I used a WGS 9150 for a while. My one came with 7.6 installed, fully loaded with very noisy harddisk drives and the RAID software mentioned in the BYTE magazine. I disconnected the drives and installed one cheap and silent drive for test operation running Mac OS 9.1. The machine works fine with Mac OS 9.1. With OS9helper software Mac OS 9.2.2 should work well, too. I have not tested the RAID software, but I suspect it will not work with volumes larger than 2 or 4 GB. I can not recommend the retrospect software, as my one experience with dantz retrospect was a desaster.
I would recommend to use at least Mac OS 8.1 to use the machine as a server, to take advantage of the Mac OS extended volume format (HFS+). A Sonnet G3 upgrade will give a noticeable speed bump. As long you will use the computer as a server, only, you need not to worry about the video output. If else, think about getting the Apple HPV card for the PDS slot. Keep in mind, that this card interferes with the Sonnet processor upgrade. To install both, a special adapter connector is required.
A problem with a reliable operation of this machine might be the fact, that it does not have any connector of a recent standard (Nubus, DB15, PDS, RS422, ADB, SCSI, AAUI, PS/2 RAM). You might look for a bunch of cheap SCSI-IDE adaptors, to install drives that still will last for some years of continuous operation (harddisk as well as optical or ZIP; the tape streamer usually will not work if not used for a long time).
Question:
Does anyone know if there is a way to have more than 256 MB of RAM working in the WGS 9150, like using 64 MB sticks instead of the maximum 32 MB specified as the maximum at the time of manufacturing this Mac ?
I would recommend to use at least Mac OS 8.1 to use the machine as a server, to take advantage of the Mac OS extended volume format (HFS+). A Sonnet G3 upgrade will give a noticeable speed bump. As long you will use the computer as a server, only, you need not to worry about the video output. If else, think about getting the Apple HPV card for the PDS slot. Keep in mind, that this card interferes with the Sonnet processor upgrade. To install both, a special adapter connector is required.
A problem with a reliable operation of this machine might be the fact, that it does not have any connector of a recent standard (Nubus, DB15, PDS, RS422, ADB, SCSI, AAUI, PS/2 RAM). You might look for a bunch of cheap SCSI-IDE adaptors, to install drives that still will last for some years of continuous operation (harddisk as well as optical or ZIP; the tape streamer usually will not work if not used for a long time).
Question:
Does anyone know if there is a way to have more than 256 MB of RAM working in the WGS 9150, like using 64 MB sticks instead of the maximum 32 MB specified as the maximum at the time of manufacturing this Mac ?