Thanks for the troves of info guys this is really helpful,

Yah, I'm going to try Mac OS 7.4.6 (I believe that's the one they have for download) simply for userfriendliness, but if for some reason that's incompatible I'm moving to Slackintosh and most likely DSL for the Gateway rig (simply for HD space constraints) though I'm going to check out Linux-m68k to see how that works out.

The problem with a TUI is twofold. First, the TUI has always been intimidating to the computer illiterate. Of course, when TUI was all there was noone complained and the illiterate learned TUI, but as time progressed it seems that the computer illiterate have been given to expect a Windows/Mac OS GUI environment, and a TUI is intimidating (though there's nothing particularly intimidating about them... other than the fact that the screen is black... maybe the darkness is intimidating ).

Second, my programming ability is severely limited, so making the computer load to a screen that gives two options is beyond my reach... (Visual Basic is the only thing I have experience with... not so good outside of the GUI environment).

The specs on the rigs requested are...

Performa 575
33 MHz 68LC040
4 MB of RAM ( )
160-320 Mgs of HD space ()

Performa 6400/200
200 MHz PPC 603e
16 MB of RAM
2.4 GB ( )

Gateway 2000 Colorbook
Intel 80486, Around 33 MHz (someone supposedly got Redhat 4.2 up on one of these rigs)
12 MB of RAM
320 MB HardDrive ( )

More specs for the Performa 575 and the Performa 6400/200 can be found at lowendmac.com

Thanks again for the treasury of info, it's really helpful,
GoblinInventor

My recoomendtion now that I know 7.5 is free download from apple on the mac go with that unless you want to use a text interface. use the Mac os on the old old mac and depending on the amount of RAM use it on the performa. As for a text editor, I am sure you can find a free or shareware text editor for mac. I miss my mac! I wish I still had it to run BBedit lite....oh well good luck

Alex

You should really consider using Delilinux, take a look at it here

It is focused mainly on supporting old hardware and beeing able to run in old machines.
The test platform for this distribution is a 486 with 16 Megabytes of RAM. I'm running it on a P200MMX 32 Mb Ram and its behaviour is excellent on the graphical environment.

It comes with Icewm as window manager, has a office suite (SiagOffice) and ftp, mail and web clients.

Installation is nothing that can't be handled, even for a newbie. It is partially menu driven, but there are certain steps you need to do on your own. Everything is clearly documentated on the website.

It's Slackware based, so you can install almost any slackware package on it.
One aditional point, is that it can be installed via a COM port from a host machine, with one of the included boot disks. (I assume you have no cd drives in the ColorBook)

The real issue here, is the Performa 575. With a 4 Mb memory, you can hardly work out a graphical environment. You could run it on console mode, but no fancy windows i'm afraid.

Delilinux in action:

shot 1
shot 2
shot 3

Have fun.

Thanks again guys,

DeliLinux might be a viable choice, unsure at present. I'll try and give you guys a synopsis of how it all works out (since you guys helped me out so much). If anybody could help me find the site on apple that actually allows you to download the freebie Mac OS (I've found third party sites, but for legal reasons I'd like to get it from apple (so I don't have to say that I think it's legal, rather I can say that I know it's legal because they're distributing it)). Also, if anyone can find a good description of how to install a Mac OS from scratch (this doesn't happen all that often... usually Macs come with the stuff already there... only upgrades have to be added, and that's usually fairly easy). Now to download some iso's and make some disks... funfunfun. Thanks again guys,

GoblinInventor

Quick announcement on progress in addition to the continual call for advice,

The Mac OS idea will probably not work because there will be no usable word processing program to use. This will probably force me to go back to Slackintosh and DSL (possibly DeLiLinux or Yellowdog also). The Word Processing programs available to me are all under district licensing so I cannot use them. Thoughts?

GoblinInventor

Hey don't give up on the macos yet go here <a href="http://www.pure-mac.com/textword.html">http://www.pure-mac.com/textword.html</a>
Check out NIsus Writer 4.1.6 or Check out Wordperfect both downloads for the versions offered there are freeware. And BOth should be able to save in formats readable by a windows machine. For more freeware for macs, check out http://www.groomsville.co.uk/absmac/softframe.htm THeres even more on this site dedicated to software for macs running under 680xx processors http://www.jagshouse.com/classicsoftware.html. There's a lot of options just look.

Alex

Try deli http://delilinux.berlios.de/ works good in very old PCs

Hey guys,

Thanks for the freeware suggestion... didn't think of that. Unfortunately, the links are all broken (only one of yours is, but both the links on those sites to Nisus Writer and Wordperfect are broken) and finding the freeware downloads has so far proven impossible (though I just sent a message to the Nisus boards to see if anyone there knows about it, probably going to do the same with WordPerfect if they have any). Anywho, thanks again. I'll look at DeliLinux for the Gateway again, but as of yet DSL still seems like the better choice to me, simply because of absolute tinyness (is that even a word?) of the Distro. Thanks again,

{edit} Disregard the question on where to find the Nisus Writer, the people at the forums showed me where it was. Thanks again for all your helpful info!

GoblinInventor

glad we could help NIsus writer is a good product I used it for a while came with my old mac.

Alex