I plan on loading Poser 4, RDS5.5 and Bryce3D, on a Mac G3 running OS8.02. Can anyone answer these questions? 1)Is there a specific order to loading these programs? 2)Since I'm using RDS5.5, will I have to install any Poser plug-ins? How about the Poser4 update? Any other advise would be helpful. Thanks.

You can install in any order; it doesn't matter. I would definitely install the Poser update.

Unless you have a very good reason not to do so, I would strongly recommend to start with the OS 8.1 update... (which is free). Even if you don't plan to format any harddisks to HFS+ it still fixes a lot of bugs and is one of the most stable systems I've ever seen myself. From my personal experience, I can also strongly vote for HFS+... I've been very reluctant myself in the beginning, but it works like a charm, and disk related oddities are virtually reduced to zero since I re-formatted. The only thing to keep in mind is that you can't access your hardrive any longer unless you have a 8.1 (or later) boot CD - so if your 8.0.x is your only system, leave all your disks to HFS.

I'd install Poser first. When you install RDS, you'll be asked if you want to install the Poser importer plugin, after which you'll be asked to locate the Poser.exe file.

Well, Poser likes lots of memory on a Mac, I hope you have at least 128Mb, 256+ is better, there was a thread not to long ago where somebody called Curious Labs on the Poser memory settings, they suggested 150,000 minimum, 300,000 prefered (pick application after installation, pull down File, Get Info, Memory, must be set while not running), that seems to work better than anything I've tried on my G3. There was a plug in for Poser 3 in RD5.0, it doesn't work with 4. I assume it let you open Poser from inside Ray Dream Studio, so no big deal.

Thanks to everyone who replied. I've had this G3 upgraded to a 20 Gig harddrive with 512Mb, so I should have enough power. I plan on using RDS5.5 for modeling and morphs, and Bryce3D for rendering. OS8 will also be updated to OS8.2 (I think). To Martin C- Excuse this newbie question, but what is HSF+?

Sorry for using a bit too much technobabble... The traditional Mac file system was called "HFS" and dates back to a time when a 10 MB harddrive was expensive high end gear... :-) It used a fixed maximum number of blocks which was suitable for disks up to the size of a CD, but wastes precious space on larger ones - officially, the recommended limit was 2 GB (!) "HFS+" was the follow-up system introduced with OS 8.1 which has a flexible block size suitable to the specific disk size in question. If you format any drive, you will get a popup that asks you for "Mac OS Standard" or "Mac OS Extended" - this is just "HFS" and "HFS+". You can tell for your disk(s) by the "Get Info" window, it is displayed in the "Format:" line. It would be a very bad idea to format your 20 GB drive with "Standard", because even small files will take huge disk space then. The problem might be your "emergency" boot CD. Under OS 8.0.x (or earlier), "Extended" disks will not be readable - if you do so, the only content is a "read me" file that tells you not to panic... the files are there, but you need OS 8.1 (or later) to see them. This means, if you only have a OS 8.0 boot CD, and then installed the 8.1 update (there is no 8.2), formatted the disk as "Extended", and one day your system on disk completely crashes, you might be in trouble: You can't boot with the CD and re-install the system (unless you re-format the disk and lose all the files). So, if you have no chance to get a real OS 8.1 boot CD, you should always format the startup harddrive as "Standard". In the worst case you can then re-install 8.0, run the updater, boot under 8.1 and can read other disks again.

HFS came out in 1986 when the 800K floppy disk came out (never mind 10meg hard disks): it was the first time you could really have "folders". HFS="hierarchical file system"

To MartinC and anyone else- I also had the hard disk partitioned:15 Gig for start-up, and five 1 Gig partitions(one partition will be a scratch disk). Would this have any effect on file size in HFS? I guess one other solution would be to use OS8.5. Any comments on that OS? Thanks for all your help.

doozy, you got folders before, but the very first OS forced you to have unique filenames on the whole disk. The old system (MFS) was fully supported up to OS 6, partially in OS 7 and finally axed in OS 8... Illo, the 1 gig partitions are fine, but the 15 gig one wastes blocks again (If I counted it right, one block would be 240k, which is much too much...) I would rather recommend to split the whole thing into 4-5 gig partitions each. However, if you can (legally) get OS 8.5, then GET IT. It will be soon the minimum OS anyway (Apple has just recently dumped the Carbon support for 8.1 - the recent Carbon library requires OS 8.5/6. This means that a lot of new software for OS X will no longer run under 8.1. As with 8.0 -> 8.1 there is a free 8.5 -> 8.6 update, and 8.6 is about as stable as 8.1. If you plan to use it, get it quick and re-format the disk again (before you become too comfortable with your current setup...). If you want to use virtual memory, a scratch partition is a good idea. With "HFS+" it is fine to format the remaining 19 gig as one partition.

I would not bother with OS 8.5 it was an unstable peice of crap I have the 8.5 CD but only use it to in stall 8.5 and IMMEDIATELY install the FREE 8.6 update whenever i reformat my main drive I definately agree with the recommendation that you use the HFS+ file system as an example I have a nine gig internal backup drive where i keep backup copies of all my apps and extensions and fonts etc. this back up drive is not formated with HFS+ and my poser runtime folder takes up 1.2 GIGS of space. My working copy of poser4 on my main 20 GIG HFS+ formatted drive, uses 762 megs of space so its quite a difference

Wasn't there a 8.5.1? I think I used it for ages without any serious trouble, but I agree that 8.6 is definitely worth the update.