A very late 040

[IIfx]

I bought a Performa 630CD on a whim off of eBay. The price was low ($70 total) and the case looks immaculate. Why? The manufacturing date on the back is oddly late for a 68k, 6/20/1996!  Deep into the reign of Gil Amelio and the PowerPC era. Was it an oddball product of clearing old inventory? Possibly. A refurb? Also possible. The fact that the case was common to the 6200/6300 probably made it even easier to keep putting out 630's for those customers that demanded a 68k. It's possible Apple just had a huge overstock of 630/640 logic boards and used up the stock rather than taking a write off.

Whatever the case, having the AV setup in it will be neat. Fingers crossed that the plastic was no longer sourced from the 1993-1995 supplier.

Will post more info - attached a photo of the back posted by the seller.

 

[Cory5412]

Very neat find!

By recollection, the original 630 was discontinued in 1995, but, we know that all three versions of the base 630 had different intro/disc dates  and we know that different sub-versions (i.e. the "Performa 637CD" had different intro/disc dates. If any 630 variant actually continued beyond mid-1995, it would mean all the sources we have for intro/disc on them are wrong, and as far as I know it would be the first evidence that this happened beyond ~1992 or so. Other instances of this kind of things are known to almost certainly be case swaps on sub-models that did last longer than the "main" model (such as Performa 476 and Performa 560).

My most instinctive thought is that it could be a 6200 or 6300 case swap, but, still, looks nice! The plastics are probably good. I've got a 6220 and its plastics are solid, so far as I've poked at it.  

Incidentally, the Performa 560 lasted until mid-1996 as well, making this not the lowest end possible 68k of the moment.

The 6200 started at like $1299 ish so I've always wondered how much demand there would really have been for a 68k, especially a low end model. This is late enough that the 100MHz 6xx0/5xx0 families would have launched (well, within days of this) and those should have done way better at 68k emulation, and 1996 is getting late enough that most consumer and edutainment stuff would have switched over to being PPC native. Plus mid-late (August) 1995 saw the introduction of the 7200+ (Granted: base 7200 was $1900, so) for people who needed more emulation performance.

The next latest 68k in this family I can find is the 640/DOS, discontinued February 1996. All the 1994 630 variants are listed by EveryMac (and, TBH I kind of bet some of these are wrong) as being discontinued at varying times in 1995. (adding: P588 disc. May , 1996.)

Now I'm kind of wondering if there's a good archive of Apple press releases and if they published discontinuation dates in them. Maybe that's a future project for me.

I'll admit I don't strictly speaking believe the idea that Apple was custom making 630s for some customer who needed a 68k but didn't want something nicer, for whatever reason. They'd make fine ExcelBoxes, but, for what EveryMac says a Performa 640/DOS was selling for ($2400) so would a 6100, 6200, or 7200. (I do realize $2400 probably included the display and at least clarisworks, and might be the /DOS version's price.) It's not impossible, but it is difficult to believe Apple was well-enough organized to realize all of this and receive or make an offer and then do it.

 

[dr.diesel]

Please post a pict of the board once it arrives (for chip dates), also curious would be the 040 Mask ID!

 

[Byrd]

Looks nice!  I think the TV tuner was not a bundled part in most LC630s, so if it isn't a case swapped motherboard someone upgraded it well when it was their main machine.

The 6x0 and 6x00 was probably where Apple lost it for confusing model names.

 

[IIfx]

The front case is labeled Permafrost 630CD, so I assume this wasn't a 62/63xx case swap. Exited to have it and take a look inside.

 

[CC_333]

@IIfx Permafrost 630CD?  I think your spell checker might have gone AWOL a bit here and decided to invent a new Macintosh model!! :lol:

Silliness aside, this is a good find!

c

 

[cheesestraws]

"Permafrost" is a good name for a model that was apparently frozen in time for a long period, mind, if it was built in '96...

 

[ArmorAlley]

 I was in Japan in 1996 and Performa 630s were generally available then (along with PB190s) but they were the very last of the 68ks. They were being offered at around ¥360,000 - ¥400,000. I was humming and hawing about which one to buy. Both were expensive because I didn't really a computer. I just wanted one. What I wanted was a PB540c but that cost ¥540,000 (which was almost three months' salary if I didn't eat much food and lived like a hermit for that period).

 In the end, the PB1400 came out in August 1996 and, as a consequence, the price of the PB190 plummeted to a mere ¥200,000 and I bought it on the spot.

 

[joshc]

I have one of these too. The soft power on mine acts weird - it can switch itself on if its plugged in, without me touching anything. I probably need to recap the PSU.

I recapped the logic board in mine and it's very happy, I like the chime on these - I also had to replace the CD-ROM drive as that no longer worked reliably either.

Plastics wise, these are not the worst of this era but they're not the best either and still pale in comparison to the quality of the 80s Macs. Yours has all the rear plastic pieces intact which is nice, mine is missing the rear plastic bezel cover for the logic board tray. The front bezel is the most troublesome on these - I eventually got mine to stay on without glue but its a pain.

These are pretty decent overall, despite the slow system bus. I managed to get an 80GB IDE drive working in mine, formatted as 4 x 2GB partitions, the original IDE drive had given up the ghost.

What I don't like is that getting to the PSU seems to be quite a chore - I made one attempt and gave up, I need to try again as I mentioned earlier I would like to recap it. I would put these in a category of machine that are not great to work on, except for logic board removal which is easy.

What are you planning on doing with it?

 

[Cory5412]

For what it's worth: "Generally available" and "officially still on the books" (in the "being manufactured" sense) are different things.

Being able to move extant Mac inventory through the overall supply chain (Apple -> resellers -> customers, plus whatever other steps were probably involved) was cited as a big problem near the end of the '90s in some of Apple's own annual reports. There was a point at which dealers stopped 

W/re case swap: All of the parts of this case are swappable, although, the confounding factor here is definitely that most of it looks relatively evenly colored. If you got it in and the faceplate was turbo-yellow then I'd say that the faceplate was swapped along with the board into a 6200 or 6300 enclosure.

The other possibility is that only the piece of case plastic containing the date was swapped, but, that's definitely a little more farfetched.

It's also possible that somehow Apple had enough presence of mind to continue building the 630 series into 1996, despite on paper all of them having officially been killed in 1995, and the 630 family being among the least desirable of 68k Macs to continue using if you had some legitimate power-user case to keep using a 68k. (Except, I suppose, that most of the others had already been discontinued.)

 

[NJRoadfan]

Another theory is that it was a swap-out warranty replacement. Given they had an extra logic board in stock, its entirely possible since the cases were still being used in the 6200 series. A lot of "late" production Powerbook 100 series parts came from warranty replacements (like my 165 that bbishoppcm took apart).

 

[jessenator]

Being able to move extant Mac inventory through the overall supply chain (Apple -> resellers -> customers, plus whatever other steps were probably involved) was cited as a big problem near the end of the '90s in some of Apple's own annual reports. There was a point at which dealers stopped 

This is something that gets forgotten quite often in threads regarding product/supply/sales/marketing (even some of my own, probably). Apple didn't have their "customize and buy for yourself online (or phone)" until after their purchase of PowerComputing, and it wasn't as refined until the early '00s. That was really what they were after in buying them. PCC had an incredible build-to-order system.

Until then, like Cory said, you really needed to "know a guy," i.e. had to work through a dealer (for the most part).

According to the dates I've seen, the "discontinuation" of the 475 and 476 even lasted as long as most of the 62xx Performas did, and slightly longer than the 640CD/640 DOS Compatible model, which is interesting. Yes, technically the 63xCD models died about a month before the 62xx Performas started... but again, this is based on the sources we have (Apple, Everymac, etc.)

yellow=030; orange=040; red=601; purple=603

 

[Cory5412]

Yeah, and, for what it's worth here, the purpose of all these variations wasn't really to allow people to select something better suited to their needs. It was to allow competing retailers never to  ofer discounts on the Mac hardware they sold, because you couldn't cross-shop and competitor discount  Best Buy's Performa 635 and OfficeMax's Performa 637, because they were different machines. Almost all of the PC OEMs still engage in this practice heavily, to the point of offering identical hardware with different software loadouts for different stores so Staples can tell you they won't price-match Newegg's price on the same configuration of the same machine. (I don't know if the actual store policies on this have changed, and how they do this work, just, this is basically why the Performa lineup in particular is as bad as it is.)

 

[IIfx]

Well, it isn't a Performa 630. It's a 6320CD. No idea how this happened, somehow the seller wrote "Performa 630", the photos showed a Performa 630, but the computer front panel says 6320 and the logic board is a 6320. The serial number matches what was in the listing. Totally confused. The seller seems to be as well. :/

I don't mind it that much, I think I have a random Q630 logic board somewhere. But completely crushed the 96 630 isn't really a thing.

Weird thing is there is a P630 with plastic just as good as this 6320, supposedly.

So, performance of the "Permafrost" 6320CD - it isn't anywhere near as bad as LEM claims. It actually seems to be peppy. It has the original install of 7.5.3 Update 2.0, the original owner seemingly used the system for a year and then never used it again. 16mb RAM and a 1.5GB hard drive. Really not bad for an Amelio era re-bundling of a Spindler era machine. It was probably dirt cheap when new.

 

[jessenator]

It's a 6320CD.  ...It actually seems to be peppy

Everymac seems to allude that this model, in addition to the TV accouterments, came with a 256k L2 cache as standard, and that, more than almost anything IME, will make a night/day difference on a 603e(v) machine for sure (well it makes a difference on all PPC Macs, but you get my point). I've run my 4400 with and without its cache and it's like a different machine. Pop the cache in, and it's the cut-price PowerMacintosh it was made to be. Take it out, and it's a Performa.  

My family 6218CD (75MHz) compared to the 5x00 school lab Macs was a complete dog. It got crap done for my family though   but I was sad about having to play Dark Forces at pixel-doubled resolution, and never being able to play with the full viewport on DOOM. But with their price points, they filled a market segment, I'll concede.

 

[Byrd]

6320 isn't the Road Apple, it's the predecessor 6200/75 which was an absolute dog.  120Mhz 603e would bring it up to low specced early PPC speeds (think 6100/66) which if running PPC aware programs is capable enough.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

LEM doesn't know it's alive sometimes. Their whole schtick about how bad the 6200 series was, and still is, just a load of BS. Of course it wasn't great, it was low end, but even the 6200 had 256K L2 cache.

 

[joshc]

Had a 6200 as a kid, and loved that thing. Not a road Apple either in my opinion   my dad even used it as his primary graphic design workhorse before it was handed down to me. Sure, it wasn’t very fast compared to other options but I didn’t know better back then, I used to do a lot of Bryce rendering on it. For the most part, it could do what it was intended to. As has been said, it was a low end, low cost machine so I’m not sure what the point of criticising it ever was. 

 

[cheesestraws]

I’m not sure what the point of criticising it ever was. 

Snobbery?  ;-)   There's a lot of people who seem to criticise low-end computers on general principle, purely for having the effrontery not to be high-end computers.  Personally, I think the cost-performance tradeoffs are really interesting...