Apple PHX 100

[Franklinstein]

Anyone ever hear of one of these? They're essentially a 6200/75 with just the Apple logo and "PHX 100" in the sticker on the front; it doesn't say Macintosh or Performa or anything on it. Cursory searches only turn up a few hits with no real info. I thought maybe it's part of an early production run or sold as a special kit that never really got public attention, like a specialized corporate or educational order. 

 

[Alex]

Another obscure marketing name is the MLS200. It appears to come up after searching for PHX100

 

[Cory5412]

Just for fun: This forum thread is now the third result in google for apple PHX 100. Do you have a picture of it or any other notes about markings on it? A link to where you saw it or anything?

The only connections I have been able to think of are that Phoenix, AZ's rotary club is the 100th such club to exist, so they call themselves some variation of Phoenix 100 or Rotary 100.

The only other conection I can thikn of is that the Power Macintosh 5500 was apparently given the codename Phoenix. So, like, in that Apple-specific context, "100" is the clock speed of the 6300, so my initial thought is testing the next revision, but per wiki the actual codename of the 6300 is Elixir.

If it doesn't look like a prototype (or have any labeling thuswise) then it probably isn't and it's more likely some kind of special edition like the JLPGA PowerBook.

 

[Franklinstein]

I bought one, along with a beat-up Quadra 630, for $20 on Yahoo! Auctions. They should be here in a couple days and I'll put up a few pictures. I figure it's either a pre-production unit or rebadged for inclusion in some sort of custom set. The more or less complete lack of info could point either way. A review of the logic board will help: if it's one of the 100MHz units and has "PHX" on it somewhere then it's probably a preproduction unit. 

 

[unity]

Either they are common in Japan or the same units are making rounds. I have not seen one in the states yet, only in Japan for some reason. Even then I found out about one and that led me to a second. And that was probably 10 years ago. Since then I have seen a couple more pop up.

 

[mrpippy]

Found an old Usenet post which said that it was a special product line customized for businesses, like Performa was for consumers here in the US

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/fj.sys.mac/NYZC-J8cFnU/htOow4WdijEJ

 

[unity]

Okay. But if that is the case, why remove the "Macintosh" stamping yet retain the Apple logo on the case. Not totally doubting that story, but some more information would be awesome.

 

[Cory5412]

Given what Apple was doing with names at the time, this kind of tracks, in the realm of "generally, things that Apple could/would do."

At the end of the actual Performa line in the US, Apple started applying Power Macintosh as a label to products packaged and sold almost identically. The 4400, 6400, and 6500 in particular, with the fun addition that there were explicitly business-focused variants of those three machines.

For example:

http://www.vectronicscollections.org/gallery/ads/macintosh/0268.php

and http://www.vectronicscollections.org/gallery/ads/macintosh/0269.php

The idea that Apple might have picked a different name for a product line being sold a different way or through a differentchannel isn't particularly surprising, in that sense.

The thing I'd love to see more of is what software bundles or hardware bundles looked like, advertising material, perhaps even reviews of the machines. Contextr stuff, basically.

You can look at this stack and go "oh, I know what a 6200/75, a 7200/90, a 7500/100 and an 8500/120 are" and be correct, but that's an interesting grouping in the sense that, realistically the 6200 wasn't considered in with the 7200/7500/8500 in most contexts in the US. To the extent that it existed as a Power Macintosh, I don't think Apple really gave it its fair due in that market, mostly because the 7200 is the real successor to the 6100 and the 630 is the base model home computer during the time of the 6100, 7100, and 8100. And, as far as I can tell, 630s and 8100s or 630s and 840s weren't really ever sold directly next to one-another.

 

[Franklinstein]

Found an old Usenet post which said that it was a special product line customized for businesses, like Performa was for consumers here in the US

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/fj.sys.mac/NYZC-J8cFnU/htOow4WdijEJ

That's interesting. I wonder why there are no records of this? You'd figure hardcore Apple geeks would have been in the know. Maybe it was a very specifically targeted campaign aimed at the Asian business market? I doubt most office drones bother to look at the make/model of their computer, let alone remember what they used nearly 30 years ago, so this particular bit of history is nearly lost to time unless someone manages to turn up some sales material referencing these machines.

 

[Franklinstein]

The thing I'd love to see more of is what software bundles or hardware bundles looked like, advertising material, perhaps even reviews of the machines. Contextr stuff, basically.

You can look at this stack and go "oh, I know what a 6200/75, a 7200/90, a 7500/100 and an 8500/120 are" and be correct, but that's an interesting grouping in the sense that, realistically the 6200 wasn't considered in with the 7200/7500/8500 in most contexts in the US. To the extent that it existed as a Power Macintosh, I don't think Apple really gave it its fair due in that market, mostly because the 7200 is the real successor to the 6100 and the 630 is the base model home computer during the time of the 6100, 7100, and 8100. And, as far as I can tell, 630s and 8100s or 630s and 840s weren't really ever sold directly next to one-another.

They probably came with ClarisWorks and Claris Emailer (if it wasn't bundled in the same suite) and maybe some third-party apps. Maybe that was the big selling point wit these: a large third-party library specifically tailored to business. Either way I have no idea; the one I bought comes with just the bare unit and I'm 90% sure the hard drive will be gone.

Anyway I'd imagine the 6200 was grouped in for the people/businesses whose only demands were that it be PPC at the lowest price point, same as the reason it was built in the first place: cheapest PPC they could make, but also widely compatible with hardware and software they already own. Apparently a lot of these things didn't even come with a keyboard, just a mouse.

 

[Cory5412]

.

I'd imagine the 6200 was grouped in for the people/businesses whose only demands were that it be PPC at the lowest price point

That's a valid use case even in the US. To the extent that the "Power Macintosh" 6200 sold at all, it was to that same market, since a 6200 was still several hundred less than a 7200.

The 6200 is, as we know, not really anywhere near as bad as a machine as it's made out to be. It performs around as well as the 6100 and it was hundreds less than *that* madhine was upon its (the 6200's) introduction.

Apparently a lot of these things didn't even come with a keyboard, just a mouse.

That's normal for the Power Macintosh market. Keyboard didn't become 100% standard equipment in the Mac lineup until 1997 or 1998 when the Beige G3s were introduced and all the old models were discontinued (so, 1998 when the 9600 was finally killed.)

Maybe that was the big selling point wit these: a large third-party library specifically tailored to business.

That was specifically the way I read it in the newsgroup article that was shared. Performa-like bundles, but for a particular business need.

I believe there were one or two 630/6200 variants that were business bundles, and of course there were the 4400/6500 business bundles.

Re ClarisWorks/Emailer bundles, a couple non-performa machines in the US ended up with lite software bundles like that, the PB1400 in particular, probably a couple others (LCs and Classic/CC often had clarisworks bundled back in those days too) so if the machine was specifically intended to  be an easy start, I can see that. That particular practice died off by the mid '90s in the US so I can see it as a nicety as a Performa Lite bundle.

That said, if the market they were selling into was expected to have a large existing Macintosh ecosystem, the performa bundle usually wasn't needed.

 

[PB145B]

The 6200 is, as we know, not really anywhere near as bad as a machine as it's made out to be.

Indeed! I’ve got the “Performa” branded version and it’s a great Mac. Never really understood why it’s such a hated model.

 

[Cory5412]

The abridged back-story on that is that in 1997 when Low End Mac was first going, Dan Knight was (correctly) dispensing the advice that if you were paying a couple hundred for a used computer, the 6200 was the worst of what was available. This is reasonable advice for 1997-2003, but instead of just leaving it there, and later acknowledging that after around 2003 or so even a 7200 or 8500 wasn't a good machine any more, the legend of how bad this particular machine grew.

Since then, there have been at least a half dozen other editorials about the 6200 specifically, all on LEM, all of which outright fabricate utterly ridiculous infromation. "left 32" and "right 32?" somebody had to outright invent that. It makes literally no sense. And it's not like the 6200's developer notes were ever hard to find.

There were a couple actual problems with the 6200/5200, which Apple fixed via recall, at which point Apple also put some extra RAM in the machines it serviced, because in 1995 8 megs is barely enough to boot.

 

[Franklinstein]

Yeah we've been down this road with the 52/62xx before. In summary: LEM wrote a bunch of crap on the internet that a lot of people (including myself those many years ago) initially took seriously, and then some guy wrote a rebuttal that's more correct but still has errors, but the long and short of it is that in truth the 52/62xx is essentially a Quadra 63x with a built-in PPC upgrade, so there are several bottlenecks present that hamper performance due to the extensive cost-cutting and/or drive for backwards compatibility. Also, the 603 with its 8k+8k split cache was too small to hold the 68k emulator in L1, so performance with 68k code suffered. If either the L1 was a unified 16k, as it was in the 601 (though the 601 had 32k unified), or it was larger, as it is with the 603e's 16k+16k, 68k code emulation performance would have been vastly improved. This is why the later 53/63xx boards with 100 or 120MHz 603e processors felt so much faster despite being architecturally identical.

That being said, the 52/62xx wasn't really that bad unless you were running exclusively 68k programs, and even then they were still at least as fast as the 68k boxes they replaced. Could it have been better? Sure, if you wanted to spend more money. But if you wanted to spend more money, you'd get a 7200 or 7500. These were also built with both CS and LC PDS slots in addition to (two unpaired) 72-pin RAM slots, so you can take your old Quadra 630 or LC 575, pull out its extra RAM and expansion cards (except the IIe card; those won't work here), and drop them into your new 52/62xx. An excellent choice for business or education customers with legacy devices they could reuse for additional cost savings.

Anywho, pictures are below. You'll notice that, aside from the badging on the front, there's nothing special about this thing: it's a 62xx/75 by a different name. As I figured, the hard drive was gone, so there's no telling what may have been installed on it. It does come with both the TV tuner and A/V input card, though, which I figure would be a little out of place on an office drone's work computer. 

 

[LaPorta]

My Performa 6300 I got in 95 or so as a kid was not “bad.” It ran games well, allowed for word processing and even photoshop. I am sure heavy graphics and math wouldn’t be great, but that didn’t apply.

 

[jessenator]

My recent revelation: not that long ago I discovered that PPC architecture runs 68k programs in emulation (better late than never I guess...). Our Performa 6218CD came with a metric cr*p tonne of software, some of it 68k and not fat, most notably The Even More Incredible Machine.

It ran like cold molasses in January, even slower than a school computer I installed in on briefly before getting caught... "Don't copy that floppy..." And it bugged me to no end. Later it ran perfectly well on our iMac DV...

Flash forward to getting my turbo IIsi and I'm playing TIM and it's snappy and barely slowed down even when multiple things like bouncing objects are going all over the screen. Wait, what? Then I watched a video about the first Power Macs and my"bad" family computer didn't seem that "bad."

That's an interesting machine/rebadge. As a child, knowing less than I do now, I was fascinated by missing ports. It would've sent be through the roof to see a decked out 62xx machine.

 

[Cory5412]

The 6300 (as well as later/faster versions of the PB2300, 5300, and 1400, which all share the same architecture) do have more cache, which does help the 68k emulator issue.

Speed Doubler 8 as well as running as much PPC native stuff (including newer versions of the OS) should all help.

and then some guy wrote a rebuttal that's more correct but still has errors,

By that, do you mean http://www.taylordesign.net/classic-macintosh/the-mythical-road-apple/ or  http://www.taylordesign.net/classic-macintosh/a-response-to-the-mythical-road-apple/ ?

I'm curious as to what you mean by "still has errors"? As far as I know these articles are some of the best representation of the truth of the 6200 & Co: they're, as you say, a 630 with a PPC upgrade integrated, and that PPC upgrade got faster/better over the course of a few revisions.

most notably The Even More Incredible Machine.

I'll admit, I'm surprised (but also tbh completely unsurprised) Apple would bundle something they would/should have known would have been slow on the machine.

I wonder if somehow in their testing it ended up different or if this is an indication that Apple outright didn't test what they were bundling.

 

[Franklinstein]

By that, do you mean http://www.taylordesign.net/classic-macintosh/the-mythical-road-apple/ or  http://www.taylordesign.net/classic-macintosh/a-response-to-the-mythical-road-apple/ ?

I'm curious as to what you mean by "still has errors"? As far as I know these articles are some of the best representation of the truth of the 6200 & Co: they're, as you say, a 630 with a PPC upgrade integrated, and that PPC upgrade got faster/better over the course of a few revisions.

Yeah thats it. Im not going to deconstruct the whole thing, but quick and obvious examples are where it says "L2 runs at processor speed," when L2 actually runs at logic board speed (37.5 or 40MHz), and missing that the Primetime II (III in the 6300) provides the '030 bus for both the LC PDS and CS slot, which can hamper performance if both cards are populated and used simultaneously. Then there's the fact that all of the comparisons were based on the improved 6300 when the original and primary gripe was with the 62xx (which he sort of hand-waves away at the end). 

 

[Cory5412]

All or almost all of that was addressed in the response article, the second one I linked.

I'll have to look at the cache stuff.

In terms of 75MHz machine speed: I need to get a network card working in my 6200, but when I put 7.6.1 on it at a friend's house and we put IE5 and macbench on it, it was "Fine" - in MacBench 4 it turns in almost the same scores as a 6100/60. Given that that that's intended to be representative of ~1997's Mac productivity applications, that's "Fine" in 1995.

And really, in 1995, the 6200 launched at a bit over half what a 6100 cost, in a complete bundle, and it was as fast as the 6100 was. For a home computer, that's pretty reasonable.

(Yes, that's for PPC apps, but much of what came with the 6200's bundles was PPC or FAT, and PPC/FAT software was becoming increasingly common, it seems like this issue was only specifically problematic with a couple games from the time. Incredible Machine series has been mentioned a couple times.)

Almost more importantly, to the point about the origin of the legend of the 6200, which is Scott Barber and Dan Knight, from the perspective of "it's 1997-2000 and I'm in a Computer Renaissance" - the 6200 should be at an advantage compared to 1995 when it was new, because by then, you'd be able to put 8+, speeddoubler 8, and a fair amount of free/cheap native software (including internet tools) from magazine coverdiscs on it, and it would be "fine" for the duties expected of a cheap used machine at the time.

To the cache issue specifically, where does it specify what bus speed the cache runs at? In the dev note, the block diagram shows it being essentially directly connected very closely to the CPU, but doesn't appear to list a speed.

In addition, from page 14 of the dev note:

The 603 bus is connected directly to the main processor and runs at the same clock rate. An external 256 KB second-level cache and 4 MB of ROM attach directly to the 603 data bus and help to optomize system performance.

So, I think that Daniel Taylor is probably correct in saying the 256k cache runs at the full speed of the CPU. Apple certainly thought so, and wrote as much as their dev note.

here is the relevant part of the diagram:



Presuming here that the dark black line labeled P_D63-0 is the 603 bus, the one that runs at 75MHz in the 5200/6200.

Then there's the fact that all of the comparisons were based on the improved 6300 when the original and primary gripe was with the 62xx

LEM, and subsequently, others, categorize the faster 100MHz+ systems based on this architeture in the same way and (incorrectly) list all of the same limitations on those machines as the 6200. It's definitely worth noting that Daniel Taylor's experiences from the '90s were on a 6300, but it doesn't invalidate anything he wrote.

the Primetime II (III in the 6300) provides the '030 bus for both the LC PDS and CS slot, which can hamper performance if both cards are populated and used simultaneously. 

Curious: In what scenarios does this come up? What combination can create a performance impact?

And, is that combination likely to have been used in any high amount in 1995?

And, given that you can have five complete 6200 systems including productivity software, displays, keyboards/mice and usually printers and/or modems for the cost of a single bare 9500, do you think it actually matters, at all?

Apple's own dev note (granted, this isn't like, "marketing material" or anything a store clerk would have been able to clarify in 1995, but they wouldn't have been sure about this re compatibility between, say, an LCII and a 630 either, *and* the implication in the text is that the PrimeTime in the original 630 did the same thing, meaning this specific limitation/situation isn't even new to the 6200, it's the second generation to have this consideration, since the LCPDS is technically an 020/030 PDS slot and the 640 is of course an '040 system) suggests that there are compatibility issues, but doesn't say anything about performance.

Anyway, extremely curious as to which card combinations display performance issues, especially compared to any other LC-class 030 system equipped with either an internal modem or Ethernet. (Actually, a 575 comparison could be interesting, but I wouldn't be surprised if it also has PrimeTime or something like it.)