I stumbled into a hobby business of building the ultimate Mac OS 9 machines
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I have older macs, including a cube that runs MacOS9 (basically for HyperCard) but there's a Mac OS 9 emulator [1] that runs on modern Apple hardware and software, and HyperCard runs on it.
It started with my son...
I wanted him to have a classic Mac to play some of the great educational games that I grew up on. I considered various models—as a pseudo-collector, I had a bunch of classic '80s and '90s machines lying around, but I thought why not get the fastest PowerPC machine possible?
The issue is the last few years of PowerPC machines (2002-2006) boot only Mac OS X, not Mac OS 9. So I was thinking of a late '90s iMac, but then I stumbled upon something cool—a bunch of ROM hackers at https://macos9lives.com created a way for mid '00s Macs to boot Mac OS 9.
These machines came out after Mac OS 9 was discontinued so they're faster than anything that natively ran Mac OS 9. The most convenient to get due to space/shipping is a laptop or Mac mini G4. And they can be made even faster...
You can also upgrade them with an internal IDE to mSATA SSD adapter. So, you can basically put an SSD inside one.
There was only one model of PowerPC Mac mini (A1103) so you have to be careful which one you're buying. Make sure it has a Firewire port and only 2 USB ports.
So, I bought three of them that said they were untested on eBay. After getting one working, I decided to fix up/upgrade the same way the other two and try selling the upgraded ones on eBay.
I thought I was done then, but I saw a lot of 13 untested ones on eBay. Now that I knew the ins-and-outs of upgrading them so well I was like, well I could just keep doing this, so I bought the lot and another lot of 2 more.
So now I have 15 of them in my home. I'm cleaning and upgrading them one at a time. This is typically
- Clean
- Install SSD
- Install more RAM
- Put a new clock battery in
- Install Mac OS 9
Most of them don't come with power adapters so I'm now buying a bunch of parts in bulk:
- Power Adapters
- IDE to mSATA Adapters
- SSDs
- RAM sticks
- CR2032 clock batteries
- screws (yeah some are missing screws)
So far I'm not really making much money (pretty much breaking even) but it's kind of a fun hobby at this point and I think some people who need fast Mac OS 9 machines for their actual work (yes some people still use these for music production and print stuff) are benefitting.
Anyway, my latest one is up on eBay now if you want to bid: https://ebay.com/itm/126433161881