WaMCom....

So I finally decided to try my hands on another browser for Mac OS 8.6-9.x: WaMCom.

I must say that after having tried MSiE 5.x and iCab 2.x-3.x on the Mac and MSiE 6.x and Firefox 1.5.x-2.x on VirtualPC on my 6100, WaMCom really seems to be the best in terms of compatibility with most of the websites out there today.

I mean, I tried the following websites and ALL of them worked properly in WaMCom:

AOL.com
maps.google.com
www.google.com
forums.macnn.com
www.northbeachpizza.com

.....and a bunch of other sites as well. (yes, I even managed to make an order for pizza online for dinner!)

I just have to say that WaMCom is amazing.

But it does have its weaknesses......... just because it's running under OS 9.x. No full Unicode support (at least, not with certain Unicode characters that were typed from MS Windows), streaming Flash movies don't show video stream (YouTube, MySpace, etc.), skinned interface elements seemed to slow down my machine more than it should've, scrolling is -SLOW!!!!-, and memory usage (after checking with the "About This Macintosh" window) appears to show that WaMCom just ended up hogging most of my free RAM.

While the programmer(s) who compiled this browser suggests that WaMCom 1.3.x is less secure than the later versions of Mozilla (which this browser is based off of), I still find this browser suitable for my basic browsing needs.

the big 5......

So there I was... sitting in front of my suped-up 6100, with VPC 4.0.2...................... and Firefox 2.0 installed and running!!!!! I tried several sites, and they all worked fine....... except for ones that made extensive use of Java, JavaScript, embedded Flash movies, or even complex CSS's. Performance either just slowed to a crawl (felt like working on a 10-MHz machine at times), or just resulted in a Kernel32 error (Windows98 side) and I had to restart the emulated PC.

It wasn't long after that night on my 6100 that I had my prospective eyes set on getting ahold of VPC 5.0 and trying it out. After some serious researching and finally getting ahold VPC 5.0 (with PC-DOS), I proceeded to install that and updated it to 5.0.4.

I set VPC 5.0.4 to use the current Win98 disk image that got installed by 4.0.2. It worked great! But for some reason, every time i try to run the VPC app, it always seems to force the "Control Strip" to launch. To fix that, I simply uninstalled Control Strip and its associated Preferences file and Control Panel.

I was told that 5.0.x should feel faster than 4.0.x, but I really didn't notice any difference, except for the fact that I had better, if not more control over VPC's functions; Pause, Resume, etc. Hey, anything to get my 6100 up to date with the times.

Another thing I noticed was that downloading large files from the web (using either Firefox or MSiE 5.x/6.x) on the Windows side of VPC was a HELL of a lot faster than downloading through iCab or MSiE on the Mac OS 9.x side of my 6100. It's strange but true. With my 3.0Mb/384KB DSL connection, I should at least approach 260KB/s like I normally do on my Compaq PC. That simply wasn't the case. I understand that having a 10Base-T ethernet transceiver acts as a bottleneck on my network, but still... if I can get speeds of 100 KB/s or higher on the VPC side, why can't I get those same exact speeds on Mac OS 9.x? It's just not fair. <_<

VIDEO!!! (wOOt!!!!)

Yeah!!! My 6100 now has video capabilities!!!

View/download the video here. (made, compressed, and uploaded using my 6100!)

For this video, I used an old Sharp VL-NZ100 digital video/picture camera (from way back in 2002), Apple Video Player, and Quicktime 6.03.

VPC 4.0.2 Update - Dec. 02, 2006

Ok, so I've just received the upgrades that I purchased from WeLoveMacs.com:

• a) ONE Power Macintosh AV card for the Power Mac 6100 (NEW IN BOX..... !!!!!) (part#: M3447LL/A) (2 MB VRAM)
  

• b) TWO 64 MB SIMMs (RAM)

My new system specs are like this now:

Macintosh Performa 6115CD/AV (Power Macintosh 6100/AV)
.
Sonnet Crescendo G3 @ 480 MHz, 1 MB cache
.
136 MB RAM
.
4.0 GB HDD (Quantum Fireball - SCSI)
.
Apple 300i CD Rom (2x - SCSI)
.
Mac OS 9.1
.
10Base-T Ethernet (add-on transceiver; Farallon)

My screen resolution and bit-depth have gone up...

From:
640 x 480 @ 16-bit (Thousands of colors)

To:
832 x 624 @ 32-bit (Millions of colors)

So.... what have I learned from all this?

1. Pluging the VGA monitor's cable into the old motherboard connector only limits you to 16-bit color at 640x480. Simply connecting the monitor to the AV card gives you access to higher bit-depths and higher resolutions. (you *MUST* have a Mac-to-VGA adapter in order to use this connection scheme)
   
2. Using RamDoubler 9.x with 136 MB of physical RAM or more only limits you to 240 MB of "doubled" RAM. (Ram Doubler 9.x employs a software scheme that usually lets you 'double' or 'triple' your RAM)
3. Internet Explorer 5.0 on the Windows side is actually bearable... at least more websites work with it than the Mac port of IE 5.0
4. Internet Explorer 6.0 ACTUALLY RUNS!!! AND RUNS FAST!!!!! However, I ran into a few errors.... most likely due to the lack of RAM or resources available to the VPC app.
5. FireFox 1.5.0.8 RUNS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fast? Well.............. maybe just slightly slower than IE 6.0.... but OMG............. AT LEAST I GOT A MODERN, COMPATIBLE BROWSER ON MY OLD 6100!!!!! WOOT!!!
6. Haven't tried FireFox 2.0 yet. But I -DO- have it installed..........

STAY TUNED!