" Hey Mike,
I thought I'd give you some more details on a February/99 build of Mac OS X Server install on a 9500.

The new installer apparently checks machine ID and shows a dialog if your machine is not 'offically' supported:

Mac OS X Server cannot be installed on this computer.

However, they have included a workaround. There is a Special menu available that gives this option:

Allow installation on unsupported configurations

Warning! This might render your computer and hard disk unusuable. You must reformat your disk and reinstall the Mac OS to recover, should this occur. Apple will not provide any support for problems you experience if you select this option.

After choosing this, you can continue with install. Select the HD or partition you want to be used as with any Mac OS install. The installer then configures your machine to boot off the OS X partition of CD, and then reboots.

After reboot, the installation process continues until the base system is installed, then reboots again. The desktop appears and then more files are installed. After ANOTHER reboot, you are presented with the familiar Mac OS style Setup Assistant.

After configuring various setup options - network settings, services(apache, appleshare, quicktime streaming, etc), users - the machine then reboots yet again and you can login to your machine and get to work!

Note: This particular 9500 had a PowerLogix G3 upgrade card installed during this process, and no problems were encountered at all.
[Backside cache was not enabled he said - see below for details-Mike]

I'm sure many people will be able to use this product with older Power Macs as a very capable web/intranet server with little difficulties. You might consider using it to serve your site!

- Anonymous Speed Freak "

Updates/Additional Comments:

More on OS X/G3 CPU Cards: - last week's news had several reports that reported OS X failed to boot with many G3 CPU cards due to too fast a cache speed (one reader said 1:1.5). A 220/110 G3 owner was able to boot by lowering the CPU speed to a point where this ratio resulted in a speed the cache could run reliably. I suggested to an owner that had lockups at boot to try lowering the card speed - he replied:

" Actually, Mike, that hint helped me "break the code." The key is the _bus multiplier_. On my particular system (7600, XLR8 233), OS X would not work at all if the bus multiplier was _greater_ than 5. Any combination of 4.5 or 5 worked; any combination using 5.5 (the default) or greater didn't, causing the above-referenced errors.
I wonder if your other readers will find this to be true.
Thanks!
Rick Zeman "

I welcome feedback on OS X installs on G3 CPU upgraded Macs. Remember to set the CPU speed so that a 1.5:1 cache ratio will result in a cache speed that is at or below the card's cache speed rating.

FYI: After a reader replied OS X would not install on the slave I suggested installing it on the master, with 8.5 on the slave drive (to allow booting with the previous OS). He replied this did work:

" I managed to install OS X on the master and 8.5 on the slave. I can boot without any problems with either disk.
Thanks for your input! "

Many companies (Apple incl.) say Slaves are not supported/don't work on the primary IDE bus of the B&W G3, but as over 100 readers who have followed my guide since it was posted in January know - it does work.

6400/6500 Report:

" Installing on 6500 & 6400 is futile so far. it sets up the drive for OSX Server, then refuses to reboot and go into the install process. guess i better start saving for G3."

Getting too many reports to list them all but generally owners of 8600/9600 report success (one reader with a non-apple CDrom replacement had to restore the Apple CDrom drive). Mach 5 (8600/9600's with Apple's 250-350MHz 604 CPU Cards (Sept 97 or later dates I think) are reported to have 'G3 clean' ROMs btw.

A reader had asked for more info on the 'unsupported' macs menu item.

" During the installation of the latest build, there is a "Special" menu available in the menu bar when the installer states that the software cannot be installed on a particular computer. "

OS X Readme file Online:

[Page Pulled as of Sunday night 3/8/99 so this post was removed.]

More feedback on OS X beta (not sure what release and the comments make me wonder about the basic system stability):

" Mike,
i like to share some first experience with MacOS X Server installed on a 7600 Power Mac and on a PowerBook G3 at 233 Mhz. I was NOT able to get it installed on an G3 upgraded PCI Mac, not even with a trick. The 7600 machine runs with a PPC604e at 200 Mhz.

The installation on my 7600 shows a graphics driver bug where windows and icons and menus will leave traces behind and show some garbage in the menu bar. The user interface is still nextish in style in some places. On the PowerBook G3 these glitches do not occur.

Overall speed and responsiveness is a bit disappointing compared to the speed of an average NT Server on a 166Mhz PII PC. My BeOS and Linux systems are definitively faster in terms of responsiveness and launch times. Application launching is really slow, whereas networking seems to be very fast.

Installation is easy and done within 1 hour. I think the final product will be delayed since i see too many bugs in the interaction between the BlueBox and the Workspace Manager and with crashing apps. This is more or less in its current state an early adopters and geek OS rather than something i would like to trust as a server in my office.

Everyone who hopes to use this as a replacement for an AppleShare Server beware! I am wondering where Apple has built in the brakes, probably there is still some debugging going on within the system. I hope this version will not be what we all expect to be delivered as GM. But what really puzzles me are the obvious bugs, where sometimes apps will simply not launch and quit without reason. I really cannot imagine how the netbooting of 20 iMacs and live streaming of Quicktime with this OS was made!

All in all the test was more of a disappointment with hopes for the near future! "

OS X Performance tests and a note on interleaved RAM:

" Mike,
Here are some BYTEmark(DR/3) results from my latest tests:

9500/180MP - Mac OS X Server 2/99 Bluebox
===========OVERALL============
INTEGER INDEX: 4.814277
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 3.063445
(90 MHz Dell Pentium = 1.00)
==============================

9500/G3 - Mac OS X Server 2/99 Bluebox
===========OVERALL============
INTEGER INDEX: 9.700614
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 6.513660
(90 MHz Dell Pentium = 1.00)
==============================

9500/G3 - Mac OS 8.5.1 Native
===========OVERALL============
INTEGER INDEX: 9.934745
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 6.669016
(90 MHz Dell Pentium = 1.00)
==============================

There is also an interesting Readme in Mac OS X Server concerning interleaved ram. According to the release note, using non-interleaved ram may result in problems. The workaround is to use interleaved ram.
- Anonymous Speed Freak "

A PowerCenter Pro owner reports a DR/2 failure (stock 604E CPU card)

" Hi Mike,
I just wanted to add that installation of DR2 did NOT work on my Powercenter Pro 180 (overclocked to 210). It gave me a message that my machine was unsupported (same gestalt ID as 7200 series). Using "Wish I were..." to gestalt hack the ID did let me install to my HD (not on the 2930 card), but rebooting left me with an Openfirmware boot failure afterwards. Had to reset the entire thing by pulling out the battery. So unless someone can hack the LinuxPPC/MkLinux booter to boot OS X server on the 7200 type machines, PCP owners are out of luck.
Tony "

A PowerTower Pro owner reports on an OS X install, but from his comments it is an earlier build than the (above noted) 2/99 version:

" Mike,
I have successfully installed a pre-release version of OS X on a PowerTower Pro 200. The installation proceeded as mentioned by the 9500 user except the installer never mentioned being run on an unsupported machine. The hard drive used for the install was connected to the motherboard's internal SCSI port. The CPU is the stock 604e, original IXMicro TwinTurbo and IXMicro Ult. Rez cards, FWB Jackhammer SCSI card. I had no problem installing or booting OS X. I assume the 2/99 build contained more safeguards against use on unsupported configurations and that is why I received no warnings

Problems.
I did lose a SoftRaid striped array. OS X did not recognize it and after installation booting to another drive running OS 8.5 also did not recognize it. I assume OS X wrote or attempted to write a driver to it and erased the old driver. I would of course HIGHLY recommend backing up all hard disks before installing any OS.

I performed this install only as a test. I did not attempt to run any applications or benchmarks
(Anom) "

The 9500/PowerForce G3 tester (original post above) replied regarding the issue of backside cache enabling of the PF G3 card under OS X:

" Mike,
I didn't have the cache enabled. I have tried the G3CacheEnabler before with no success. I'll be trying to get in touch with the author after the release to see if he's still working on it. I would think that the upgrade card manufacturers would come out with an OS X Server version of their control panels, since the consumer OS X will be similar.
- Anonymous Speed Freak "