OS X on the Lampshade

#1 Wed, 22 Oct 2014 - 16:00

I have two matched lampshades (40gb hdd, DVD, AirPort, 512mb ram) that I want to put fresh installations on. The thing is that I want to avoid the "whatever the latest it will support" rout because I seem to recall I did that once before and was left with essentially a very cool looking powerpoint display. What would be a best suited OS? 10.3? 10.4?

#2 Wed, 22 Oct 2014 - 17:01

Which models? 700MHz? 800MHz?

#3 Wed, 22 Oct 2014 - 18:15

I wouldn't use any less than 10.4 for anything. Tiger was the longest lived single version of OS X (it spanned the PPC/Intel transition, for instance) and there are at least a few diehards out there still "supporting" it. As to performance, about the only element of it that made it any "heavier" than 10.3 was Dashboard; it's easy enough to turn that off if you really don't want it sucking up some RAM. Other than that I recall it being mostly superior to 10.3 performancewise.

(Well, okay, "Spotlight" also can be a pig sometimes, but if necessary it can be tweaked as well.)

So far as I'm concerned Leopard is a cow on anything with a G4 in it. Granted I only base that on a single sample install, but the machine in question was a 1.5Ghz Powerbook, they don't come much faster than that.

#4 Wed, 22 Oct 2014 - 18:27

I haven't used it much at all, but 10.4.11 works fine on my 800MHz iLamp and flies on my 1.33GHz 12" AlBook. Gotta get Faux9 installed on that pair of toys and I'll play with them a lot more.

#5 Wed, 22 Oct 2014 - 19:12

I think I have it on my iMac G4 800 Mhz first gen.

#6 Thu, 23 Oct 2014 - 01:51

Oh geez, sorry. I meant to say I'm running the 700mhz G4.

#7 Thu, 23 Oct 2014 - 01:54

G4 gets 10.4.

G5 gets 10.5.

End of story.

#8 Thu, 23 Oct 2014 - 02:03

I'd recommend 10.1.

But pretty much everyone else will disagree with me on that…

#9 Thu, 23 Oct 2014 - 02:10

Could always do OS9 as well, that should be a compatible model.

#10 Thu, 23 Oct 2014 - 06:22

Dammit. Both of my copies of 10.4 are bad. Looks like I'm stuck with 10.3.

#11 Thu, 23 Oct 2014 - 18:09

I'd probably suggest running OS 9 over 10.3. That shiznet is old, dude. (And not in a "great, it's now retro!" way; more of a "Really, you expect me to use Windows ME?!?" vibe.) I guess the real question, of course, is what you plan to do with the things. If you're going to try surfing the Internet with them I'd say, uhm... Debian Linux, maybe? NetBSD? *That's* a tough one.

#12 Fri, 24 Oct 2014 - 02:52

I second for OS 9. 10.3 doesn't really have much aftermarket support (i.e browsers, apps). 9 is just more fun, especially after raiding the Macintosh Garden.

#13 Fri, 24 Oct 2014 - 03:35

If I wanted to run OS 9 I could use either my 9600 or my B/W G3. I just don't need another classic machine to run my ancient copies of Microsoft Office and iLife on.

Anyways, I dug through my drawers of loose discs and found another 10.4 disc that worked so I'm changing plans again and going back to installing 10.4.