Welcome to the Wrong OS

Several years ago, I decided I wanted a desktop computer, so I purchased a used Power Macintosh 6100/60. This particular 6100 still had it's original 16 MB of RAM, 700 MB hard disk, and System 7.5.

Shortly after I bought it, Mac OS 8.5 came out. That is when I made a big mistake. I wanted to use the new OS, so installed Mac OS 8.5 on my 6100 with 16 MB of RAM.

Now, I know 8.5 is bad on a 6100 - but with only 16 MB of RAM it was terrible! It would give me "out of memory" messages and sometimes just halt for a moment to catch up with itself. The only thing I liked is that it was very stable. I figured more memory would fix some of the problems, so I went out and bought some. I increased the memory to 24 MB. That was the time Mac OS 8.6 came out, so I decided to upgrade again.

Another big mistake. As I opened the installer, I came upon a message: "Make sure you have at least 24 MB of RAM." I figured that it just wanted to make sure that your computer would work well with 8.6, and that it still needed only 16 MB to actually run, so I clicked continue. It took a while to update, but once it did, I restarted.

"Welcome to Mac OS 8.6." It was successfully updated. I looked a moment later. "Welcome to Mac OS 8.6" was still showing on the screen, yet the machine was not frozen. It sat there for 10 minutes trying to load the extensions! By the time it was done, it was painfully slow in the Finder - it was almost impossible to use. I kept it this way for some time before I decided I would let a friend borrow it. They told me it was way too slow, and if there was anything I could do to speed it up....

I deleted Mac OS 8.6 and installed a fresh copy of Mac OS 7.6. "Welcome to Mac OS." It looked as if everything went well. Then: "A System Error Occurred." It turned out to be the "Auto Power Off" control panel. It had been installed before.... (Could this be a hint of the problems to come later?)

I later decided I would install Microsoft Word 5.1a. It installed and then told me I didn't have enough memory - but there was nearly 16 MB left!* I restarted with the shift key down, and then Word worked fine. I restarted normally, and an empty box came up where a system error would normally be.

* This is a known and frustrating "feature" of Word 5.1a on certain versions of the Mac OS. We struggled with it for quite a while at work, since Word 5.1a has been our default word processor for about eight years. One workaround is to always launch another program before launching Word; we don't know why, but that almost always worked. The other is a freeware extension FixWordSystemMemory by Larry Rosenstein. You can learn more about it and download it here. Dan Knight, editor

I went through all the extensions, and even reinstalled the Mac OS. Same problem. I then tried to update the hard disk driver with Apple's Mac OS 7.6 Drive Setup. It stated the hard disk was "unknown," yet it had Apple ROMs and Mac OS 8.6's Drive Setup had worked fine.

I tried Mac OS 8.0's Drive Setup, and it recognized the driver. I reinstalled it and restarted. Same problem.

I then decided to install System 7.5. I installed it, and it worked! I updated to 7.5.3 successfully. However, I now frequently get system errors, usually error type 11. Internet Explorer 4.0 refuses to work; 3D Website builder also freezes.

The main lesson I learned from this experience is to be sure what OS you want on your Mac and what works well. If you are unsure, consult my article, A Question of OS. My poor 6100 is to the point that if I want to use an OS prior to 8.0, I must reinitialize the hard disk to make it function properly. Oh well. When I find my Mac OS 8 CD, I will install that.

I am writing this article on my Power Macintosh 6100/60 with System 7.5.3 in Microsoft Word 6.0.1. Despite what people say, I will never, ever again try Word 5.1a on a Power Mac. I have found "my" version of Word: 6.0.1. It rarely crashes, seems to have a lot of nice features, can still use the Word 5 menu bar, and has a nice new interface, which you either love or hate. I love it.

I also have mixed feelings about this computer itself. I both love it and hate it, all at the same time. I love it because it is a cool design and it's a PowerMac. I hate it because of all the trouble it has given me.

I wonder what it would say to me if it could talk.