OS Suggestions - Mac Quadra 800

[Zane H. Healy]

>  > Scored this from the local "cleanup week", sans monitor, keyboard and
>mouse.
>>  Has the DayStar Digital 100 MHz PPC upgrade board installed. Now, what do
>I
>>  do with it? I have a keyboard and mouse on the way.
>>
>>  I have plenty of "standard" PC VGA monitors. Will these probably work?
>What
>>  OS would suit this machine the "best". I am primarily a
>Xenix/Linux/Solaris
>>  man, with a smattering of Microsoft products. Which OS will be the most
>>  "usefull" I know the machine has at least 48 Meg of RAM. Not sure exactly
>>  until I get it connected to a monitor.
>>
>>  What are the Pros and Cons of each OS?
>>
>>  Thanks for any suggestions,
>>  Kelly
>>
>
>I think the 800 shipped with OS 7.1 pro. Any of the os 7.X version should
>run fine on that machine, apple allows you to download OS 7.5.3 and upgrade
>it to 7.5.5 for free if you download the disk images from the apple site.
>The unit by itself can go to OS 8.1 (last for 68k macs) but with the PPC
>upgrade you can probably do 8.x (if you like slow machines).
>
>If you are real adventuresome you can go dig up a copy of Apple A/UX unix
>and run that on the 800 (without PPC upgrade).
>
>You will need a VGA to Mac video adapter to use a standard SVGA monitor on
>your Mac.

With the Daystar 100Mhz PPC Upgrade his options might very well be 
limited.  I believe such things of that era tended to require 3rd 
party extensions.  Mac OS 8.x if it will run it, is a nice choice, I 
ran 8.6 for several years on my G4/450, finally upgrading to get 
iTunes.  With the proper software the system will be good for email 
and general office apps, however, surfing on it would be painful.  I 
still have my PowerMac 8500/180 (180Mhz 604e PPC) and surfing on it 
has been painful for years, even on my G4/450 it isn't the most fun, 
though finally installing Mac OS X 10.2 and using Safari made surfing 
on the G4 much better.

I'm guessing A/UX is *totally* out of the question, and that even 
NetBSD or Linux wouldn't run either, but I might be wrong about the 
last two.

		Zane

-- 
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| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
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