2 Power Macs from Craigslist for $50(G3 Upgrade Mania)

[kite210]

Ok so I just got 2 Power Macs for $50

The first one is a Power Macintosh 7100/66, Here are the specs:

109MB RAM

4GB SCSI HDD

Standard CD-ROM

66Mhz PowerPC 601

Sonnet Crescendo G3 @ 250Mhz, with some kind of video card attached via ribbon cable to the upgrade card(Let me know what it is, if you know)

I was told that this one was stock configured, but when I booted it up, it said Sonnet crescendo on the boot screen, so I opened it up and, it had a G3 upgrade card and some sort of video card attached to it with 4 SIMM slots on it, so I'm not sure what it's for.

The Second one is a Power Macintosh 8500/180. Here are the specs:

288MB RAM

60GB SCSI HDD

200GB IDE HDD

CD-RW drive

PowerPC 604e @ 180Mhz

Sonnet Crescendo G3 @ 300Mhz

IDE Controller Card (I think it might be a Sonnet Tempo)

USB and FireWire card

Zip 100 drive

ATI Radeon 7000 PCI

This one is the reason I bought them both, and even beats out my B&W for features.

I'll post pictures in about an hour.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Nice snags! :approve:

You've probably got the Sonnet PDS mounted CrescendoNuBus & the matching passthru cable for either the standard PDS Video Card or the HPV Card with a full load of VRAM on whichever you've got.

If there are S-Video ports (same connector as ADB) above & below the DB-15 Mac Video Port, you've got the HPV VidCap Card, otherwise it's a nice Video Card.

 

[kite210]

Unfortunately, no S-Video, so it's just the video card, but it has no RAM (or VRAM) in any of the SIMM banks, so I'm not sure if it's for RAM extension or for VRAM.\

Otherwise, both have office 2001 and photoshop 4 on them.

Though, I'm wondering if the 8500 would run OS X (either 10.1 or 10.2) using XpostFacto.

 

[Strimkind]

You could get OS X to work on the 8500 but it will take a lot of patience to accomplish. Personally I think they are great OS7-9 units for old gaming (even Diablo II works on them...barely).

 

[kite210]

Here are the pictures:

First the 7100/66:

And here's the 8500/180:

I'm actually going to try a dual boot between Mac OS 9, and BeOS R5 with the 8500.

 

[Strimkind]

BeOS should be interesting. I have been thinking of doing that on my C600 I have around...just no time to do it yet.

Let us know how it goes!

 

[kite210]

I'm not sure if BeOS is going to work, each time it crashes when I click on the BeOS launcher it just locks up the machine with a black screen, and it won't boot from the cd at all.

When I tried to turn the machine off with the G3 card out(since I know that BeOS doesn't work with G3 or G4 CPUS) It doesn't even chime, which leads me to believe that the original CPU was in the slot that the G3 card is now.

I did find Sonnet PCI X installer on the hard drive, which can allow easy installation of OS X 10.0 and 10.1 (10.2 if I upgrade the installer), so I might actually try that.

This machine is quite responsive with everything I've thrown at it so far.

I'm actually posting this from the 8500 using classilla 9.2.2 under Mac OS 9.2.2

Which I find interesting, the previous owner had actually used OS9Helper to install OS 9.2.2, and it runs really smooth.

As for the ide card: It's a Sonnet Tempo ATA 133 card.

There actually isn't a Zip100 drive inside either (was very tired when I picked them up) it's just a 1.44MB Floppy drive. 8-o

 

[Bunsen]

some sort of video card attached to it with 4 SIMM slots on it

What you have there is the apple HPV (High Performance Video) card. There are two versions:

• 1MB of onboard VRAM, expandable to 2MB with 4 x 256k VRAM SIMMs
  
• 2MB of onboard VRAM, expandable to 4MB with 4 x 512k VRAM SIMMs

These are regarded as amongst the best available video upgrades for an x100 PowerMac, as they use a full 64 bit data path and are PDS (Processor Direct) rather than stuck on the Nubus bottleneck.

They also, as you can see, can be mounted on the fast side of a G3 upgrade, where they can make use of the much faster cache on the upgrade module.

As the onboard video in the x100 series uses main system RAM as VRAM ("vampire video") it is hideously slow compared to an AV, HPV or even most Nubus cards with dedicated VRAM.

If there are S-Video ports (same connector as ADB) above & below the DB-15 Mac Video Port, you've got the HPV VidCap Card, otherwise it's a nice Video Card.

Trash, that card is called the AV card, not the HPV. It's not as fast as the HPV, but as you say, it does give you S-Video in and out.

You can find out just about everything about these and related cards here:

http://kan.org/6100/graphics.html

 

[kite210]

Well, I'm officially running OS X 10.2.8 on the 8500, and it runs just as fast as it did on my B&W G3.

As for the 7100, I upgraded the RAM to 136MB (4 32MB SIMMs). Won't be able to get online with it though, as it has that terrible AAUI port on the back, otherwise, I would throw Classilla on there.

I'm not sure what to do with it otherwise though.

I did notice that as well, the onboard video was restricted to 256 colors, so after plugging it into the HPV card, I was able to get thousands of colors, though it probably needs some VRAM SIMMs to boost it even further.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Thanks for the explanation/specs clarifying the relative capabilities & terminology, B.

I'm not all that interested in the 7100 I was recently given as yet, but the other HPV Card I've got will be getting a VRAM upgrade for installation in my pet Radius 81/110 very soon!

A burly aluminum version of Sonnet's PCB based "NuBus Plug" Adapter Card was included in a great mixed lot I snagged off eBay. I've been casually looking at "outside the box" methods to mount it and the card "inside the box" without wasting a NuBus slot. [] ]'>

 

[Strimkind]

I'd love to get my hands on a good 6100/7100/8100. They seem to be...difficult to find around here right now.

The only ones I can even find are on ebay and are stupid priced (plus super-expensive shipping).

Well, I'm officially running OS X 10.2.8 on the 8500, and it runs just as fast as it did on my B&W G3.
As for the 7100, I upgraded the RAM to 136MB (4 32MB SIMMs). Won't be able to get online with it though, as it has that terrible AAUI port on the back, otherwise, I would throw Classilla on there.

Nice job with the 8500. You must have better luck an coaxing OSX onto units that don't support it than I do.

The 7100 sounds very nice with that much RAM in it. Heck, it could run 7.1.2 and that would be blazing fast! There are easy to find adapters for the AAUI port so you could easily put classilla on it and surf the internet.

If you are looking for something fun to do with it, put 2 16MB SIMM cards in it and try installing Copeland

 

[kite210]

I was using a utility called "Sonnet PCI X Installer 1.2.6", it kinda works like XPostFacto, and was on the hard drive.

I have archived the software so I don't lose it, as it seems it wasn't actually included with the Crescendo card.

I am going to back up anything on the hard drives worth keeping, and wipe them, as they are partitioned weird.

 

[kvanderlaag]

I'd be intrigued to try that Sonnet installer helper on my 5400 with the G3 in it.

I doubt it would work, but I'm also not above trying.

 

[kite210]

Finally, I had a break through.

I got BeOS R4.5 PPC to install on the 8500, it turned out that the CD-RW drive that came with it, wasn't bootable.

So I swapped it with my trusty AppleCD 600i (4x) and it loaded right up.

It feels really fast and responsive so far, but I haven't really tested it any further.

 

[kite210]

Well, thanks to me not needing to use the floppy drive in the 8500, I now have 3 hard drives inside of it.

Wow was that a pain to achieve though, those Quadra 800 style cases are severely cramped.

 

[LCGuy]

They're very cramped inside, especially behind the drive bays, and generally terrible to work on (even back in the day loads of people used to complain about them, having to take half the machine apart just to get to the RAM)...but I have to say - I'd still actually rather work on an 8500 than, say, an Aluminium iMac.