't those part of a separate "personality" card they shipped in some G3's and not others?

[diamondsw]

Originally posted by goMac:
Rhapsody supported the pre-G3 machines. When it morphed into OS X they dropped pre-G3. Technically it could still run perfectly on a pre-G3 as shown by XPostFacto. I loaded 10.1 on my 200 mhz 604e and it ran fine. However, the floppy drive didn't work.

Do you see me complaining that OS 10.1 doesn't work with the floppy drive on my 7300? Heck, it was nice that 10.1 even loaded at all.

Apple has to draw the line somewhere. It is now technically impossible to run 10.2 on my 7300. I'm guessing it won't be long until the OS will no longer run on the beige G3 without XPostFacto.

I was going to say that comparisons to the 7300 were unfair as those machines were never officially supported, and we all know that just about EVERYTHING was rewritten bewteen the Rhapsody days and OS X. Not to mention, Rhapsody never had full hardware support on these systems either (serial ports were always an issue, as was the floppy drive - the release notes on what DIDN'T work back then were dozens of pages).

However, I do think it's fair to say that the Beige G3's days are limited (and probably the Wallstreet and Lombard Powerbooks). These machines are the only ones remaining that had ADB, built-in SCSI, the older graphics chipsets on board, built in serial ports, etc. G3 support will be around for a long time due to the iMacs and iBooks.

Look back at the announcements of the iMac, B&W G3, and the Pismo Powerbook - they are fundamentally different from their predecessors. There was a distinct break with the "old" Mac architecture, which hadn't changed too significantly since the Plus added SCSI.

[goMac]

Actually, OS X (10.1 at least) will run on any machine with Open Firmware (using XPostFacto). Open Firmware was the leap beyond the Mac Plus that enabled these changes.

[grumpy]

Originally posted by diamondsw:
The last three I fully agree they should have supported, and as other posts indicate, go get your money back. As for the first four, weren't those part of a separate "personality" card they shipped in some G3's and not others?

I believe this personality card was included with all the initial beige g3/dvd systems for its video out hardware.

I saw the settlement, and I would probably fall into the $25 not-quite-satisfied group. But of course I would much rather have had full hardware support than $25. OS 8&9 were never stable enough for me to fully use the video and audio hardware.

[Enough complaing from me, the beige g3 got me through school and I am ready for a replacement.]

[Mac Write]

RCA out fully works on my Mac. the RCA is one of the reasons I love my Beige G3. and now the G5 has an even better audio in/out Optical.

I will loose my serial modem when I upgrade to Panther but I don't care. I just need Panther for work. There are allot of small things that will really speed up the human-computer processor

[almaink]

A pci card though not free may be a solution for you. I've seen them for as little as 25 us dollars. The onboard ide bus is slow anyway so performance will increase too.

[Mac Write]

Originally posted by almaink:
A pci card though not free may be a solution for you. I've seen them for as little as 25 us dollars. The onboard ide bus is slow anyway so performance will increase too.

All my PCI slots are full. That Sonnet Temp IDE/Firewire/USB card is in the card in a few years. But by then this Mac will be a server. But the opportunity for 300GB+ HD's h,,. I think a nice used faster Mac would make a better file server though.

[drjoe]

Originally posted by Mac Write:
All my PCI slots are full. That Sonnet Temp IDE/Firewire/USB card is in the card in a few years. But by then this Mac will be a server. But the opportunity for 300GB+ HD's h,,. I think a nice used faster Mac would make a better file server though.

Isn't this all a bit premature? 10.3 is not out yet, XPF 3 .0 is not out yet, we don't know that the ROM patch to allow slave drives will not be present in 10.3, etc, etc. Perhaps this entire discussion should be fast forwarded 'till next month untill we see what's what.

[Zimphire]

Anyone who thinks that dropping support for older hardware has nothing to do with boosting new hardware sales is either in denial, or is a bit naive.

I am sure that isn't the ONLY reason, but it is a big one.

Apple survives on it's hardware.

If Apple is going to continue to drop support right and left, people will get perturbed and go elsewhere.

One of the things I always used to brag about with Macs was, their support of older machines.

Meaning your hardware doesn't get obsolete as fast.

There should be no reason Apple shouldn't FULLY support machines 4 years old.

Meaning the OS and all it's basic functions work properly.