Week: 6
The Challenge/New Experience: Install Mac OS 7 on a USB thumb drive.
There is a Macintosh computer on this thumb drive:
No, seriously! This week’s New Thing is a little on the nerdy side (okay, a LOT on the nerdy side). As some of you may know already, I now have five computers — two desktops, two regular laptops and one netbook. Of the five computers, two are running Windows Vista, two are running different Linux operating systems, and the netbook runs both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. The only major operating system not represented in my collection is Mac OS.
Several months ago, I read that it was possible to run one of the older versions of the Mac OS off of a small USB thumb drive. A really old version of Mac — from the mid-to-late ’80s. I really wanted to try it out, but like so many things on the list this year, I just never got around to it.
Tonight, I gave it a shot. Using instructions I got from Linux Beacon, I set about doing the installation. The instructions were pretty easy to follow:
More to follow — keep on reading…
Admittedly, in my haste, I did skip ahead, and therefore ran into a few roadblocks:
Whoops! A question mark’s not good. I went back through the instructions a little more carefully, and was able to continue on successfully. Check it out:
It’s an entire, tiny little Mac computer, running from a little 1GB thumb drive. It includes tiny little software, such as games:
And simple text editing:
Yeah, granted, I’m not going to be running Photoshop on it, or editing a movie or anything. It’s not particularly useful. It’s more of a “because I could” kind of project. I still think it’s pretty cool.
Related posts:
When I came to the page and saw the first photo, it looked like you were holding up a digital home pregnancy test. You had me very scared there.
I’m kind of nostalgic for those old OS’. Those were the days when you could really do stuff with the operating system and there were a billion fixes you could do yourself. I remember the question mark very well. Most things could be fixed. And I ran my first Mac without a hard drive — every floppy had to have the OS on it, until I spent the big bucks and got a second floppy so one disc could have the OS, and one the program.
It’s just very recently that I finally tossed all the floppy discs with programs that would absolutely run on your little Mac. I used to have a choral program, art programs, and a lot of games. The biggest problem you’d have is getting a floppy drive to get to the programs. What version of the OS are you running? I may have one or two programs on CD-ROM that might still work — some text games.
“…it looked like you were holding up a digital home pregnancy test.”
Of all the new things I’m planning to try this year, I assure you that is not one of them.
It’s version 7.0.1, and I can actually download software for it on the internet. It comes with a few apps, which I haven’t explored much yet. Pretty cool, though! Reminds me of the one and only Mac we had at my old job at the engineering firm; I believe it was a Macintosh SE.
Strike that, a browse through Wikipedia suggests that the one we had at work was probably the Performa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Performa
That’s awesome, Sten! Good job! Actually, when I first jailbroke my iPhone I got System 7 running on it, as well!
It’s amazing how many places that little guy will run, huh? Now, if someone could come up with instructions for installing Mac OSX on a netbook, I’d be super stoked.
Also, I wanted to mention that I have Vista on my eee 4g (4GB SSD!) and it runs pretty well. It’s constantly complaining about running out of space, but I am able to do all the standard portable things I like to do just fine. Though, I do end up spending most of my time in Easy Peasy (Ubuntu 9.04 tweaked special for netbooks).
My next netbook will have Win7 on it for sure, I am NOT going back to XP. Christ I hate that OS…
Pete, my netbook is currently running a dual boot of XP (suck!) and Ubuntu Netbook Remix. I don’t think I’ve booted to XP since the first week I had it. I love UNR, and I’m learning new things about it every day. I may remove the Windows partition altogether.
Instructions for installing Mac OSX on a netbook, you say: http://www.enik.ch/2009/03/osx-leopard-1056-on-the-eee-1000h/ This is specifically for the EEE 1000H series, I’m not sure of your model. But you can also look here: http://osxdaily.com/2009/09/19/the-ultimate-resource-for-building-a-hackintosh-netbook-or-hackintosh-desktop/