MacOS System 7.5 Pro - Copland aka 8.0

[blackdogvintagecomputers]

Anyone ever seen this version of MacOS?

I was testing some SCSI drives and one booted to Copland System 7.5 Pro. The About this Mac shows 8.0.

 

[eric]

I cant say i recognize the 7.5 Pro branding - though I have seen alpha's and betas of Copland on the garden. Best get an image of that HDD so we can dig in and see what alpha/beta it is!

 

[scj312]

Is it possibly a standard 8.0 with a custom boot splash?

 

[Nycturne]

Is it possibly a standard 8.0 with a custom boot splash?

I do wonder about that. Early alphas for developers in 1997 (which this has a 1997 copyright) were stamped with MacOS 7.7 as the version. MacOS 8 became the name later in development as the July release approached. MacOS 7.7 releases also didn't yet have the "About this Computer" banner that was used in MacOS 8. So this is a weird duck, 7.5 introduced the "MacOS" splash screen on boot that 7.6, 7.7 and 8.0 would go on to use. So while it's not impossible for an internal build to have a different splash screen, that would have been extra effort, and should have predated 1997, which means no 7.7 or 8.0 versioning in About this Computer. So something doesn't track here if it's an Apple splash screen.

I do suspect this was someone's idea of a tongue in cheek splash screen. I vaguely remember being able to edit the system file with ResEdit?

 

[misterg33]

Copland didn't have "extensions" that would load across the bottom of the screen.

 

[phipli]

Yeah, that is just Mac OS 8.0 with a custom boot screen.

I used to always be editing mine as a kid, and there was commercial software to make it easier. Not that it was hard anyway, you just needed to shove a MacPaint document or file with a pict resource in the system folder with the right name.

 

[blackdogvintagecomputers]

I didn’t boot it into Copland. This was the MacOS install. I looked around briefly and didn’t notice anything unusual as compared to 8.0. I did not see the Copland folder although I didn’t know to look for it at the time. I’ll plug it in again and take a closer look. I think it may be a custom boot screen.

 

[blackdogvintagecomputers]

I looked at the disk further. I found the boot screen as a Photoshop image file in the System Folder. The machine also has an extension called Aaron BeOs that according to description on the extension changes the OS appearance to match the future look and feel of Copland. The extension had a date of 95, if I recall correctly. This was a vanilla System 8.0 install. The Finder and System files reflected the 8.0 version and were dated June or July 97. The machine was last used in 2003. I think I pulled the 230MB drive from a non-working Centris 610. Not suitable for running Copland.

 

[blackdogvintagecomputers]

I’ll have to look at that Aaron BeOs extension again. The comment in extension manager described it as appearance extension for Copland. Makes sense given the startup screen. I don’t see anything called Aaron BeOs on Macintosh Garden. I do see Aaron be seems not same.

Updates: ~Aaron’s BeBox is the extension Version 1.0 built by Greg Landweber, ISYS Development Corp. The extension was created Mar 16, 1996.

I still do not see this on Macintosh Garden. Not sure what it is actually doing as I don’t know what The Copland appearance looks like.

”This extension gives your Mac a user experience resembling the 3D theme offered in Apple’s upcoming “Copland” MacOS release.…”

 

[Yoda]

I had Aaron installed on my PowerBook 1400, running Mac OS 7.6.1 (I think). All it did/does is alter the visual aspects of the UI to include shading effects which gives the appearance of depth to icons and windows. Quite a popular extension at the time if I recall, since stock Mac OS was rather unexceptional before 8.0

It's on the garden if you search for 'Aaron' (eg: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/aaron-161 ).