Sonnet is currently working on OS X compatibility for its line of upgrade cards and hopes to have (preliminary) drivers for its cards by the time OS X ships, according to MacUser UK, who notes the the company is working on new multi-processor upgrades, has cut the price of its cards by up to 25%, and has decided to discontinue development, including OS X drivers, for older Macs with NuBus expansion slots.
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There is nothing wrong with my 6100. It runs quite well next to my G3. It's too bad that it will probably never run OSX. There is still hope that some will come along. If there is a OSX upgrade or not I will still have my 6100.
…don't expend lots of engineering resources to support really old computers. Best to move on. If you are happy with a machine as designed, or even upgraded once or twice, fine. But keeping a 1994-vintage machine and expecting support at the OS and driver level is a little unrealistic. Sonnet (and Apple) do need to keep themselves in business, and hardware sales do this. On the other hand, there are plenty of older systems that still do great service. Just don't expect them to have indefinite forward compatibility.
Forget NuBus machines, they will never be able to run Mac OS X because of a lack of Open Firmware, only PCI machines (7500, 8500, etc.) and later can run Mac OS X.
they are buying into the mantra of not supporting any machine more than 3-4 years old, just like the mothership. Seeing as how, with the great imac push into the consumer market, there might not BE that much of a market for X. So we have 3 million installed imacs.. of which most (95% I'd guess) will not be upgrading. So we have a couple of million late model G3 and the G4 who ARE candiates, plus about 10-15 million with those "old" PCI machines for which X is excluded (i.e. "not supported").
My prediction is that by MWNY they have sold something like 50 to 100,000 copies of X. They trot out the "contrite" Steve, who will say they just didn't have the time to qualify it for the 7,8, 9xxx series PCI machines and that by fall, they WILL qualify X for those series of machines. THEN things are going to get interesting..
Y'all who expect that your machine will have OS support forever are dreaming. Maybe that was something you got used to during the late 80s, when a IIFX cost $10,000. At prices like that, you could have a few more luxuries. But when the price of admission drops to a few thousand, things have to be cut somewhere. Really. Apple is a business, and nothing is free. On the other hand, the replacement cycle has to be longer when you shell out 10 large for a box. Now that it's two or three, just upgrade every 3-4 years. Consider it the price of admission.
The 61-81XX were never even able to run the first version of OSXS. The reason is a lack of PCI not OF.
If you are really interested in making the most of your 61-81XX or Power 1X0 machine consider Linux. I have a Power 120 and a 7100 running Yellow Dog Linux Champion Server v1.2.1.
Check out how by looking into the Nubus project at http://sourceforge.net/projects/nubus-pmac/
This project may also make it possible to run OSX on these orphans as well.
Well, that's it for Apple. If one of their Upgrade card manufacturers won't even make drivers for OSX, people will be jumping over to the Wintel world and not look back. Well, it was nice while it lasted....
The problem with the Nubus macs is that there isn't anything in the OS that supports that platform, so Sonnet would have to develop the drivers to driver all accessories and cards as well (hard drives, video, etc). Why should they do that????? Since OS X should run on most PowerPC (post x100 series) with a little tweaking (and a card upgrade), I don't think its that killer folks.
A 7100/80 has a 40 MHz bus. Even with a Sonnet bus-doubled card, you'd still only have an 80 Mhz bus. Just sit and think about how s l o w OS X would run. I remember people complaining about 9.x being slow on nubus macs, this'd be hellishly worse.
It's not logical to support os x on nubus, a) because of the lack of bus speed, even with acceleration, and b) lack of PCI slots. every nubus card (even if they're no longer being made) would need a driver. I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to write them.
It's time to go PCI, people.
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drop the NuBus Macs
let them go, it was a miracle they were even able to make G3 cards for them, but I hope people didn't seriously think they'd be able to run OS X on them. It's no longer worth the effort in 2001. Go buy a new G4 and get a much faster machine that will run OS X happily.