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You are here: MacNN Forums > Enthusiast Zone > Classic Macs and Mac OS > Prepping a UMAX S900 for OS X

Prepping a UMAX S900 for OS X
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F�RKB�BB��
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Aug 9, 2002, 08:05 PM
 
Here's what I have:

Umax S900 w/ 400 Mhz G3 MaxPowr card.
500+ MB RAM
9.1 GB SCSI
Non-Apple SCSI CD ROM

1. Assuming I can load OS X, will it run decently on this machine? I don't plan on much real intensive work on it.

2. What about the MaxPOWR card and the non-Apple CD? Will those cause problems?

3. Im thinking about getting a PCI IDE card as well as a USB/Firewire card. A) Which do you recommend and B) how will it affect booting/access under OS X?

3a. If I installed USB/Firewire, could I just get a good USB or Firewire CD burner and use it 100% (get rid of the SCSI CD?)

4. I'd like to load the OS from scratch -- no 9.x anywhere on this machine. Format drive and go.

Anybody who can point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.

Is it worth the trouble????

Farkbubble
( Last edited by F�RKB�BB��; Aug 9, 2002 at 08:14 PM. )
     
chris v
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Aug 10, 2002, 04:36 PM
 
I did a a search for "unsupported" on versiontracker, and it spit out:

XpostFacto

Don't know if this'll work with a UMAX, but there's reports of it working with Power Towers.

Keep us posted as to how it works. I'm kind of curious.


BTW, versiontracker rules.

CV

When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. -- Jonathan Swift.
     
F�RKB�BB��  (op)
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Aug 11, 2002, 09:51 PM
 
I don't know, Chris. The more I think about it, I'm starting to get cold feet. I would just sell the dam thing on eBay, but it would be more hassle to pack and ship than the measley $75 or so I'd get out of it. I can probably sell off the G3 400 card, the RAM and then just throw the rest in the garbage. I have two of these antiques.

I'm starting to think that I might as well just concentrate on playing with my REAL Mac -- dual 800 w/ maxxed ram. Time to say "bye bye" to my old friends UMAX and put 'em out to pasture.

Anybody need some UMAX parts -- cheap? :-)
     
Taipan
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Aug 12, 2002, 02:50 AM
 
Hi!

1. It works great with XPostFacto. I have got an S900 with a XLR8 G3 card running at 440 MHz and MacOS X runs better than I had expected. And Jaguar will be even better. You should get a video card that's supported by OS X, though (ATI Radeon 7000 or even better, Radeon Mac Edition).

2. According to several sources on the web, the brand of the accalerator card shouldn't matter. I don't know about the CD drive, but if it works with OS 9, I am pretty sure it will also work with X. OS X has some problems with SCSI peripherals like Scanners and CD burners, but I haven't heard about problems with CD drives. But you might want to check www.xlr8yourmac.com for further info.

3. I have no personal experience with IDE cards (but looking for one myself), but there's not too much of a choice. There are ATA/66,100 and 133 models from Acard and the Sonnet Tempo models, which resemble the Acard models. There's also a shareware OS X driver for the VST Ultratek, but I don't know if that one is bootable. I think ATA/66 should be enough for most needs. Again, xlr8yourmac is a good source for further info.
USB and Firewire cards will work, as long as they support the OHCI standard (most of them do).

3a. I won't promise, but it should work, though I'm not sure about booting from a firewire CD drive. I wouldn't use USB for that, because of the limited transfer speed (about 6X). BTW, there's no USB 2.0 support for MAC OS, yet.

4. You will at least need OS 9 to start XPostFacto from. Once OS X is installed, it shouldn't be needed anymore, but I would keep at least a minimal classic system, in case any problems should occur.
Anybody who can point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.

If you have a decent video card or are willing to spend some money on one (the Radeon 7000 isn't too expensive), I would definitely go for it. OS X is a great system, mine has only crashed once (after installing Norton Utilities, a known problem that was cured by deinstalling NU) in the (roughly) 6 months I have been using it.

Ciao!
     
Britney F.
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Aug 12, 2002, 10:42 AM
 
Originally posted by F�RKB�BB��:

Is it worth the trouble????
I would say without a doubt it is worth it. I have a PowerTower Pro with 640Mb RAM, G3/450, 6 internal HDs of various sizes, internal CD-R drive, internal Jaz drive, ATTO SCSI card, FW/USB card, 100Mb ethernet card, and a IxMicro 3d card. It runs X.1.5 great and has kept me from having to shell out $1500 for a new mac. My next upgrades are to a Radeon or Radeon 7000 and 10.2.

Check out this page for more info about Xpostfacto.

Britney
     
F�RKB�BB��  (op)
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Aug 12, 2002, 05:37 PM
 
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