Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (
More info?)
In article <1106690294.897964.85450@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
<huntzing@pica.army.mil> wrote:
> Lisa Horton wrote:
> >
> > Perhaps how newer versions of OSX won't run on somewhat older
> hardware?
>
> OS X is backwards-compatible to every Mac built since Oct 1999.
> An OS 9 bootable Mac was available from Apple until until June 9th,
> 2004.
officially, the current version of osx, aka panther, will run on all g3
macs that include usb on the motherboard. that includes imac and later,
which is summer 1998. unofficially, it will run on earlier macs.
the version of osx prior to panther could officially run on any g3 mac
on the motherboard (with one lone exception). that includes macs going
back to late 1997, and it can be made to run on macs as far back as
1995.
of course, 7 year old computers, be they mac or pc, are not exactly
'fast' compared to computers of today, and they typically can't accept
the large amounts of memory needed for today's bloated applications
anyway.
> That's ~4.75 years of product lifecycle overlap, which is longer than
> the lifespan of most PC's. How much more can we really realistically
> expect?
it is 6.5 years since the first imac shipped. and if you count all macs
that can run osx, including those that take a little extra coaxing, it
covers about 10 years. those older macs may need an upgrade or two for
osx, but they still keep on chugging.
> Okay, there are a few other ADB peripherals. The only one I can think
> of offhand is a graphics tablet, and for these, I see no reason why a
> USB-ADB adaptors wouldn't be suitable:
they aren't suitable at all. the adapters basically support mice and
keyboards. other devices, such as tablets, copy protection dongles, bar
code wands, and whatever else existed on adb don't work so well, or do
not work at all.
> The situation with SCSI is similar, with the difference being that when
> SCSI disappeared off the motherboard circa 1998, all PowerMacs could
> continue to use a PCI slot to have the capability, and Apple offered a
> PCI SCSI card as a BTO for quite awhile. If you have a G4 and want
> SCSI, one aftermarket choice is the Adaptec SCSI Card 2906, which lists
> for $65.
>
> The G5 also has PCI-X compatible SCSI cards available for it, but they
> simply aren't aren't low end and thus not cheap: the Adaptec 29160N
> lists for $329.
>
> For the lower-end iMac's, there's USB-to-SCSI and Firewire-to-SCSI
> cable adaptors.
scsi is not *that* well supported in osx, even with the appropriate
cards. also, quite a number of peripherals never had driver updates.
and the adapters don't work so well for devices other than a hard
drive.
for someone with a lot of scsi peripherals, it *is* a problem. scsi
peripherals are not generally cheap. people who got bitten have
expensive raid arrays, scanners, and printers.
for the average person the transtion from serial ports, adb and scsi to
usb and firewire is not a big deal. computers come with mice and
keyboards and maybe they need to buy a new printer which are usually
pretty cheap too. but for some users with a lot of higher end
peripherals, the change can be costly.
> Now we could complain that OS X required new drivers, but go talk to
> the peripheral manufacturers who for some strange reason aren't
> particularly motivated to write new drivers for old, discontinued
> products. Also, this problem isn't unique to Apple: its cropped up on
> Windows and Linux too.
sometimes support from the mother ship is lacking, making writing
drivers difficult or impossible. in the early days of osx, a lot of
parts weren't entirely done, or were changing so fast that one could
not plan a product around it.
> We're always going to find some holes in backwards-compatibility to
> complain about, if complaining is what we want to do. For example, how
> are we going to go about plugging in an old Appletalk Postscript
> printer? Not that it likely does much good: the last few revisions of
> MS-Word no longer support embedded Postscript commands.
old printers such as those can be made to work but usually need a
localtalk-ethernet bridge and/or an older machine to be a print server.
and someone with such a printer probably has an old machine, so its not
that big a deal. but it is more than swapping a cable.
Facebook
Twitter