5500/225 advice

[3nik]

Hi, I just found this site and it seems alive: it has recent posts, so I registered. Recently I dragged out my 5500/225 which I was given maybe 15 years ago.
Soon after getting it I updated it to 7.6.1, which, according to release notes I shouldn't have. I can't remember how I did it, I guess by downloading it on another machine and burning a CD. Now it starts up with extensions disabled but window borders look a bit stripey. Without disabling extensions I get a mess of bits of windows on the desktop.
My classic mac OS experience ended when I first put OSX on my 233MHz iMac and my 1GHz TiBook and I'm wondering whether maybe life is too short to bother with it.
Maybe I should try BeOS. I'd get rid of the 5500 if it wasn't so heavy to carry to my nearest recycling centre, so I wonder if I can justify keeping it just to have a CD player and floppy reader. How do I connect to an ethernet cable? Any thoughts?

 

[phipli]

Hi, I just found this site and it seems alive: it has recent posts, so I registered. Recently I dragged out my 5500/225 which I was given maybe 15 years ago.
Soon after getting it I updated it to 7.6.1, which, according to release notes I shouldn't have. I can't remember how I did it, I guess by downloading it on another machine and burning a CD. Now it starts up with extensions disabled but window borders look a bit stripey. Without disabling extensions I get a mess of bits of windows on the desktop.
My classic mac OS experience ended when I first put OSX on my 233MHz iMac and my 1GHz TiBook and I'm wondering whether maybe life is too short to bother with it.
Maybe I should try BeOS. I'd get rid of the 5500 if it wasn't so heavy to carry to my nearest recycling centre, so I wonder if I can justify keeping it just to have a CD player and floppy reader. How do I connect to an ethernet cable? Any thoughts?

If you just update it to Mac OS 8.1 it will be fine again.

The cheapest way to get ethernet is a PCI ethernet card. There are some common cheap models that work in old macs, for example, ones based around the RTL8139 or RTL8169S chip.

The mac drivers can be found here :

https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/realtek-rtl8169s-gigabit-ethernet-card-driver

https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/realtek-ethernet-pci-card-drivers-rtl8100blrtl8100clrtl8101lrtl8139cl-rtl8139clrtl8139dlrtl8100

The cards are common as muck on eBay for less than 10 monitory units of choice.

Mac OS 8.1 is here : https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macintosh-system-81-mac-os-81

 

[3nik]

If you just update it to Mac OS 8.1 it will be fine again.

The cheapest way to get ethernet is a PCI ethernet card. There are some common cheap models that work in old macs, for example, ones based around the RTL8139 or RTL8169S chip.

The mac drivers can be found here :

https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/realtek-rtl8169s-gigabit-ethernet-card-driver

https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/realtek-ethernet-pci-card-drivers-rtl8100blrtl8100clrtl8101lrtl8139cl-rtl8139clrtl8139dlrtl8100

The cards are common as muck on eBay for less than 10 monitory units of choice.

Mac OS 8.1 is here : https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macintosh-system-81-mac-os-81

Thanks, that's great, I take it 8.1 is as high as it'll go, then. I'll see if I've got 10 pesetas lying around anyway and meander down eBay ;-)

 

[phipli]

Thanks, that's great, I take it 8.1 is as high as it'll go, then. I'll see if I've got 10 pesetas lying around anyway and meander down eBay ;-)

It will go all the way to 9.1, or 9.2.2 with a bit of messing. You struggle to get OSX on them because they have low maximum RAM limits. I said 8.1 because it is the next "good" OS on from 7.6.1. Plus it's memory requirements are pretty similar to 7.6.1 and so without finding out how much RAM you have I know it will work fine

10 pesetas sounds fine to me people use those things to wedge doors open.

 

[3nik]

It will go all the way to 9.1, or 9.2.2 with a bit of messing. You struggle to get OSX on them because they have low maximum RAM limits. I said 8.1 because it is the next "good" OS on from 7.6.1. Plus it's memory requirements are pretty similar to 7.6.1 and so without finding out how much RAM you have I know it will work fine

10 pesetas sounds fine to me people use those things to wedge doors open.

ta again, I wouldn't try OSX on it, but I seem to remember 9.2.2 being much better behaved on the iMac than the 8's. I should try to max up the RAM too. I bought a stick off eBay before which didn't register in the 5500, so I presumed it was duff, I'll try again. I like the chime and the extra heat it throws out will be good in the winter.

 

[phipli]

ta again, I wouldn't try OSX on it, but I seem to remember 9.2.2 being much better behaved on the iMac than the 8's. I should try to max up the RAM too. I bought a stick off eBay before which didn't register in the 5500, so I presumed it was duff, I'll try again. I like the chime and the extra heat it throws out will be good in the winter.

Personally I wouldn't got past 8.6 for my only boot. 9.x is less stable on beige macs than it is on iMacs and other later macs, plus it takes forever to boot... and uses loads of RAM...

9.2.2 needs hacks to install on a beige mac, 9.1 is the maximum that just installs.

I'd just install 8.1 or 8.6

Well, I'd install both on two partitions, but then you'd have to wipe the machine and do a clean install.

 

[3nik]

Now I have my PCI-Ethernet card fitted, how would I go about getting the drivers installed, and in fact any tips on any tech info generally?
I'm techy enough to be into Linux, Plan9 and happy with -nix terminal command-line.
Once fitted, I did some random clicking in Control Panels to see if I could find any sign of networking having been possible previously, but it was random, and the "AOL" entry in TCP/IP didn't generate an IP from my router.
The floppy drive and the CD-ROM both seem to work so I might have to get an Internet caff to burn me a floppy or a CD I guess as I trashed all my optical drive stuff a while back, have never had a floppy writer or seen a SCSI in the wild....

 

[phipli]

Now I have my PCI-Ethernet card fitted, how would I go about getting the drivers installed, and in fact any tips on any tech info generally?
I'm techy enough to be into Linux, Plan9 and happy with -nix terminal command-line.
Once fitted, I did some random clicking in Control Panels to see if I could find any sign of networking having been possible previously, but it was random, and the "AOL" entry in TCP/IP didn't generate an IP from my router.
The floppy drive and the CD-ROM both seem to work so I might have to get an Internet caff to burn me a floppy or a CD I guess as I trashed all my optical drive stuff a while back, have never had a floppy writer or seen a SCSI in the wild....

What ethernet card is it? Do you have the main chip part number? Or a photo of the card? Cheapest solution based on what you're saying is going to be to buy a second hand or borrow a USB CD burner and a pack of CD-Rs, although some old drives don't like reading some brands of CD-Rs.

and in fact any tips on any tech info generally?

Don't buy computers that you can't upgrade or you'll have to buy an entire new computer sooner. Ideally, you want some empty RAM slots when you buy, so you can later increase the RAM without having to remove the existing RAM. Its too early to adopt RiscV based computers as a daily. When buying disks, consider the cost per MB and try to target the best value like that, but at the end of the day, if you don't need the space it isn't worth it. FireWire 400 has better sustained transfer rates than USB2.

 

[3nik]

It's an RTL8139 card. After writing the post above I had a look at my Plan9 Thinkpad and remembered it's got a CD-RW so I should manage to burn then get the drivers loaded in that way. I've actually got a PCI FW 400 card I got for a PC-build project that I never did, so I might get round to trying that out, but thr ethernet takes priority.
For tops on tech info, I meant specifically for machines running Classic MacOS: for example I realised I'd no experience of installing a driver on classic, although the driver README says just double-click. I'm just regretting chucking out my optical stuff, USB and FW400 to IDE caddies etc. 'Twas ever thus....

 

[phipli]

It's an RTL8139 card. After writing the post above I had a look at my Plan9 Thinkpad and remembered it's got a CD-RW so I should manage to burn then get the drivers loaded in that way. I've actually got a PCI FW 400 card I got for a PC-build project that I never did, so I might get round to trying that out, but thr ethernet takes priority.
For tops on tech info, I meant specifically for machines running Classic MacOS: for example I realised I'd no experience of installing a driver on classic, although the driver README says just double-click. I'm just regretting chucking out my optical stuff, USB and FW400 to IDE caddies etc. 'Twas ever thus....

Most stuff comes with an installer, so you just double click the installer application and follow onscreen instructions once you've decompressed it. If someone has just grabbed the actual files, then what you do depends on what the files are. Drivers are usually either an "Extension" or a "Control Panel".

An Extension sort of a little application that runs during boot, sometimes staying running in the background. A Control Panel is usually a combination of an Extension, but also has a user interface that you can load up to change settings. Some software comes with both, or multiples of each, or one, or the other. If you just find someone has provided an Extension and/or Control Panel, you can drop them on the folder called "System Folder" and most of the time (not always) the OS will put them in the right folder and tell you where it put them.

The traps...

The big mistake that people without experience with old macs make is that they expand archives on their modern computer before moving the files. Old mac files have a data fork and a resource fork. Uncompressing them on a PC will trash the files, and irretrievably corrupt them by destroying critical data in the resource fork. Decompress files on the target machine.

Next, the files themselves, the archives, will lose their characteristics when you move them around between the internet, modern computers and back to old computers. If they are a .sit, .bin or .hqx, just drag and drop them on Stuffit Expander 5 or 5.5 and you'll 9 times out of 10 be fine. zips, use maczip. Disk images is more complicated.

I'm not going to be able to teach you all about the OS, I'd recommend finding some videos or perhaps grabbing a book like "The Macintosh Bible". The old Apple "Getting Started" manuals that came with computers are a good start for the absolute basics.