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But Will It Run Quake III?

Why do people climb Mt. Everest? Why do we jump out of airplanes with just a backpack full of silk? Why are we driven to continue pushing the edge, grasping beyond our reach?

Because we can.

Now via slashdot, there is news of a new frontier to explore: extreme backwards compatibility. Some Apple uber-nerd has installed Apple's OS X Panther operating system on a 10-yr old Centris with 68MB of RAM, a 4GB hard drive, running at 25MHz.

Now, I'm an Apple nerd, so I can appreciate the insane compulsiveness required to even contemplate such a feat. For those of you who aren't Apple nerds, it's like installing Windows XP Professional on your old Compaq 286 or, if you're not into the whole computer thing, it's like putting a big block Chevy engine into an old-style VW Beetle.

Given the old Macintosh hardware architecture, she's had to install and boot into Debian Linux, run a PowerPC emulator and load OS X into that. Obviously, this runs incredibly slow, taking 1.5 hours before the boot screen appears, while the full boot is currently expected to be running for a week.

But. It can be done.