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He's not heavy, he's my 8600
I call him the "Big Guy," 'cause that's what he is. My venerable Power Mac 8600, the first professional Mac I ever bought. To get us started on this tale, I'll run down the stats once again: • 450MHz G3 • 672MB of RAM • 32MB of VRAM • USB card • 3 SCSI hard drives (9GB 10,000 rpm, 9GB 7,200 rpm, 4.5GB 7,200 rpm) • OS 9.2.2 • external SCSI CD burner • external SCSI Zip drive • dead internal Zip, removed floppy • tons of software, etc. Whew. That's a lotta stats, signifying very little if you wanna run OS X, which I gave another shot this weekend. My advice? "For Hobbyists Only" ...

I prepared for this for months, you realize. I read every word Ryan Rempel ever wrote (I think), every article anywhere about OS X on "legacy" (non-supported) Macs, all the tips, discussion threads, doo-wacka, doo-wacka-doo. I collected text clippings from online articles, printed out piles of instructions, downloaded the latest versions of XPostFacto, L2CacheConfig, you name it. I even had Jaguar. I mean, I was ready, so ready, in fact, that when I finally sat down Saturday morning to do the deed, it didn't work. Imagine my joy.

What I'm trying to say here is that I was as prepared as only a well-connected Mac site editor and 20-year Mac user could be, at least one who never claimed to be a geek. I did everything I was supposed to do (supposedly) and it didn't work. All I got was a black screen full of white text telling me that the installer couldn't find all those kernel extensions and patches XPostFacto had copied onto the "target volume," so that was that. You don't want to know the details, but I'm going to lay a few of them out here anyway. I'm also sure that plenty of people will immediately see what I did wrong, or think they do, 'cause that's the nature of this game, so of course I welcome any comments. I MAY even try this again. But my point is, unless you're bored with your life and need something to occupy your time, don't bother. I know this will get me 50 emails from people telling me how wonderfully Jaguar runs on their 7500s, but every computer is different. Boy, howdy.

Send me dead flowers
Let me preface this next section by telling you that someone whose OS X-converted 8600 (just like mine) "purrs like a kitten" has just gone back to OS 9 because the spinning beach balls were driving her nuts! In other words, even when successful, etc. etc. But here's what happened to me.

I had the 9GB SCSI drive at ID 0, in place of the original Mac HD, formatted with lovely Apple software into two partitions, one just under 8GB for OS X and the the other all new and shiny with a nice clean copy of OS 9.2.2. The 4.5 GB drive was happily employed as a partial mirror to my main boot drive, the 9GB 10,000 rpm monster that opens folders as fast as lightning bolts. This should do it, right? One, two, three, GO! -- and the Jaguar install crapped out as described above. I did all kinds of silly things to get it to work, and after this long in the business I know lots of silly things, but the procedure was doomed, apparently. Aarghh. By now it was late Saturday afternoon and the sun had come out, so my wife and I walked downtown to score a latte and a chai. After a fine all-organic dinner of broiled chicken, potatoes, and salad, I had another idea.

A couple of guys at the XPostFacto tech forum opined that Jaguar didn't like "Seagate 9 giggers," and seeing as how that's what I had, I thought well, hell: why not wipe the 4.5 GB drive (Quantum Viking) and use it for OS X? Then I could reformat the Seagate, copy everything over from the main boot drive, and have myself two completely synchronized hard drives. Absolute redundancy, think about it. Of course! That would fix everything. The smaller drive didn't have anything on it that wasn't already on the main drive [did a warning light just go off in your brains?], so KOWABUNGA, I did it! Needless to say, Jaguar still wouldn't install, and when I then tried to get to the XPostFacto tech forum to bitch and moan, Mozilla didn't work. Oh no.

Why I hate the stupid dragon
If I had a voodoo doll for Mozilla, I'd be sticking pins in it right now. Wait a minute, maybe I already did (?). If you happen to have had several versions of Netscape and then Mozilla installed on your machine, you know what I'm talking about. THOSE STEENKING "PROFILES"! If you want to make a Mozilla user feel really stupid, just ask him or her to show you where the bookmarks file is. (In fact, if you're in the multiple browser version category, do a Sherlock search for "bookmarks.html," I dare you. If you never have, you'll be amazed.)

Long ago last year when I first tried Mozilla, it "converted" my Netscape 4 profile. I didn't even know I had a Netscape 4 profile, but apparently that was so and it was converted. Since then I've installed Mozilla more than once, moving up to the latest (and last) OS 9 version, and everything has been just fine. But after wiping that 4.5 GB hard drive, Mozilla didn't know who I was. From here on it gets really arcane, so I'll summarize: MOZILLA SUCKS! My profile was right where it was supposed to be but the browser couldn't find it. It took forever and a day, plus re-installing the app, to bring up a browser window that had anything like my bookmarks with it. Fortunately, I've had CopyAgent set up to copy my bookmarks file every day at noon and store it on a special Zip disk. Don't want to lose that, now do we?

"But ... these bookmarks are old ones!"

The file was last modified on January 7, 2003. Where were the elaborately edited and recompiled collections of bookmarks I'd worked on over the last six weeks, my completely reorganized writing resources links, my Iraq war news bookmarks, my incredible folders of Southwestern lore? I'd configured CopyAgent to copy the "bookmarks.html" file from my "John H. Farr" profile in the Profiles folder in the Mozilla folder in the Documents folder on my main hard drive, hadn't I? Yes, absolutely, so I checked the modification date on that: "January 7, 2003." AAAGHHH! The steenking browser had been using a profile with the same name on another hard drive, the one I had erased, of course. Aw, geez.

Helpful hints from Smilin' John
#1: Beware the profiles! Make sure you know which one of the bazillion "bookmarks.html" files on your hard drive(s) is actually being used by whichever browser you're using. Be very, very sure, and copy it faithfully every day so you'll never lose it.

#2: I know I'll hear from thousands of Mac users happily running OS X on their legacy machines, but if you haven't tried installing it yet, fuggeddaboudit! This doesn't apply if you're the sort of person who loves puzzles and has lots of time to get things straight. I don't! It was fun while it lasted, but now I don't care. Bah, humbug. Pay your ten bucks to access the XPostFacto tech forum and gaze with awe and wonder on the many discussion threads about how to get this or that to work properly and "where is my cursor?" if you will, but I am moving on. I plan to live a long time, but you never know, and Apple does make hardware that boots right up into the latest version of OS X, la-dee-dah. I already owe so much to Visa that my picture will show up in a post office near you one of these days, but as soon as I can work up a bit more denial, I'm going to just GET A NEW ONE! The Big Guy can be a backup machine, cool. *

#3: That's is a javelina skull [above]. I bought it for six bucks in a second-hand store here in Taos. The sales clerk had no idea what it was, but six bucks for a skull ain't bad, and I identified it by carefully searching a wonderful Web site called Skulls Unlimited. They even have a special service whereby you ship them your mangy, maggot-ridden head of choice and they'll clean it for you, which I think is probably the nicest thing you can do for Grandma when the time comes and also has to count as the best tip you'll read online all day. Plus, I hasten to point out, for a mere six bucks I now have an actual thing, a solid object that will inspire me and adorn my home space for years to come, something I consider a much better deal than shelling out ten to read what unmarried boys think of know-it-all pony-tailed misanthropes who spend more on teeth than computers and can't make a six-year-old Mac run the most sophisticated operating system in the world. (Stated with manly affection and requisite gruffness, you understand -- and can I getcha a beer? -- but true as true can be.)

I love you guys, but Panther is coming and that's all she wrote.

* Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr , who invites your comments, also reminds one and sundry that there's a supposedly OS X-capable iBook lying around here somewhere. It more or less belongs to his wife these days, but she has to leave the house sometime ...

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