The following is the list of Macintosh models that support System 6: Thankfully, per the above there is a sizeable set of other options available to choose from. Clearly, a more economical option was needed! For today, it is blisteringly expensive! I saw one listed on eBay recently for the princely sum of $999. For the day, the machine was blisteringly fast. The Macintosh IIfx sports a 0, up to 128 MB of RAM, and a variety of hardware accelerators, including a pair of processors just for I/O (that’s 20x more 6502 than in an ENTIRE Apple II!). When I went looking for a System 6 capable Macintosh, I was immediately drawn to the Macintosh IIfx, the “wicked fast” king of the hill for 68030-based Macintoshes. What do you need to get started with System 6? Well first of all, you need a Macintosh that can run System 6! There is a large set of such Macintoshes happily, but sadly they are becoming harder and harder to find on eBay for a reasonable price. I had the displeasure of working with 386 systems “back in the day” and I recall quite literally starting them booting and then stepping away to get a coffee, only to come back some time later and find that the CPU and the hard drive were still grinding away, having not yet completed the seemingly herculean task of booting DOS and Windows.īy comparison, a Macintosh IIsi (a contemporary Apple system of the day), equipped with a 0 and running System 6, cold booted from power on to desktop in only 7 seconds… and the desktop that it booted to was an elegant, stable, well-thought out interface relative to the equivalent mess presented by Windows 3.0.Īdmittedly, the 7-second number was for a minimal configuration, but to provide another data point, my Macintosh IIsi today, running a fully configured System 6 environment with all the applications, INITs and control panels I want, achieves the same result in only 60s, still leaps and bounds ahead of the competition from the Wintel camp.Īlright, enough Windows-bashing, however much fun it may be! Lets get started with the hardware. Now if this seems like a bit of excessive hyperbole to you, you may be right, but it is hyperbole grounded in personal experience. These horses were saddled with the twin disasters that were Windows 2.1 and Windows 3.0, resulting in an overall user experience that can only be likened to cold molasses running uphill. Intel 80386 processors running at 12 to 33 MHz were the racehorses of the PC world. In 1988, the competitive offer from the PC camp was a sad thing indeed. Lets stop and consider that competition for a moment. At the time, the combination of the Motorola 68030 and Macintosh System 6 was a slam-dunk against the competition.Ī Brief Look Back – System 6 And Its Competition Its principal hardware running mate in the Apple product family of the day was Motorola’s 68030 processor, running at speeds up to the Mac IIfx’s “wicked fast” 40MHz. ![]() What was System 6’s “time in the sun”? Well, System 6 debuted in 1988 and was Apple’s primary OS offer until it was replaced by System 7 in 1991. ![]() The reasons for this will hopefully become apparent as you read through what follows, and are largely a function of System 6’s “time in the sun”, and what the computing world was like at that time. ![]() The difference between System 6 and System 7 is enormous, and for beginners it is my guess that System 7 (or later) will serve your interests much more easily. If you have never dabbled in the world of vintage Macs before, I would not recommend System 6 as the place to start. Despite the visual similarity to System 7 and later releases of Mac OS, the operational reality of System 6 is quite different. Let’s assume that you have decided to dive into System 6 head first, as I did just recently.Ī whole new universe awaits you, and for those who are familiar with System 7 or later, it will take both some unlearning and some new learning to become proficient in this older, smaller but nonetheless very appealing environment.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |