68kMLA Classic Interface

This is a version of the 68kMLA forums for viewing on your favorite old mac. Visitors on modern platforms may prefer the main site.

Click here to select a new forum.
PM 8500.
Posted by: kissmyash933 on 2012-09-14 22:11:16 Hey all, Recently got an 8500 for 25 bucks shipped on ebay. It came with a 300MHz G3 upgrade, ~384MB ram. I put 8.6 on it, and it's working beautifully. Unfortunately, It seems as if there is something wrong with the floppy drive in this machine. It can format a floppy and (seemingly) write to one. It can also sometimes read them - most of the time though, it fails to read the disk, or will corrupt a disk upon write. It also has a broken CD bezel, but I've heard that they are rather hard to find these days. Any ideas on the floppy drive? Could it somehow be cleaned or adjusted? Also, what's the opinion of OS 9 on this machine? Thanks! Blake.
Posted by: LCGuy on 2012-09-15 00:37:58 Sounds like the floppy drive heads are dirty. You can clean it with a floppy drive head cleaner disk (good luck finding one new though), or if you're very, very gentle, you can do it by hand with a Q-tip and some isopropyl alcohol. Also - with a G3 and that much RAM, I can't imagine you having much trouble getting OS 9 to run acceptably.
Posted by: macosten on 2012-09-15 16:04:06 384 MB of ram is a respectable amount for a machine that age, right? OS9 works well with even about 200MB, in my experience. (Yes, i'm new. Hello community!)
Posted by: LCGuy on 2012-09-15 18:32:03 Official system requirements were 32MB of real RAM with 40MB of VM. I actually ran it on my 1400 with that back in the day, and it was terrible. However a few months later I got my iMac, with 96MB of RAM, and it was much, much, much better. Even with 64MB, its really quite usable. Given that the average Mac back then had 32 - 64MB (or 128MB if you were lucky), they had to design it to be usable under such conditions.
Posted by: Byrd on 2012-09-15 19:19:34 It'll do OS 9 fine, turn off VM (and startup memory test while you're there!). If the floppy drive cannot be resurrected, you can substitute any drive PPC desktop and up.
Posted by: kissmyash933 on 2012-09-15 21:59:34 Thanks for the help, guys! I'm going to Upgrade it to OS 9 tonight! If I can't fix the floppy drive, I'll pull the one from the poor 6100 🙂 Blake.
1