[velocipede]

Salutations fellow Macheads! I've gotten myself into a bit of a mess and hoped to get some help here. A friend of mine recently was given a Performa 6300 CD with no hard drive or system CDs whatsoever. He's going to be using it for simple word processing and maybe web surfing, so it should suffice, but I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to get the HD formatted once it's installed. (Speaking of the HD, I assume any IDE drive will do...?) I've downloaded the System 7.5 installer from Apple and attempted to install it on a partition to then burn a CD, but I get "The installer does not recognize this Mac." Without a bootable CD I obviously can't set up the HD, so...I'm stumped. I do have an old LC laying around with system 6.0, but I suspect I won't be able to install this on the 6300. Any ideas or suggestions greatly appreciated...

[Mac-Guy]

One of the 7.5 floppy disks (if that's how you downloaded it--in multiple pieces) should have Drive Setup on it. If you can boot off that floppy, use Drive Setup to format the drive and then try the install.

Other than that, I don't see a workaround for no system CD.

By the way, the 6300 is a well-known lemon. LowEndMac.com calls it one of their "Road Apples." But if you can get it up and running, it should be okay for basic stuff.

[velocipede]

Well, the problem is that I'm not able to copy the install segments on to a floppy, since I've got a Cube with a CD burner but no floppy drive. The LC isn't internet-ready, so I can't download the install onto it. Would the Performa run the install automatically from a CD?

[TonyRado]

Originally posted by velocipede:
<STRONG>I've downloaded the System 7.5 installer from Apple and attempted to install it on a partition to then burn a CD, but I get "The installer does not recognize this Mac." Without a bootable CD I obviously can't set up the HD, so...I'm stumped. I do have an old LC laying around with system 6.0, but I suspect I won't be able to install this on the 6300. Any ideas or suggestions greatly appreciated... </STRONG>

I'm "reading between the lines" here, but I am assuming the folowing:
(1) you d/l-ed 7.5 to "different" Mac and then burned the CD;
(2) you don't have the HD for the Performa yet (My original IDE crashed, and I went to an External after that); and
(3) you can't boot the Performa from the CD you burned.

The problem could be with the CD you burned, not that you didn't do it right, but b/c the format can't be read by the Performa. Anyway, I am about to "hand me up" my 6300 to my father for the uses that you cited (I am currently running 7.5.5). The consensus in the forums was to upgrade it to 8.6. If you could get your hands on an OS "8.5 disk," it would obviously be much easier to eliminate the issue of whether or not the problem has to do with booting from a burned CD. The other option *might* be to get a Parallel to USB converter by Belkin and try to network the Performa with your working Mac, and then dump the OS onto the HD. This will certainly be *very* tedious, as I was only able to accomplish it once, but it was enough to bump all of my data from my Performa to my Ti.

Actually, I am going to my parents this weekend where I have the original Performa Systems Disk. Post or email me and let me know if you want me to try to burn it to a CD-R for you.

Originally posted by Mac-Guy:
<STRONG>By the way, the 6300 is a well-known lemon. LowEndMac.com calls it one of their "Road Apples." But if you can get it up and running, it should be okay for basic stuff.</STRONG>

Yeah, I've only gotten eight (8) years of use out of mine

[BTP]

Tony- only 8 year? Wow. You should sue Apple for not forcing you to upgrade sooner!

Velocipede- Another vote for 8.6 on that machine. Find OS 8.5 on CD and d/l 8.6 upgrade. That is the easiest thing to do. Simply boot on 8.5, format the drive and install. Then upgrade to 8.6. Where can you find 8.6? Hell, I don't know. Sorry. But ask around and I am sure you will get some ideas. Just maybe ask in another forum.

[Chris_G]

If you're looking for OS software check out this link: http://dealmac.com/articles/30107.html . MacSolutions.com has 8.1 CDs for $19.99, 8.5 with the 8.6 update for $59 and 9.0 with the 9.1 update for $59. They're OEM, so that means no manuals and no support, but its a fair price. And to answer your second question... any IDE hard drive should work in the 6300. I've used drives from IBM, Seagate, Maxtor and Western Digital in my 6320, and all was well. hope this helps.

Chris[/LIST]

[velocipede]

Wow, thanks for help, all. I'll mention DealMac to my friend. A copy of System of 7.5 is winding its way to me (Thanks Tony!) which should at least get it up and running. It's good to know an IDE drive will work, also. I suspected as much, but of course it never hurts to confirm before spending $$. Thanks again to everyone who responded and offered help. -VP

[gto47]

Be careful about the HD, i've been trying to install my old imac HD, which i replaced awhile back into my performa 6300CD. (yes i set the jumpers properly) I was only ever able to get the machine to recognize the drive once, in disk utility, when i initialized it into 4gb partitions(on another machine), which still did not work... {the machine will NOT respond to singularly partitioned or unformatted drives, even in disk utility} I could only see the drive in disk utility with the four partitions, it would not mount. And when i attempted to format it (on the performa), it failed. It failed to initialize properly using the disk utilities contained on OS 7.5.3, 8.5, 8.6, and 9.0.4 discs. I'm still working on getting it to work. I'm considering partitioning it on another machine into even smaller partitions, like 1 gb (which will be a PITA on a 13GB hard drive) Regarding your uses, that machine is extremely slow at most modern functions. Internet is terribly slow, though i've not used it for this purpose for a few years now. The machine had a tendency to invoke random freezes, and continiued to do this, even with system reinstalls, something i believe to be the result of its poorly designed OS 7.5 SSW. The hardware is pretty slow, which is much attributed to its variance in hardware speeds. No, os 6.0 will not work on it, as it only supports computers with black and white monitors, and will not funcion on your hardware configuration anyway. If you want to actually use this machine, i HIGHLY recommend that you use 8.0-8.5. Though people have run 9 on these machines, running it wll make the makeit extremely slow, and the software upgrade to 9 will require a ram upgrade, something that you may want to do anyway. You can use 8.6 too, it should be usable, but it may be more cumbersome on the machine, though definitely not as bad as 9. FYI, apple says the largest system it should run is 8.0, though apple-history.com, a well respected source claims it to be 9.x. Apple's designation may not take ram upgrades into consideration here, but still, its something to think about as far as what SSW to run. As for what uses, this machine can still serve, it can still do a few things. For web surfing, you can use icab, or a back version of ie or netscape (if you can find one), but i stress that you use OS 8.x or higher for internet purposes. For word processing, i've run AppleWorks 5 on mine, and it works perfectly. (even in 7.5). Any version of the earlier claris works should work just fine as well, though i wouldnt recommend using the recent AW6, as the SSW may not agree with its osx elements, depending on what you're running. Well anyway, i've rambled on enough here. Just figured i'd put my two cents in, as i've become somewhat knowledgeable, being in a similar situation. Good luck on getting the machine up and running.

[ 01-20-2002: Message edited by: gto47 ]

[Mac-Guy]

Originally posted by gto47:
<STRONG>Be careful about the HD, i've been trying to install my old imac HD, which i replaced awhile back into my performa 6300CD. (yes i set the jumpers properly) I was only ever able to get the machine to recognize the drive once, in disk utility, when i initialized it into 4gb partitions(on another machine), which still did not work... {the machine will NOT respond to singularly partitioned or unformatted drives, even in disk utility} I could only see the drive in disk utility with the four partitions, it would not mount. And when i attempted to format it (on the performa), it failed. It failed to initialize properly using the disk utilities contained on OS 7.5.3, 8.5, 8.6, and 9.0.4 discs. I'm still working on getting it to work. I'm considering partitioning it on another machine into even smaller partitions, like 1 gb (which will be a PITA on a 13GB hard drive) Regarding your uses, that machine is extremely slow at most modern functions. Internet is terribly slow, though i've not used it for this purpose for a few years now. The machine had a tendency to invoke random freezes, and continiued to do this, even with system reinstalls, something i believe to be the result of its poorly designed OS 7.5 SSW. The hardware is pretty slow, which is much attributed to its variance in hardware speeds. No, os 6.0 will not work on it, as it only supports computers with black and white monitors, and will not funcion on your hardware configuration anyway. If you want to actually use this machine, i HIGHLY recommend that you use 8.0-8.5. Though people have run 9 on these machines, running it wll make the makeit extremely slow, and the software upgrade to 9 will require a ram upgrade, something that you may want to do anyway. You can use 8.6 too, it should be usable, but it may be more cumbersome on the machine, though definitely not as bad as 9. FYI, apple says the largest system it should run is 8.0, though apple-history.com, a well respected source claims it to be 9.x. Apple's designation may not take ram upgrades into consideration here, but still, its something to think about as far as what SSW to run. As for what uses, this machine can still serve, it can still do a few things. For web surfing, you can use icab, or a back version of ie or netscape (if you can find one), but i stress that you use OS 8.x or higher for internet purposes. For word processing, i've run AppleWorks 5 on mine, and it works perfectly. (even in 7.5). Any version of the earlier claris works should work just fine as well, though i wouldnt recommend using the recent AW6, as the SSW may not agree with its osx elements, depending on what you're running. Well anyway, i've rambled on enough here. Just figured i'd put my two cents in, as i've become somewhat knowledgeable, being in a similar situation. Good luck on getting the machine up and running.

[ 01-20-2002: Message edited by: gto47 ]</STRONG>

Geez, how about a paragraph break?