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Power Macintosh 7100/66 Wifi Card?

raoulduke

Well-known member
Let me give minor context.  I was looking, out of curiosity, for memory.  32mb simms are $6 a piece, so it'd be $24 to upgrade it from 48mb* to 136mb of RAM.  Then I asked myself... why?  And I had no real answer other than maybe internet.  Another key fact.  I have a router less than 10 feet from the computer.  So my baseline here is just breaking out a cable the few times I want to use internet.

So how difficult and expensive would it be to setup wifi?  (especially keeping in mind that extremely cheap cable-based baseline; what would be the cheapest respectable way?)

*How could it be 48? (8 built in 4+4 and 16+16? (8 + 8 + 32 = 48?) i didn't know they made 4mb simms)

 
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trag

Well-known member
As far as I know there are no NuBus wifi solutions.  Also no NuBus USB solutions.   That pretty well eliminates both likely avenues for putting wifi in a 7100.   Any solution will have to start with the 7100s built-in ethernet (at which point, just run that 10ft. cable) or the SCSI port.   But I've never heard of a SCSI to wifi solution either, just SCSI to ethernet, and the 7100 already has ethernet.

 

Byrd

Well-known member
An ethernet to wireless bridge would do it.  I tend to max out the RAM on all my Macs because it's cheap and you never have to worry about setting memory size for applications in the System :)

 

raoulduke

Well-known member
The ethernet to wifi bridge I saw a while back.  Maybe I'll get it eventually.  The other disinsentive for the RAM on the 7100 is that it's really annoying to take everything apart (I'd imagine).  I've personally never done it but there's just so much stuff just to get at it.

 

Byrd

Well-known member
I found the bridges pretty hard to configure, although I know nothing about networking.

Yeah, I remember ages ago pulling apart a 7100 for the same upgrade and wondered why the metal casing had red paint all over it:)  That was my blood!  I have a 7100/80AV I need to take apart too, it has the worst yellowing I've ever seen.  Nice solid cases though.

 

CC_333

Well-known member
And razor sharp as well!

I agree that the Q840av (same as a Q800, PM8100) is a pain, but it wasn't at all as bad as I thought, and I don't really mind working with it (except the blasted thing won't work...).

The 7100 (and closely related C/Q/P650) aren't bad at all, though.

My favorite, from a serviceability perspective, is the LC series (and the IIsi). Everything just snaps apart with almost no effort, and no tools are required at all (unless one wants to swap floppy/hard drive brackets or open up the PSU for a cap inspection), and they predate the Spindler era (slightly), so aren't affected by the cheap plastics that like to spontaneously crumble to dust.

c

 

Byrd

Well-known member
We think we have it bad with Spindler-era plastics; I recently was given a haul of SGI hardware - O2, Indigo2 machines - the plastics nearly disintegrated looking at them!  The cases were dusty and dirty, I took them off to clean but found the plastic so thin and brittle (and metal rusty, although that could have been a storage issue), I was unable to resurrect all of them.

 

trag

Well-known member
Yeah, I remember ages ago pulling apart a 7100 for the same upgrade and wondered why the metal casing had red paint all over it:)  That was my blood!
I had the same experience the first time I tried to get to the logic board of a 7100.    Once one knows how the case goes together, it's not that bad, but the first time, if  you don't know how to take it apart...   It looks like you could just sort of wedge your fingers under there and reach the SIMM sockets....

 
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