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Very related but self promotional—I have a hobby business selling restored Mac mini G4s. I clean all of them internally, upgrade them with 128 GB SSDs, max them

Very related but self promotional—I have a hobby business selling restored Mac mini G4s. I clean all of them internally, upgrade them with 128 GB SSDs, max them out at 1 GB of RAM, put a new clock battery in, and pre-install the Mac OS 9 Lives hacked version of Mac OS 9 that runs on them. You can buy one from me here: https://os9.shop https://os9.shop I don't think I'll start pre-installing System 7 since most of my customers are using Mac OS 9 (and the domain is os9.shop!), but you could certainly get a machine from me with Mac OS 9 and install System 7 yourself if you so desire. My customers have included a lot of real businesses running legacy software who want the fastest, least intrusive, and least energy intensive Mac OS 9 desktop machine they can buy. I've sold to dentists, veterinarians, museums, and auto repair stores. You'd be amazed how many people are running Classic Mac software in 2025.

mechagodzilla 11mo ago
Did you have to do anything special to get the SSD to play nice with OS9? I tried adding one to a 300MHz G3 iMac and it took forever to initialize on boot and would randomly stall a lot.
- WoodenChair 11mo ago
  I use a mSATA to IDE adapter that I buy in bulk. This is the Amazon available equivalent of it: https://amzn.to/48qEaOm https://amzn.to/48qEaOm I use only 128 GB mSATA cards from reputable brands. I always do the following: - Boot from the Mac OS 9 Lives 9.2.2 image (v9 of the image) by CD - Wipe the SSD using Disk Utilities 2.1 - Restore from the CD I will say this fails perhaps 1 out of 20 times. Hard to say how often this is an actual hardware failure versus some kind of incompatibility with the mSATA SSD since I do use a range of brands. I am always using the same adapters.
apple4ever 11mo ago
Wow this is neat!!! Put on my list to order sometime soon!
trollbridge 11mo ago
Seems more of a curiousity than something practical - in particular, the System 7 "native" on the Mac mini G4 is missing a lot of drivers. There aren't that many situations where software runs well on System 7 tha doesn't on Mac OS 9.2.2, and for the rare case that it does, emulation in something like vMac is sufficient.
TMWNN 11mo ago
> My customers have included a lot of real businesses running legacy software who want the fastest, least intrusive, and least energy intensive Mac OS 9 desktop machine they can buy. I've sold to dentists, veterinarians, museums, and auto repair stores. You'd be amazed how many people are running Classic Mac software in 2025. Is there any software that only runs on System 7, and not 9.2.2?
- WoodenChair 11mo ago
  Yes, but it's very uncommon for it to still be in use beyond hobbyists.
  - TMWNN 11mo ago
    Are there a lot of people still running legacy FileMaker setups?
    - WoodenChair 11mo ago
      Yes, but several Filemaker versions run under Mac OS 9 so there's no reason to go back to System 7.

mechagodzilla 11mo ago

Did you have to do anything special to get the SSD to play nice with OS9? I tried adding one to a 300MHz G3 iMac and it took forever to initialize on boot and would randomly stall a lot.

WoodenChair 11mo ago
I use a mSATA to IDE adapter that I buy in bulk. This is the Amazon available equivalent of it: https://amzn.to/48qEaOm https://amzn.to/48qEaOm I use only 128 GB mSATA cards from reputable brands. I always do the following: - Boot from the Mac OS 9 Lives 9.2.2 image (v9 of the image) by CD - Wipe the SSD using Disk Utilities 2.1 - Restore from the CD I will say this fails perhaps 1 out of 20 times. Hard to say how often this is an actual hardware failure versus some kind of incompatibility with the mSATA SSD since I do use a range of brands. I am always using the same adapters.

apple4ever 11mo ago

Wow this is neat!!! Put on my list to order sometime soon!

trollbridge 11mo ago

Seems more of a curiousity than something practical - in particular, the System 7 "native" on the Mac mini G4 is missing a lot of drivers. There aren't that many situations where software runs well on System 7 tha doesn't on Mac OS 9.2.2, and for the rare case that it does, emulation in something like vMac is sufficient.

TMWNN 11mo ago

> My customers have included a lot of real businesses running legacy software who want the fastest, least intrusive, and least energy intensive Mac OS 9 desktop machine they can buy. I've sold to dentists, veterinarians, museums, and auto repair stores. You'd be amazed how many people are running Classic Mac software in 2025. Is there any software that only runs on System 7, and not 9.2.2?

WoodenChair 11mo ago
Yes, but it's very uncommon for it to still be in use beyond hobbyists.
- TMWNN 11mo ago
  Are there a lot of people still running legacy FileMaker setups?
  - WoodenChair 11mo ago
    Yes, but several Filemaker versions run under Mac OS 9 so there's no reason to go back to System 7.