[WebServant]

Can Anyone upgrade from OS 8 to OS X without upgrading to OS 9?

Thank you for your answer.

[CharlesS]

Yep, unless you want the Classic environment. For that, you'll need OS 9.

For everything else, OS X will work fine, provided your machine supports it.

[WebServant]

That sounds great.

Thanks CharlesS

[Oneota]

Of course, I'm not aware of any machines that support both OS 8 and Mac OS X 10.4 (the current release). So if your machine currently has Mac OS 8.x on it, you'll probably need to track down a copy of Mac OS X 10.2 or 10.3.

The only exception I can think of is the early Blue & White G3s. They might have come with 8.6.

[dpfenninger]

Originally Posted by Oneota

Of course, I'm not aware of any machines that support both OS 8 and Mac OS X 10.4 (the current release). So if your machine currently has Mac OS 8.x on it, you'll probably need to track down a copy of Mac OS X 10.2 or 10.3.

The only exception I can think of is the early Blue & White G3s. They might have come with 8.6.

My first Mac, a B&W G3/300, came with 8.5.1 installed. Since this is a Tiger-supported machine, you should just be able to pop in the Tiger DVD and install away...no need for a 10.2 or 10.3 install.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by WebServant

Can Anyone upgrade from OS 8 to OS X without upgrading to OS 9?

Thank you for your answer.

Keep in mind it won't really upgrade you. You'll just be installing a 2nd system. None of your settings will be moved over.

[Oneota]

Originally Posted by dpfenninger

My first Mac, a B&W G3/300, came with 8.5.1 installed. Since this is a Tiger-supported machine, you should just be able to pop in the Tiger DVD and install away...no need for a 10.2 or 10.3 install.

Hence my "The only exception I can think of" sentence. My initial statement was referring to the fact that there are no machines that support both 8.0 (or 8.1) and 10.4.

The original poster didn't specify what version of Mac OS 8 was on the machine, nor what kind of machine it was. If it was 8.1, then we're talking beige G3 or older. If it's a beige G3, then Tiger isn't an option. Neither, for that matter, is Panther. If it's older than a beige G3, then no version of OS X will work at all without extra effort.

[undotwa]

Originally Posted by Oneota

Hence my "The only exception I can think of" sentence. My initial statement was referring to the fact that there are no machines that support both 8.0 (or 8.1) and 10.4.

The original poster didn't specify what version of Mac OS 8 was on the machine, nor what kind of machine it was. If it was 8.1, then we're talking beige G3 or older. If it's a beige G3, then Tiger isn't an option. Neither, for that matter, is Panther. If it's older than a beige G3, then no version of OS X will work at all without extra effort.

The Original 233 MHz iMac came with 8.1, if I'm not mistaken. It supports Mac OS X.

[Oneota]

Originally Posted by undotwa

The Original 233 MHz iMac came with 8.1, if I'm not mistaken. It supports Mac OS X.

Yes. Up to Panther. It does not support Tiger (officially). System requirements for Tiger call for a Mac with built-in Firewire.

In the case of iMac, as long as it's of the generation where built-in FireWire was an option, it'll work. So the slot-load iMacs are the oldest iMacs that support Tiger (some of them didn't have FireWire, but they'll work), and those all came with some variant of OS 9, if I'm not mistaken.

[bradoesch]

My slot loading iMac DV shipped with OS 8.6 and officially supports 10.4 Tiger. It was the first generation of slot loading iMacs with:
Base model iMac
-no FireWire
-CD-ROM
-6 GB HD
-64 MB RAM

iMac DV (mine)
-2 FireWire
-DVD-ROM
-10 GB HD
-64 MB RAM

iMac DV SE
-2 FireWire
-DVD-ROM
-13 GB HD
-128 MB RAM


I remember thinking how awesome that extra 3 GB of HD space would be for iMovie and having 128 MB RAM seemed almost excessive.

[Oneota]

Originally Posted by bradoesch

My slot loading iMac DV shipped with OS 8.6 and officially supports 10.4 Tiger.

8.6? Huh. Well, okay, add another exception to the general statement I originally made. B&W G3s, and the very first slot-loaders. Could'a sworn those came with 9.0. Guess not.

[undotwa]

Originally Posted by bradoesch

My slot loading iMac DV shipped with OS 8.6 and officially supports 10.4 Tiger. It was the first generation of slot loading iMacs with:
Base model iMac
-no FireWire
-CD-ROM
-6 GB HD
-64 MB RAM

iMac DV (mine)
-2 FireWire
-DVD-ROM
-10 GB HD
-64 MB RAM

iMac DV SE
-2 FireWire
-DVD-ROM
-13 GB HD
-128 MB RAM


I remember thinking how awesome that extra 3 GB of HD space would be for iMovie and having 128 MB RAM seemed almost excessive.

Very true... ah the days!

[undotwa]

Originally Posted by Oneota

Yes. Up to Panther. It does not support Tiger (officially). System requirements for Tiger call for a Mac with built-in Firewire.

I think it's wise for Apple to follow this path: No computer that was built before the 'DV' line of the iMacs should really run Mac OS X. It's too slow. I tried on my Rev A. iMac - it's hopeless!

[Oneota]

Originally Posted by undotwa

I think it's wise for Apple to follow this path: No computer that was built before the 'DV' line of the iMacs should really run Mac OS X. It's too slow. I tried on my Rev A. iMac - it's hopeless!

Agreed; we had a bunch of tray-load iMacs at my institution. They'd run the Panther image we distributed district-wide, but it wasn't pleasant. And these were machines that the district had invested $$ in RAM upgrades (they all had at least 512 MB RAM in them).

Trying to run Tiger on those would be absolute agony.

[NeilCharter]

A couple of things to consider about installing OS X on older machines:

The machine will run pretty slow unless you upgrade the processor. For tower systems an upgrade to G4 can be relatively cheap. For iMacs there are not many options.

Ideally you will need to increase ram to 512 MB. 256 at the very least.

Size of the hard drive is important. OS X take several gigs of space by itself and truly needs more space for virtual memory. From a 10 gig drive you won't have much space to play with after installing the system and 3rd party apps.

So I guess my point is think about whether it is really worth it. Over the years I have upgraded by G4 sawtooth with extra drives and disk space, video card and more recently a 1 GHz processor ($200) and a USB 2 card ($25).

The machine runs Tiger great, although it is really getting close to the end of it's useful life. I could throw in a DVD-RW drive but it would probably make more sense to move on to a new machine, probably an iMac.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Oneota

Agreed; we had a bunch of tray-load iMacs at my institution. They'd run the Panther image we distributed district-wide, but it wasn't pleasant. And these were machines that the district had invested $$ in RAM upgrades (they all had at least 512 MB RAM in them).

Trying to run Tiger on those would be absolute agony.

Tiger runs a lot BETTER on my (albeit slot-loading) G3 iMac w/ 768MB RAM than Panther did.

[Oneota]

Originally Posted by analogika

Tiger runs a lot BETTER on my (albeit slot-loading) G3 iMac w/ 768MB RAM than Panther did.

I'll bet; Apple's made a lot of architectural improvements to Tiger. But the little, crappy Rage Pro video chipsets in the first iMacs just aren't up to the challenge.

[JellyBeen]

Same here, iMac G3 400DV
Runs Tiger very nicely.
Waiting for my new iMac G5 2.0, 20"

[tooki]

Originally Posted by Oneota

I'll bet; Apple's made a lot of architectural improvements to Tiger. But the little, crappy Rage Pro video chipsets in the first iMacs just aren't up to the challenge.

It's a Rage 128, not Rage Pro, in the slot-load iMacs.

tooki

[analogika]

Yes, that is why he was saying that only the first iMacs aren't up to the challenge.

[Oneota]

Originally Posted by tooki

It's a Rage 128, not Rage Pro, in the slot-load iMacs.

tooki

Indeed. But the first iMacs (which is what I said) had Rage Pros. And they're not up to the task.

[tooki]

Ah, right. Though even that depends on the model; the earliest tray-load iMacs has Rage IIc chips, only later ones had Rage Pro chips.

tooki