Grim:
The components I have in my beige aren't really good, or supported with OS X.
Start with the Voodoo 5500 card, no drivers for it in OS X.
Oem ATTO UW card, was for a long time, unsupported in OS X. Don't know currently.
Beige isn't really supported, either, and loading OS X on it, requires expost facto, and new all of the above. Beige's ide is limited to 16 mb sec. Requires some kind of card to work. Tried Sonnet trio, hoping to get usb, and firewire, along with ATA 133. Found out from Sonnet that the problem with the beiges is insufficent memory for compressed drivers, so what appears to be pci card conflicts, in in fact a failing with the design of the machine.
that said, for what I use it for, all my old software runs on 8.6 to 9X, and, my entire school district runs os 9, because it's virus safe, and, the networking wiring is even setup for it...
While I like OS X, it feels awkward, weird, and the file organization, just isn't as easy. I don't feel like springing for another version of OS X(already have Jaguar on my Powerbook, and hardly ever use it).
OS 9 is speedy, and works for what I use macs for...and it's firewire compatible, with just a plain firewire card.
Sides, I don't much like all the fancy stuff that makes OS X appeal to people. It seems bloated, slow, and weird, and I've run it on some really nice machines.
Guys tell me it takes 1.5 gig of ram to really run quickly. Plus, I can't get my scsi stuff to work, without having to rebuy everything. Why bother?
Finally, everytime I look at it, the hardware, and software, require upgrades or replacement. Having owned macs for awhile, I get sick of the constant bleeding caused by the constant upgrades, and, all the upgrades required on your hardware.
So, in the end, I went back to the stuff that either came with it, or worked in the past, and it works fine for what I need it to do, which is keep virus crap away from my machine.
It's funny, but OS 9 gets a bit better all the time, and continues to work.
s