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2 Conquests: Power Mac 8100/80, and raid on wthww's room

Dog Cow

Well-known member
Wow! My total CPU count has doubled in the past week, but my wallet remains at a constant size. 8-o

First conquest: Power Mac 8100/80 from the library of a neighboring village. This library just recently got tax support, so before that, back in 2005-2006, I volunteered to work on their PCs to upgrade and install software and maintain them. Well, in the back room was a Power Mac 8100/80 system with a Personal LaserWriter NT attached. I would sometimes go back there to get on the Internet. In fact, Spymac.com and my site are still preserved in Opera's web cache to this very day-- both from mid-July 2005.

Anyway, I stopped by on 08 July 2009 to see what was new around the library. Well, among other things, the Power Mac was gone from the back room, so I inquired about it to the librarian. She told me that it had been moved to her "grave yard." I followed her to the back-most, darkest room in the library. There, in the narrow room, lay the woe-begon remains of countless PC machines, and, glimmering off of a shelf, the old Power Mac 8100/80 and the LaserWriter! Also among the stack of CRT's was the Apple Multiple Scan 17 Display. I took all of these, plus a box full of cables, keyboard, and software home in the trunk of my car that day.

The 8100/80 was the top-of-the line system of its day, and it still is a nice machine to work with. It has 112 MB of RAM, a 2GB hard drive, an internal CD drive, and a floppy disk drive. The OS is 8.6, and it has just a few applications on the drive, with about 20 more on some Zip disks. One can definitely tell that it was a library computer, and not a personal computer. Unfortunately, both the Multiple Scan 17 Display and the Personal LaserWriter NT are out of action. The printer returns a "board failed" error by its status lights, and the Multiple Scan 17 Display immediately shuts off after degauss.

Second Conquest: Just yesterday, on 13 July 2009, I made a road trip to wthww's home in Indiana to raid his Mac collection. At first, he was just going to give me 3 or 4 Macs, but eventually, he smartly realized that this was his chance to really clean up his room and get rid of old stuff which he didn't need so it could go into my room and clutter it up instead of his!

Here's the grand list of items, which I wrote down on paper:

1.) IIci motherboard, bare, with 4 RAM SIMMS on it

2.) LC III motherboard, with Ethernet PDS and a single SIMM

3.) Gravis ADB joystick

4.) Quadra 610 Slot convertor

5.) big baggie o' RAM

6.) two 80 MB hard drives

7.) one 230 MB hard drive

8.) SCSI DVD-RAM drive

9.) Power Mac 9500/200 - 80MB RAM

10.) Apple CD 300i

11.) Super Drive

12.) Quadra 650

13.) Quadra 610 DOS compatible

14.) Quadra 660AV

15.) Quadra 700 - 20 MB RAM

16.) Performa 6115CD

17.) Sun SPARCstation 4

18.) AppleDesign keyboard

19.) ADB Mouse II

20.) Asante NuBus Ethernet NIC (inside Quadra 650)

21.) Apple Hi-Res NuBus card

22.) VideoSpigot NuBus card

Total: $0. But it was worth something to him, because his room is tidier. :D

These Macs are definitely pitiable. Most all came from various Indiana university surplus sales, said wthww, so as you can imagine, they were used by people who did not own them, and they were treated as such. Most all have case damage, are yellowed, or have small bits cracked off. None had hard drives, and 3 of the Macs were missing CD drives. These are definitely "fixer-upper" Macs, the first ones I've ever had like this. It will be interesting to get them all going. I have washed most of the cases, dusted them out, and where necessary, used nail polish remover to get rid of adhesive left over by stickers and property control tags.

So far, I have rebuilt the Power Mac 9500 by putting the floppy drive in it, and the 320 MB HD in too. The AppleCD drive was missing a sled, so I had to prop it up with a ball-point pen taped to the chasis.

The other Mac which I spent some time rebuilding was the Quadra 700. I put two NuBus cards in it, and reconnected the floppy disk drive. Once I analyze the RAMs in the baggie, I will go around upgrading the RAM in these Macs. The Quadra 660AV particularly interests me, because it has video in and out ports. The Quadra 610 DOS compatible is missing the 486 card, but wthww says he will look for it and mail it to me when he finds it. I plan to use the LC III motherboard to upgrade my original LC, the ADB port of which I zapped about a year ago.

 

Anonymous Freak

Well-known member
If you want a copy of the original 7.1.2 for PowerPC, I think I just found my OS disc collection, and could image the disc for you. (Only the very first set of PPCs could run 7.1.x; the 8100/110 (and like upgraded other x100 models,) can only run 7.5 or higher.)

 

Dog Cow

Well-known member
It's a coincidence that you mention that, because I've had the CD for years now and never could use the OS (just the assorted goodies like Gerbils and what-not). I have not tried it yet, but I suppose I will soon. The HD I put in the Power Mac 9500 is 230 MB and has System 7.6 on it. It also has a 68k Hotline client and an IRC client.

 

Dog Cow

Well-known member
I had a bit of time yesternight to look at the Apple Macintosh CD which is for the 7200, 9500 and a few other Macs. It's dated 1996 and says that it has System 7.5.3 on it. However, I have not booted up the CD yet. I might do it this weekend.

 

Temetka

Well-known member
Nice score on some great gear!

I've always had a special place for the case styling of the 81/8500 series of computers. A nice looking mini-tower, with power under the hood.

I have not used an 8100, but used to own an 8500. I've always wanted to play around with an 8100 just to try it out.

I hope all gear serves you well.

 
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