[DuoList] OSX on 2400c

[Ivan Drucker]

On 10/6/10 11:56 AM, "dijkwel at aol.com" <dijkwel at aol.com> wrote:

> Just dug up my old 2400c and succesfully installed OS 9.1 on it. Now
> want to take it to the next level....OSX. I downloaded XPostFacto 2.2
> onto my 2400c and hooked up a SCSI CD-ROM drive to the 2400c.
> After starting up XPostFacto and inserting the OS 10.0 installer-CD,
> a lot seemed to be copies and something took place after that but
> then the 2400c stopped doing much without actually freezing.
> Restarting it didn't do much either way, so I am kind of at a loss what
> to do next: try again, use another version of XPostFacto, try the
> whole process over again in SCSI-disk mode.....?
> Any suggestions welcome, thanks, Peter.

As an early OS X on 2400 adopter, and relatively recent re-doer, let me
recall my thoughts on this:

- Do it for fun -- and it is fun -- but don't expect a really viable OS X
experience. The 800x600 screen and slow performance will convince you of
that quickly, if the below limitations don't.

- Mac OS X 10.2.8 is the latest viable version; later versions don't have
usable PC card slots (and therefore connectivity), and the video is all
screwy. Furthermore, to have the PC card slots work, you have to bring over
the extensions from 10.2.6 (or maybe 10.2.5). If you add Firefox 2 and
Office 2004 to this, you have a barely viable "modern" computing
environment. 

- A G3 upgrade might actually be required for 10.2.x ; if it isn't, it will
be unusably slow anyway.

- You'll have no brightness or volume control, and if both PC card slots are
loaded at startup, neither slot is usable. There are other weird issues too.

- I can't remember if 16-bit PC Cards work. I think they do. If not, you'll
need the Cardbus modification to your motherboard if you want connectivity.

- I don't think I ever got XPF to install OS X on that machine. I only
succeeded by one of these methods:

--- Remove the drive, install from another PowerPC Mac, replace (remember to
keep your OS X partition under 8 GB, and within the first 8 GB of the drive)

--- Or, partition the drive so your X partition is under 2 GB, and within
the first 8 GB of the drive. Make another partition on another Mac of the
same size, and install X on it. Use some combination of Disk Copy 6.3
(actually, the harder-to-find 6.5b11 might be required) or Apple Software
Restore or both to image the drive, then copy the image over to the 2400 via
network, SCSI disk mode, or USB/Firewire if you have the cards for it. Then,
use the same on the other side to restore the drive to the 2 GB partition on
the 2400. I really can't remember how to do this anymore. I *think* that if
your other is a laptop with SCSI, or any Mac with FireWire and you have a
FireWire card for the 2400, you can go into Target Disk Mode on the other
Mac, and then use ASR on the 2400 to directly copy the 2 GB partition
(rather than an image file). Maybe. It's been a while.

Hope this helps,
Ivan.

P.S. If you think this is retro, you should see the stuff I've been doing
lately to network Apple II's to modern machines...

P.P.S. Hi Ralph!