Apple Power Macintosh 6100 (the very first PowerPC Mac) booting Mac OS 9.1

This video shows an Apple Power Macintosh 6100 booting Mac OS 9.1, along with a quick demonstration of the OS, web browsing and the famous After Dark screensaver running on this old Mac.

This is a very slow machine by today's standards, running at just 60 MHz with 40 MB of RAM and a 1 GB SCSI hard drive, and this certainly shows with the speed that even the old Mac OS 9.1 runs on it (this is the newest OS that it can handle, it would not even think about running OS X whatever you tried! It can also only display a maximum resolution of 832x624 with 256 colours without the optional graphics card (which I don't have).

However, it is an important machine in the history of Apple as it was one of the very first generation of PowerPC Macs, launched at the beginning of 1994 and marketed as "the future is here". The first generation of Power Macs was also the only one to use the startup chime heard here, which is a guitar chord played by jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• apple
• mac
• macintosh
• power
• powerpc
• ppc
• 6100
• nubus
• beige
• vintage
• old
• classic
• macos
• os
• 9.1

[CabaProductions1]

Can I install Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar on Power Macintosh 6100 because I have PowerPC G3 processor, 40GB internal hard drive and 512MB RAM!

[BeigeG3]

@CabaProductions1 I'm afraid not, the "Nubus" architecture of the first-generation Power Macs is very different to the later ones and so is not compatible with OS X. Many of the later Power Macs that were never supported for any version of OS X by Apple can run up to 10.2 Jaguar, and up to 10.4 Tiger if a G3 upgrade is installed (or 10.5 Leopard with a G4 processor upgrade), but with the x100 machines you are limited to OS 9.1 and below.

[CabaProduction]

@BeigeG3 Is Power Macintosh 6100 a x100 machine?

[BeigeG3]

@CabaProduction Yes, that just means any machine whose name is any number followed by 100 - the Power Mac 6100, 7100 and 8100 were the first generation of PowerPC Macs, released in 1994.

[animalcrossing890]

Internet Explorer O_O?

[BeigeG3]

@animalcrossing890 Yep, separate Mac versions of I.E. were made up to version 5.1 for both the Classic OS and OS X, it was arguably the best browser for the Mac until Apple brought out their own browser in the shape of Safari, MS soon killed the Mac version of I.E. after that.

[mememe84]

Damn macs last a long time!

There very impressive for '94 machine!

[matthewsmattsmac8]

My aunt just gave me one of these.

[gatorman22]

This brings back some great memories. From OS 6 to 7 to 8 to 9 to X...Mac 512k, Mac Plus, Quadra 610, G3/233 Desktop, G4 PowerBook...it was an unbelievable time to have a Mac. Alas, the corporate world never really adopted them and I've been stuck in a PC world ever since.

[mrSqueakyRAT]

@Quaaludedude714

Not at all. A modern $200 computer probably has a Celeron or Sempron processor which is still over 200x faster than this computer's 60mhz PowerPC CPU, and easily over a gigabyte of ram beating this mac's measly 40MB of ram (0.04GB).

[animalcrossing890]

@BeigeG3 Okss thanks for the information ^^