Quadra 800 and stuff

[ClassicHasClass]

Picked up today from a friend's parents' house, a Q800. Haven't really looked at it yet, don't know if it works. Came with a nice if somewhat yellowed Extended Keyboard II, plus a SCSI Zip 100 and a firewire (!) Zip 750. If I get it operational, I think I'll slap A/UX on it.

[Hrududu]

My Quadra 800 is top 5 in my all time favorites list. It was the first Macintosh I used as my full time computer and it served as my primary setup for several years. 4 internal HDD's, external Apple CD 600e & ZIP drive too. Steamed right along with 7.5.5 then 8.1 later on. I'm sure it'll make the final cut when the time comes to kill off most of my collection.

[Unknown_K]

800's rock, plus they use easy to find 72 pin SIMMs.

[ClassicHasClass]

It seems nice; haven't really looked at the board yet, it's in my project bay. Hate that case, though.

The owners have a ghetto external CDROM shoehorned into the case, so that's gotta go. Going to see if I can find a proper cover for it.

[Unknown_K]

800/840av/8500/9500 cases are made of brittle plastic, the CDROM bezels are first to go so good luck finding one. I think the 800's mostly came with either blank or caddy type CDROM bezels but one from an 8500/9500 will work fine.

[mac2geezer]

Going to see if I can find a proper cover for it.

I have a couple of blank bezels lying around. They fit the 8600/9600, dunno if they will fit an 800, but if so you're welcome to one for mailing cost.

[Unknown_K]

8600/9600 do not fit.

[ClassicHasClass]

Well!

I got the cover off and other than eight billion dust bunnies (that floppy is going to need some TLC), it has a 601 card (820-0562-A) in the PDS slot! Also, the CD-ROM is a tray loading 600i, so I guess I shouldn't be too hard on it. There is also a 500MB hard disk. Can't tell about the RAM.

After I finish checking it over, I'm going to fire it up, though I bet the PRAM battery is dead and I'll have to get the board off. I HATE THIS CASE DESIGN.

[techknight]

ive seen worse case designs. the dells from the early/mid 2000s ring a bell. they NEVER seemed to go back together correctly without a bulge or track mis-align.

[IIfx]

The Quadra 800 case is pure evil. I love the computer. I hate the case. With a passion. At least it looks decent.
Mine had its CD ROM bezel shear off thanks to the fantastic SpindlerPlastic TM technology. All it took was removing the case.

Mine has a temperament due to this horrible case. When you put it all back together, DEATH CHIMES. Something was knocked loose by this horrible case!
So you take it all apart, reseat the RAM and Nubus cards, and its fine.
Not to mention the massive amount of tension on the logic board when installing it in the choke-hold clip system.

The bright side is the very good Delta 300w PSU, room for 2 SCSI HDD's, Internal CD-ROM, and good cooling. (Oh, and the logic board has solid-state capacitors...no leaking)

On an episode of the Computer Chronicles, Apple shows off the Q800, and the Apple Corporate drone says its the easiest case to work in apple ever made.


I still would not trade the Q800 for anything else....ok perhaps a Q950. But, the Q800 has a faster system and ram bus, uses 72 pin ram instead of the older stuff, and I forget what other advantages it has. (nubus90?)I put it as a tie. With enough NuBus cards the 950 could be made into a supermac. (Ha, get the pun? )

[TheIanMan85]

On an episode of the Computer Chronicles, Apple shows off the Q800, and the Apple Corporate drone says its the easiest case to work in apple ever made.

He must have meant to say least easiest to work on but messed up on his line.

I mean even the compacts are easier once you get it open, which is only a matter of the proper tools. Considering only Macs produced to date, there's plenty of easier ones. The the cover on the LC style cases pop right off and everything's there. Almost everything clips into place. Back in school when I'd help out with the computers those were the easiest to replace a floppy drive that had something like a pencil jammed into it. Pop it out, quick work with a screw driver on the bracket, and plug and pop it back in. Took longer to walk to and from the location of the computer in most cases.

The 610/6100s weren't that bad, despite having the same crappy plastic. At least back then they weren't usually as brittle as they are now. I could think of more examples, but I'm preaching to the choir.

That said, I agree I like the Quadra 8XXs. I'd love to have an 800 or 840av. I do have a Quadra 660av (with 14" AV monitor) and 950 along with more Macs than I know what to do with...so I guess I don't need one THAT much... Still, the collector in me wants one.

[ClassicHasClass]

It boots

It's running 8.0 and the card is a 601 at 66MHz, as expected (2x the 33MHz '040). Unfortunately, the poor thing is hamstrung by only 20MB of RAM, so it really strains. Apple System Profiler identifies it as a "Power Macintosh 800" (hah!).

I'm going to max out the memory, then see if I can hack 8.6 (or at least 8.5.1) to boot on it because I've always wanted to see how well Classilla would run on such a system.

I don't know if anyone's tried (maybe I'll be the first), but I wouldn't think I need to pull the PowerPC card to boot A/UX because it just won't get enabled. Unless anyone here with experience with the 601 cards knows differently?

[Unknown_K]

You just need to run it in 68k mode and hope the A/UX installer doesn't try to do anything with the PDS card.

I think the that 601 card is completely dead untill you initialize it with the control panel. I do know my 601-80 PDS card with RAM + 1MB Cache has the RAM active in the 68k mode so something is going on.

[zuiko21]

If that card works like the 820-0547-A on my Quadra 700 (now known as Power Quadra 700 ) I think it always take control first, then if set on 680x0 mode, quickly lets the original CPU boot -- but the usual '040 chime plays after a slight (somewhat less than a second) delay, while on PPC mode the 6200-type chime goes almost at once (like the original did without the card).

A funny thing is that PageMaker 4.0 refuses to work in 680x0 mode with the card plugged-in, but works fine in emulation mode!

I'm recapping a 840AV mobo, but I'm not willing to put it into that case...

[bibilit]

Don't like the case either, looks like a cheap no-name PC.

the LC style cases pop right off and everything's there. Almost everything clips into place

The IIsi is pretty easy to work, no tool required and every item is clipped too (including the fan and speaker...ok the speaker is not a good example)

[beachycove]

My own experience with A/UX is that it does not like standard 68040 PDS cards. My Q950 will not boot in A/UX with a Daystar Turbo 040 accelerator (40MHz with 128k cache) installed. Your 601 card has 1MB L2 cache onboard, so if A/UX could recognize that alone, things would be interesting.

Dedicated 040 PDS L2 cache cards, which would be the "right" way to do this, are scarce as hens' teeth.

[ClassicHasClass]

Interesting. Well, the SCSI drive and RAM (18GB, to divide between 8.1, 8.6, A/UX Mac and A/UX Ute and Root, and 128MB) arrived today, so I'm going to overhaul it, partition it, try to get A/UX installed and see how far we get.

[zuiko21]

If you can use 8.6, I find little point on installing 8.1... why not leaving 7.5.x (or 7.6.1, especially with large partitions on the disk) on a partition? These machines fly on System 7. If you ever need some 8.x features (HFS+ volumes is a good reason) you can go all the way to 8.6 -- in my experience, the best compromise between functionality, stability and performance.

[ClassicHasClass]

I need an OS that can boot both as 68K and PPC so I can switch back and forth. A/UX MacPartition will only boot as 68K and 8.6 will only boot as PPC, and 7.6 is a suboptimal choice for me because I need the later AFP support. As it happens I do have 7.6 on it right now but mostly as a buffer until I finish all the partitioning work. So 8.1 satisfies all the requirements; it can boot in either mode and I can switch the card off or on, and it has all the support extensions I need.

Getting A/UX happy on the 18GB drive I put in it was a right pain in the @$$. I eventually went with Silverlining and had to figure out how to newfs everything from the SASH (documented now on http://www.floodgap.com/retrotech/os/aux/ ). Right now it boots 8.0, 7.6 and A/UX 3.0. Next weekend I'll upgrade the 8.0 to 8.1, wipe the 7.6 and put 8.5 there and then 8.6, and A/UX 3.1.1.

[beachycove]

So it DOES boot with the PPC card installed? That would be great news.

The info on partitioning should also go into the A/UX FAQ if possible (at least a reference and a link)!

[ClassicHasClass]

Yes, it does boot with the card installed as long as it is off, natch. I was delighted to see this too.

The downside is that if the card is on and you boot A/UX MacPartition, it gives you an unhelpful error message, and then proceeds to boot again from the same partition, in an endless loop. So I'll need to keep a rescue floppy with a Startup Disk control panel around if I forget to shut the card off when switching to A/UX. I imagine I'll have the same problem if I forget to have the card enabled when switching to 8.6.

[Bunsen]

I'm recapping a 840AV mobo, but I'm not willing to put it into that case...

May I ask what other case you will be using? I would like to move my own 840AV into a slightly less horrifying case. What other bodies would it fit into, with/without some dremelwork?

[zuiko21]

I got this 840AV as a bare mobo -- not even CPU! But I'm thinking about putting it inside a 7200/7300/7500/7600 case -- they're fairly nice to service, and the required mods shouldn't be that hard...

I have compared both boards (Quadra 840AV - PMac 7600) and the task seems feasible

[Bunsen]

That is excellent research and documentation there, zuiko21! Thanks for making those images available.

I am curious to know how you are thinking of attacking the back plane, as that seems to be the only major difficulty - especially, as you point out, around the Nubus vs PCI area.

[ianj]

the CDROM bezels are first to go so good luck finding one.

No kidding. Mine didn't have a CDROM bezel when I got it, so I bought a new one. It's been on for five years, but it finally fell off. I can't find any more for sale like I used to be able to, so I'll probably just glue it back on.