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Rack mounted 7100 with audio stuff and interesting NuBus cards

joshc

Well-known member
An unusal rack mounted 7100 popped up on eBay. Clearly it was used for music production as I could tell it had a Digidesign AudioMedia card and who else would rack mount a 7100?

I was the only bidder and I collected it today. The seller threw in a bunch of audio equipment too, a Digidesign analog sound interface box and a MIDI box of some sort.

The seller used it for music production for some time, it was handed down to him from his father, and then it was retired and stored in a loft for years.

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The thing that interested me the most is what NuBus cards the 7100 might have...

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Yup, we have cards. All the r@re cards!

RasterOps 8XL
Village Tronic Picasso 340
Digidesign AudioMedia II
NewerTech MAXpowr - I imagine it's a G3 card.

Upon further inspection, things get a little bit worrying...

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Uh oh, we all know what this means. The battery was left in the machine and it's decided to do its thing.

Well, here's the weirdest thing I've ever seen happen...

All of the exploded battery juice ended up hitting the CD drive, and NOT the logic board !! I can only think the machine was stored upside down.

Here's the underside of the CD drive and the battery damaged RAM:

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The logic board looks ...fine !? These RAM sockets even look clean, can't see any battery goo in the sockets.

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The other unusual thing about this 7100 is the PSU... It's a LITEON branded unit which I've not seen in a Mac of this age before. Anyone else got a beige Mac with a LITEON?

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So, next steps will be testing these cards, and see if there's any life in the logicboard.
 

Byrd

Well-known member
Nice score @joshc ; yes to a 7100 with a Liteon branded PSU (which seems pretty good). I once bought a similar 7100 and when I got it home it must have been stored vertically as one side of the chassis was completely roached out from corrosion. Rest of the machine was in good condition, go figure.
 

volvo242gt

Well-known member
Haven't come across any Liteon PSUs in beige Macs here. I would say you got very lucky with the battery bomb. If the holder cleans up, then grab a meowtoast adapter and a CR2032 for it. If not, then maybe just install a CR2032 holder in place of the CR14250 holder.
 

Skate323k137

Well-known member
Wow! What a find!!

On first glance the MIDI rackmount is an opcode studio 4 which can handle a metric $:&@ton of MIDI instruments.
 

techstep

Well-known member
Glad someone here got this! I actually asked the seller if they would ship to the USA a few days ago but they said collection only.
 

joshc

Well-known member
On first glance the MIDI rackmount is an opcode studio 4 which can handle a metric $:&@ton of MIDI instruments.
Yes, great guess, silly me photographed the less interesting side of it with the MIDI sockets but the other side is full of LEDs and says Studio 4

It looks like this:

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The village tronic picasso is what caught my eye. Such a lucky find
Yeah, I'm really glad I finally have one of these - a handy card to have as it's got VGA output, 4MB VRAM and supports up to 1600x1200 @ 16bit.
 

mg.man

Well-known member
WOW... what a steal! What are your plans for it? I know a guy who's seriously into vintage Macs / MIDI / etc... He might be interested - perhaps without the Picasso / G3... PM me if you're looking to find a home for the racked 7100 & audio/MIDI bits...
 

joshc

Well-known member
I know a guy who's seriously into vintage Macs / MIDI / etc...
I'm probably keeping the 7100 for now and I think the rack case and audio/MIDI bits are spoken for but I'll certaintly let you know if that changes.
 

joshc

Well-known member
fun fact Liam Howlett (The Prodigy) used Powermac 7100 :) for his music creations
Thats cool, I didn't know !

I imagine a lot of artists were using Power Macs back then, they did have the best hardware/software combo available for this stuff. And the G3/G4 era only strengthened that.
 
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