Sinclair-Speccy

I hear stories about how Apple’s System 7.5 was the buggiest back in the day but I can’t seem to find any actual information backing it up, besides stuff I’ve been told by others. I’m looking to see if anyone has information like personal experience to back this claim up about PowerPC version of System 7.5, and maybe some websites that I can research about how System 7.5 was a mess?

All I really know is the following;

- It was supposedly buggy for being a port to the PowerPC platform.
- System 7.5, in Mac circles, from what I've told about, has a reputation kinda like ME does in Windows circles.

#Apple #MacOS #MacOS7 #Macintosh #ClassicMac #Fediverse

Sep 11, 2024 at 9:13pmWeb
Show threadSo‑Called VaughnSep 11, 2024
@SinclairSpeccy I really don’t remember 7.5.x being a PITA vis-a-vis 7.0 and 7.1. I supported a lot of Macs in that timeframe and had zero qualms installing it. My own machine at the time was a 68040 LC575 with a Daystar PPC601 accelerator and the same system ran fine on both.
Show threadTeg BainsSep 11, 2024
@SinclairSpeccy it was buggy. It took 7.5.3 to finally fix some of the OpenTransport issues as well as memory leaks. There was a lot of 1.0 level tech combination in 7.5 that caused a lot of grief for early adopters.
Show threadFeohSep 12, 2024

@SinclairSpeccy My recollection was that it ITSELF was solid as a rock, the problem was the profusion of "extensions" that every app and driver wanted to install, which could have conflicts and get crashy AWFULLY quick.

Remember Conflict Catcher? :)

Show threadKarl BaronSep 12, 2024

@SinclairSpeccy My experience with System 7.5 on the family PPC Performa back in the day was that it was really bad. Daily "System Error 11" bombs

My recollection was that error 11 was a catch all for like anything that happened in PPC-land. In 7.6/8 they finally mapped out the errors to the actual errors and this let
the OS more gracefully quit misbehaving apps to the Finder instead of requiring a reboot

Never any problems on my personal 68k Mac with the same set of extensions

Show threadScott Small 🇨🇦Sep 13, 2024

@SinclairSpeccy From what I can remember - System 7.5 was marketed as a major upgrade from 7.1, but it was really just 7.1 with a bunch of popular third-party extensions and control panels now built-in to the OS (i.e WindowShade, SuperClock).

On top of that, 7.5 bundled a bunch of the new tech Apple was working on at the time that was still experimental/unproven: OpenDoc, PowerTalk, QuickDraw GX. These all tended to be buggy, and I would recommend that folks disable them if you didn’t need them.

Regarding PPC specifically, the Finder was still primarily a 68k app, but with each 7.x release they rewrote more and more of it as PPC. I don’t think it was until 8.1 that the Finder became fully PPC native. So anyway, in 7.5, it was slow (or at least slower than in later 7.5.x releases) and the new PPC parts of the Finder were still pretty unproven and buggy.

Also, all the extra stuff added to 7.5 raised the memory requirements quite a bit over 7.1, which didn’t help things.

Show threadThe Chaotic Good 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🖖Sep 13, 2024

@smallsco @SinclairSpeccy

This

On PPC machines it was a nightmare, and on 68ks it was… dependent on memory.

Earlier machines with low memory were nasty. Machines with FPUs were OK, but for the most part you needed an ‘040 to get decent performance.

Apple’s transition to PPC was also a nightmare. Some machines were mishmash of different architectures shoehorned in together to work. The PowerBook 520/5300 is a great example of this.

That’s before we even talk about the drop in upgrades…

Show threadSinclair-SpeccySep 13, 2024
@Aminorjourney @smallsco The whole thing with the Finder is interesting. I assumed the PowerPC version of System 7 was like a complete port that was somehow buggy for some reason, but I guess not everything was completely PPC
Show threadꙮ 𝄃𝄁𝄂𝄀𝄀𝄁𝄃🇫🇯🇱🇨🇱🇧Sep 13, 2024
@SinclairSpeccy never had any problems in emulator