Mac OS 8 on 10mb RAM: Is it possible???

#1 Sun, 28 Feb 2010 - 20:32 68kMLA

Has anyone tried this?

#2 Mon, 1 Mar 2010 - 01:38 68kMLA

No. I think the smallest I've done it on is 20 MB in a Quadra 605.

#3 Mon, 1 Mar 2010 - 03:19 68kMLA

I've done it with 12MB on a Powerbook 1400cs. It runs as well as anything can with 12MB of RAM I guess. What computer are you going to try it on? PPC or 040?

#4 Mon, 1 Mar 2010 - 03:29 68kMLA

I was just curious if it was possible. I do not know whether or not the installer does a RAM check to make sure you have 12mb. If it does, I thought maybe you could just insert an OS 8 system folder onto the hard drive. It depends if it really needs 12mb.

#5 Mon, 1 Mar 2010 - 06:19 68kMLA

Possible? Probably...

But one day you might want to run a program as well! I advocate using OS which are from a similar time period as the hardware, and I can't imagine which late 90s mac you would need to use with 10 MB of RAM. For a 6 system or earlier it shouldn't be much trouble.

#6 Mon, 1 Mar 2010 - 13:17 68kMLA

I once used OS 8 on an LC580 with 12MB of RAM. It booted, and sort of ran, but it was terrible, I wouldn't recommend it at all.

FWIW, OS 8 doesn't actually do a check at startup to see how much RAM you have - I've actually booted OS 8 on a machine with 4MB of RAM before...with extensions off, it boots....and then runs out of memory when it tries to load the Finder.