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Slide scanning recommendations


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Many variables to unpack before jumping on a used Nikon CoolScan at the going prices today. Do you already own a good full-frame body with a sensor of at least 24MP? (if so, you may only need a good macro lens and a film positioning setup). What is your realistic budget? How much time can you dedicate to scanning until you clear your backlog? (While the the 35mm-only CoolScans are fairly reliable, they've been out of production since 2009 and are not repairable if they fail down the line, so assuming you have a decade to handle your archives is risky). How amenable are you to learning the intricacies of dedicated scanners (easy for some film types, not so much for others)? And so on.

 

Twelve years ago the CS-5000 sold new for $1399 and the auto feeder accessories were a couple hundred $ more, today people are asking $2000 and up second hand for the scanner and obscene amounts for feeders and replacement trays. With no real proof of the mileage already on them, you can be flying blind. As far as using various tricks to make NikonScan cooperate with Windows 10, these workarounds fail for many users with every third forced update from MicroSoft. You could be lucky, or very much not. Depending on your individual PC, this can be a treadmill of never-ending interruptions. Neither MS nor Apple has any interest in maintaining compatibility with arcane, obscure, obsolete hardware: if anything they're openly hostile to those of us who have the temerity to still use film scanners, medium format digital backs we paid $35K for barely ten years ago, etc.

 

There are plenty of photographers on this and other forums discussing their transition to camera-based scanning with DSLR or mirrorless, because they couldn't cope with used scanner prices to begin with or afford to replace their existing failing unit. This method isn't time-wasting or less-promising per se, its just that (bafflingly) no mfr has seen fit to offer well-made, easy to operate film holder/lightsource accessories at entry-level reasonable cost (the few now available can cost almost as much as a scanner). Either way, a newbie is gonna flush mucho time down the drain: pulling together the needed parts for camera scanning and learning how to post-process the captures, or tracking down a working film scanner and learning the voodoo needed to use it.

 

 

 

As long term owner of an LS-8000, with several friends owning the LS-9000, I would say proceed with caution re the medium-format Nikon scanners. GREAT caution.

 

The 35mm-only CoolScans are much less prone to issues and breakdowns, but the 8000/9000 can be a minefield. My 8000 was almost new when I bought it thirteen years ago, and I don't use it heavily, but it had to be sent to Nikon Melville for an overhaul several times (at considerable cost). The 9000 is only slightly more reliable, being the same chassis with minor firmware tweaks. Nikon hasn't offered scanner repairs at any price for a decade, so every time I load a film tray in the damned thing I have my fingers, toes and eyes crossed.

 

If you've got literally thousands of 35mm frames to digitize, a case can still be made for a Nikon 35mm-specific model like the 5000. The smaller-format CS-IV, 4000 and 5000 have much simpler mechanics and film transport than the 8000/9000. But if you need to scan film from your Hasselblad, Bronica or Mamiya RB67, research posts from photographers who employ camera scanning and strongly consider doing that instead. The 8000/9000 are a combination of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory and Monty Python's Flying Circus under their big bulky hoods (only without the laughs). Some of their plastic film tray versions can wear or break, replacements are scarce and crazy expensive ($200 for a used plastic rectangle with a couple flaps, $400 if you want glass- and you DO want glass).

 

I have both a Coolscan 8000 and Coolscan V in active use, and for very good reason.

 

The 8000 gives unbelievable results when used to its full potential. I rigged a glass mount rather than paying nutty prices for the factory one and get good sharpness. Still, though, it's a pain to load, is noisy, slow, and a mechanical nightmare. Among other things, I'm always afraid I'm going to strip a gear lining up and pushing in the carrier enough for it to catch and the scanner to take over, but not TOO far or hard. I've never even taken the mounted slide and 35mm film strip carriers out of the boxes they were in when I got the scanner-I think I've only physically laid eyes on the 120 holder, but I've put my fair share of mileage on it. That's not to mention that the Firewire chip can fry if you look at it crosseyed.

 

The V, on the other hand, is just a slick little device to use. The standard holder for these takes a 2x2 mounted slide that you just pop in and then eject by a button on the front. There's a strip "tray" holder that feeds into this, and lets you do a single frame if need be. Most of these come with an automatic film strip adapter, and I highly recommend seeking one out-the strip adapter lets you feed in a loose 2-6 frame film strip, and can move and manipulate the strip easily. It's nice to just load up a strip, have it auto-scan previews, sequence the final scans, and then let it do its thing for a few minutes and be ready to go for the next one. The V offers the same resolution as the 8000/9000, but is faster and doesn't have a serving tray to rack back and forth to scan. Plus, the V is USB, which both makes adaptation easier and frees you from the flaky Firewire chip. The 4000 offers the same resolution and similar speed, but is Firewire with, again, the flaky chip.

 

If you want to pay big bucks and do some hunting, the 4000 and 5000(not the V, unfortunately) allow you to access a couple of potentially really useful accessories. Among them is an APS adapter(if you care about that), and the really useful one IMO, the strip feeder that can handle a full 36 frame strip. I THINK a slide stack loader also exists.

 

The only potential advantage I see for the 9000 when doing 35mm is that it supposedly can do ICE with Kodachrome, something that can be a killer feature if you have a bunch of Kodachrome to scan. I honestly would really like to know what magic is involved in making that work. Given that the optics and AFAIK the electronics are the same in the 8000, I'm not sure why it won't work with the 8000 also. If the boards weren't already so fragile and the things weren't so dang expensive, I'd be tempted to see if an 8000 could be "flashed" or have an EPROM transplant to become a 9000 and gain this functionality.

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To be fair to the 8000/9000, they do have a couple nifty tricks up their sleeve: its just unfortunate that their mechanism is so Rube Goldberg and their electronics more flaky than a 1974 Jaguar. I initially chose the 8000 over the 4000/5000 for my 35mm film because Nikon (oddly enough) employs hardware that is more "friendly" to 35mm in its medium format models. The larger units have a slightly more diffuse light source, and a more finely-tuned dust-and-scratch removal algorithm which handles 35mm with more finesse. And while not as slick as the 5000, which can scan an uncut roll of 36 exposures automatically, the 8000/9000 35mm trays hold 12 negative frames or 5 slides at a time.

 

But I soon discovered the 35mm negative tray is really fussy and tedious to load, and the scanner itself so temperamental its best reserved for medium format film. For 35mm, I was lucky to stumble on a near-new Polaroid 4000+ with the rare USB/FireWire option instead of SCSI. Very very nice 35mm-specific unit, equal to the 5000 for slides and better with B/W negatives. Doesn't have ICE hardware for automatic dust/scratch removal, but the cathode light source is much softer than Nikon's LED so hides scratches better. Software d/s cleaning with Polaroid's utility is quick and easy. Too bad Polaroid croaked in 2003, orphaning their scanners (which have their own mechanical issues: like the CS8000/9000, Polaroid uses the same sketchy "shove the flimsy plastic tray into the scanner mechanism firmly, but not TOO firmly, until the auto feed roller yanks it out of your hands" - yeah, that's a recipe for durability).

 

The more common SCSI-connected Polaroid SprintScan 4000 is a relative bargain if you can find one in guaranteed working condition with trays included, and already own (or would be willing to buy) an old Apple Mac with SCSI connectors to run it. Tho probably better to opt for camera scanning if the budget is below $400 (and you already own a good DSLR or mirrorless).

Edited by orsetto
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The more common SCSI-connected Polaroid SprintScan 4000 is a relative bargain if you can find one in guaranteed working condition with trays included, and already own (or would be willing to buy) an old Apple Mac with SCSI connectors to run it. Tho probably better to opt for camera scanning if the budget is below $400 (and you already own a good DSLR or mirrorless).

 

I have a Sprintscan 35 that I have used a decent amount, and it's actually a surprisingly good unit. The resolution is nowhere near what the later Nikon scanners offered, but it's fast and does well at its designed resolution. It actually has one sort of unique feature among 35mm-dedicated scanners in that its sensor can scan over a ~40mm width rather than the 24mm of the Nikons and most other 35mm-dedicated scanners. For most folks, this means scanning slides in their "native" orientation rather than orienting correctly post processing. A big deal to some folks, though, will be that it can scan "Superslides"(4x4 127 slides in 2x2 mounts). I haven't used mine in years, but it's worked perfectly for me in the past in OS X Tiger with Vuescan. I would have liked the Polaroid software but never went hunting for it.

 

Along those same lines, if you don't mind dealing with SCSI, there are actually some good Nikon bargains to be had, or really in most any scanner brand. The Coolscan II is a nice compact little unit that does slides only, and at only 1200x1200. IMO, the Coolscan III is an overlooked gem. The 3600x3600 resolution isn't appreciably different from the 4Kx4K of the newer scanners. It has the same single slide and autofeed 6 strip options. Of course, the catch is that it's SCSI, which means that it can be had for peanuts but can be daunting if you don't have...well...more than a few computers around where SCSI is no problem.

 

On the Mac end of things, I THINK that the version of NikonScan it requires is OS 9 only(and Classic won't work with SCSI peripherals), but that's not a huge deal as long as your computer can boot OS 9. My preferred tool for all SCSI scanner work is a PowerMac G4 Quicksilver or Mirrored Drive Door, although on the latter for OS 9 friendliness avoid the version with a FireWire 800 port(there are ways to run OS 9 on it, but they're not obvious), and on the MDD be sure you either get the original restore disks or have access to a CD burner so you can make your own set. I tend toward the Quicksilver as I find them more reliable. My card of choice is the Adaptec 2930CU, which Apple shipped as a build to order option in G3 and G4 towers without built in SCSI. Not that it matters for running a scanner, but it's a firmware compatible card with an internal 50 pin header so you can boot off of an internal or external SCSI drive if you so desire. The external connection is LVD-50, which isn't AS common as a DB-25 or standard 50 pin Centronics, but is probably the 3rd most common SCSI connector and is what the Coolscan V has on it.

 

Isn't SCSI fun?

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Ben, do you recall offhand which CoolScan model was supplied as an integrated drop-in module for desktop PCs/Macs, fitting directly into an empty CD/DVD drive bay? Was it the II or III or a special designation? Don't know why, but your description of the II triggered that memory.

 

Only the four digit Nikon scanners (CS4000 and 5000) accept some of the autofeeders: potential buyers should be aware the cheaper roman numeral models only accept individual slides and negative strips .Assuming its working properly, the CoolScan IV was a very decent unit that was very attractively priced when new. The first CoolScan with USB connection, I believe: slow, and lower 2700 resolution, but not far off the results from the more expensive 4000 model. Actually still competitive with the V and 5000 if you don't have tons of dense underexposed frames, or specialize in night photography. I was torn between the IV and the Polaroid SCSI 4000 SprintScan some 20 years ago, eventually opting for the Polaroid when that company offered an incredible rebate deal. Sale price $1299, $500 rebate dropped it to $799 actual cost, which was an utter steal in those days. The CS IV was $1199, 2700 vs 4000, and not as good with dense films as the Polaroid. They were the only two scanners priced below $1300, so very hard to choose between until Polaroid offered that killer rebate.

 

Of course, a year after getting the Polaroid I began dipping my toe in medium format and eventually needed to choose between a used Nikon 8000 or new Polaroid 120 (either about $1100 in 2004). The newer 9000 was $1995 minimum, while the Minolta Multi Pro II (best MF scanner ever made, period) was already a rare, sought after cult item. Around the same time, I got rid of my first-gen blue iMac, which was running my SCSI Polaroid off a USB>SCSI adapter. Other Macs did not work well with the adapter, which was another big push towards the native FireWire CS8000. Then I got the 8000, and my fun really began (sending the thing back and forth to Nikon Melville for three overhauls in three years at $300+ a pop, discovering it has the 35mm negative trays from hell, etc).

 

So off to eBay I went, and luckily found a replacement Polaroid 4000 with USB/FireWire upgrade for under $250 (Polaroid had imploded, people were scared to buy used scanners so if you knew they were good you could snag great deals). I seldom use the Polaroid now since I don't shoot much 35mm, when I do I just resign myself to struggling with the awful Nikon trays. The Polaroids run beautifully under VueScan, as they don't have any proprietary features like Nikon so Ed Hamrick was able to reverse engineer their operation perfectly. The CS9000 I've run under both VueScan and NikonScan, depending on where we were with operating systems year to year.

Edited by orsetto
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Ben, do you recall offhand which CoolScan model was supplied as an integrated drop-in module for desktop PCs/Macs, fitting directly into an empty CD/DVD drive bay? Was it the II or III or a special designation? Don't know why, but your description of the II triggered that memory.

 

A quick glance through the Coolscan II manual shows that it was an optional configuration.

 

If mine weren't two states away, I'd already have the case open to see if the external one could be reconfigured. If it can be, the next "get it done" project is going to be actually installing one in a computer :)

 

I have a "hotrod" PowerMac G3 Beige minitower that has a 1ghz G4 and boots off a 15K RPM 68 pin SCSI drive(via a separate SCSI card). It also has the obligatory USB/Firewire card and a Radeon 9200 GPU. The G3 minitowers have onboard SCSI(that's not usually used, but it's there) with a 50 pin ribbon cable header on the logic board plus an external DB25, and they have a couple of spare drive bays. That computer seems a logical home for a drive-mount scanner.

 

The only other place I could think to put one would be a PowerMac G4 Mirror Drive Door, since that was the only G4 with a second optical bay. They're much faster than even a hotrod beige could hope to be since the system bus is over double the frequency of a beige. In OS 9, if you run NikonScan as a Photoshop plug in and install the PS 7 multiprocessor extensions, you can take advantage of the second CPU. Of course an Adaptec 2930CU gets you SCSI easily.

 

You have no idea how badly I want to hop in the car now, drive to Kentucky, and actually try doing all of this...even if it means excavating an MDD from the back of a storage unit(the beige I mentioned is easily accessible).

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How I envy your collection of 'vinage" Apple Macs! :)

 

Wasn't able to keep mine, no room. Started with the Mac Classic B/W 9" in '90, then a Quadra 700 in '92, the iMac in '97, then a series of PowerBooks (Toilet Seat, Darth Vader, Titanium G4) and finally landed on the Mini for web/graphics and Windows 7 laptops for video work. Still miss the Quadra most of all: had the best time using that thing, Cost me near $4K with memory upgrade (whopping 4MB), 240MB HDD and 13" RGB. I think I still owed money on it when I sold it for scrap on eBay in 2005 (sniff). Recently found the huge heavy Apple SCSI CD-ROM for it at the bottom of my junk box.

 

Familiar with your nifty towers like the mirrored drive doors, etc, from my work as a Mac systems consultant thru the '90s. Never owned one, but set up tons for ad agencies, designers etc. System 7-8-9 and G3/G4 towers were my bread-n-butter, but I bailed with the arrival of OSX: a disaster in its first few years, it would have cost me more to learn to troubleshoot than I would have earned in fees. Works better nowadays, but I still miss the "real" Mac OS: that was a work of engineering art we'll never see the like of again. If Apple could have survived without bringing back Jobs and his Unix ripoff OS in '96, they might have finished their internal OS10 project and we might have a much more interesting Mac experience today. I keep an old Powerbook T4 running OS9 for nostalgia sake and play with it occasionally (it can even run my film scanners, albeit slowly).

Edited by orsetto
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I have the Coolscan V (LS-50); in an unfortunate moment (OK, roughly two days of agonizing over it) of penny pinching I decided to save $500 relative to a Coolscan 5000 back in about 2005 when my Polaroid started to fail. The scan quality isn't the issue -- it's very, very good. The issue is the speed, for while the Coolscan V is faster than most other scanners it's only just over half the speed of the 5000 due to the 5000's two-line CCD. We're talking 20 seconds versus 38 per frame. That plus the Coolscan 5000's ability to take a bulk slide feeder makes it the better production environment piece.

 

There are still third-party servicers working on the Coolscans, adjusting and lubricating them, cleaning the mirror, that kind of thing.

 

I also use an ES-1 adapter on a Nikon D800 with Nikon's 60mm AF-S macro lens. I find this more convenient than the Coolscan for mounted slides with film that's in good condition, but it's a non-starter for negatives and strip film and also not so good for damaged or faded film. The ES-2 adapter, not nearly as nicely built as the ES-1 as it's plastic instead of metal, is a very versatile piece, with a locking collar to prevent the film from rotating, a holder for strip film and a set of adapter rings included for lens mounting (in contrast the 62mm ring for the ES-1 is an accessory). And, when used with a D780 or D850 these give you the ability to convert negative images in-camera if you're OK settling for JPEG output (in contrast, if you want your negatives raw, you'll have to import them into Photoshop or similar and reverse them manually). Third-party vendors produce 120 film holders which you can also use with reversal mode on the D780 and D850. But using the Coolscan directly with Vuescan is nice; DNG output, JPEG output, TIFF output, whatever you want, the ability to batch a film strip of up to I believe seven images, and a nifty ability to sort out slightly faded Ektachrome.

Edited by daniel_bliss
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There are still third-party servicers working on the Coolscans, adjusting and lubricating them, cleaning the mirror, that kind of thing.

 

If you've used any of these techs yourself and can recommend them, this might be a good place to post their info? I've intermittently run across a couple guys who do it on a casual basis but none who were making a serious run at it as a business. All were strictly Nikon, no other brands.

 

I'd be comfortable shipping a 35mm CoolScan V or 5000 anywhere, but my experience (and that of others I know) shipping the large klutzy fragile 8000/9000 has been nerve shredding. If you don't have the original double box and packaging, it can very difficult to keep them stable enough to survive shipping any distance without coming unglued. I live about 35 miles from Nikon's Melville service center, and had some major issues with their repairs getting jolted out of whack en route back to me. The medium format Nikons are very much a "you buy it and it never again leaves your desk for the rest of your life" proposition (DIY or die, really). The CS-V, CS-5000, CS-4000, CS-IV etc are small dense units with hardly any moving parts by comparison: if you don't need to scan 120 film, the smaller models are a much safer bet.

 

Its worth mentioning Nikon scanners should be fully covered at all times when not in use. Their design is inherently problematic at imaging high contrast slides, if the slightest bit of dust gets inside and deposits on their mirrors you can get ugly blooming around highlights. The 5000 and the 8000/9000 are much more resistant to blooming than older models, but they can suck in fine dust like you wouldn't believe. Cleaning then is not a picnic, so pretend you're Felix Unger around them.

 

The 8000/9000 have a bit of an misguided cult following now among medium format film shooters, which can foster unrealistic expectations for these aging rattletraps. New and used, they fill a price point & availability niche, which is their primary attraction. The only competitors in their price range were Polaroid and Minolta, both of whom folded several years before Nikon did. That meant for several years Nikon effectively had the "affordable" MF scanner market all to themselves. The next step up to Hasselblad/Imacon scanners entailed a huge jump in price, a downgrade in 35mm quality, and a world of pain from grain and dust exaggeration: the 'blads are pro service bureau scanners, optimized for speed of scanning with expectations most refinements will be done in post by skilled PhotoShop gurus.

 

The result being everyone wants the Nikon 9000 because its more common, can be had for $3K, and has some automated retouching features like ICE. The trouble is they're fragile, the trays are junk, the feed system is laughable and getting edge to edge sharp scans of a 120 film frame can be difficult to impossible due to zero DOF in the scanner lens vs the goofy film trays (both glass and glassless). So its wise to "curb your enthusiasm" and think twice: dropping three or four grand on a 10 to 18 year old Nikon 8000/9000 may not be the most reliable medium format digitizing option in 2021. Consider using a scanning service, Epson V700 with wet mount accessory, renting time on a Hasselblad scanner, or using a digital camera to scan even if you have to stitch.

 

BTW the 8000 is cheaper than 9000 because its deadly slow, being afflicted by one of Nikon's infamous "not our problem" design defects (banding in the faster three line mode, so for best quality you need to throttle back to one line mode). Just as they replaced the D600 with the D610 rather than just fix the damned D600, Nikon simply replaced the 8000 with the 9000 instead of offering a fix for the defect in the 8000. They're almost exactly the same scanner otherwise, so if you aren't in a hurry the 8000 is a better deal.

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BTW the 8000 is cheaper than 9000 because its deadly slow, being afflicted by one of Nikon's infamous "not our problem" design defects (banding in the faster three line mode, so for best quality you need to throttle back to one line mode). Just as they replaced the D600 with the D610 rather than just fix the damned D600, Nikon simply replaced the 8000 with the 9000 instead of offering a fix for the defect in the 8000. They're almost exactly the same scanner otherwise, so if you aren't in a hurry the 8000 is a better deal.

 

I find one of my biggest "rate limiting steps" with most any scanner is in the film mounting.

 

Even though the 8000 is in fact very slow(IIRC, I'm at well over two minutes to scan 6x7 at the highest res with ICE), I'll live with it and pocket the $2K I saved in buying it.

 

Also, as repairs go, there is one person out there who will replace the Firewire chips and prefers just being sent the board. If you're comfortable, it's easy enough to pull out and obviously much easier to ship than the whole unit. I've never had him do any work, but did communicate with him re: a 4000 I have with this problem. Ultimately I decided it wasn't worth it, although if I ever came across an affordable full-stirp scanner or bulk slide loader I'd do it.

 

As dust goes-initially my III(which I have used quite a bit) gave me terrible results that were about like the old trick of shooting through a vaseline-covered filter. I got brave, buckled down, and decided I was going to try cleaning the optics, figuring I had nothing to lose since these are not particularly valuable or desireable scanners. I found the main mirror not particularly difficult to reach with a Sensor Swab, so cleaned it with one of those and then used a Kimwipe and methanol on the lenses I could reach. It was a night and day difference.

Edited by ben_hutcherson
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How I envy your collection of 'vinage" Apple Macs! :)

 

Wasn't able to keep mine, no room. Started with the Mac Classic B/W 9" in '90, then a Quadra 700 in '92, the iMac in '97, then a series of PowerBooks (Toilet Seat, Darth Vader, Titanium G4) and finally landed on the Mini for web/graphics and Windows 7 laptops for video work. Still miss the Quadra most of all: had the best time using that thing, Cost me near $4K with memory upgrade (whopping 4MB), 240MB HDD and 13" RGB. I think I still owed money on it when I sold it for scrap on eBay in 2005 (sniff). Recently found the huge heavy Apple SCSI CD-ROM for it at the bottom of my junk box.

 

Familiar with your nifty towers like the mirrored drive doors, etc, from my work as a Mac systems consultant thru the '90s. Never owned one, but set up tons for ad agencies, designers etc. System 7-8-9 and G3/G4 towers were my bread-n-butter, but I bailed with the arrival of OSX: a disaster in its first few years, it would have cost me more to learn to troubleshoot than I would have earned in fees. Works better nowadays, but I still miss the "real" Mac OS: that was a work of engineering art we'll never see the like of again. If Apple could have survived without bringing back Jobs and his Unix ripoff OS in '96, they might have finished their internal OS10 project and we might have a much more interesting Mac experience today. I keep an old Powerbook T4 running OS9 for nostalgia sake and play with it occasionally (it can even run my film scanners, albeit slowly).

 

Unfortunately my Mac collection is mostly in storage now, but it's another hobby of mine, and unfortunately one that takes up a lot of space. Right now, actually, the only thing I have out of storage and in active use is also a 1ghz Titanium PowerBook.

 

I love the Classic Mac OS, and in fact there's still a dedicated fanbase of users out there who are still trying to get the most out of it. A lot of those are folks doing digital audio/production work, and find that they can get a fast and capable studio going using OS 9 for a tiny budget using excellent but otherwise obsolete equipment. They've actually managed to accomplish things like relatively user friendly install processes on computers that weren't intended to boot OS 9, including the last generation Mirrored Drive Door G4, the first generation aluminum 17" PowerBook, and the Mac Mini G4. There's a sort of maintained browser for it, but it's extremely outdated now and isn't capable of doing much beyond browsing mostly text websites.

 

With that said, I think they managed to walk themselves into a corner with OS 9, and it would have been interesting to see what they could have come up with to "fix" it. Basically, by the time OS 9 came around, the code was a convoluted mess and apparently no one completely understood what all was going on in it. The 68K emulator is tied in at a very low level of the operating system, which is great for a lot of purposes since on a PowerPC computer, 68K software runs seamlessly and I don't know if there's even any obvious way to tell if it's running in an emulator(Rosetta pretty much disappears into the background also, but it's still a bit more obvious). Part of the problem, though, was that the 68K emulator was SO good that parts of core OS were never ported to PowerPC, so you had basic functions of your computer running through an emulator and not natively on the CPU.

 

There were a bunch of key things that were just missing completely like preemptive multitasking and protected memory, and I'm not sure if they ever could have been implemented without a "clean slate" rewrite. NEXT and OS X were the quick way to that, but they really didn't get the kinks ironed out until about 10.4(and IMO never really felt as fast or responsive as the classic OS until the Intel era).

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