How many Centris's are left?

[Apostrophe]

As long as there are other Centris 610's in the world, there will always be new parts for mine. Does anyone know about how many were sold?

-Apostrophe

 

[MacG4]

i currently own 1 centris. a centris 650

 

[Mike Richardson]

Centris was a rather short lived line. It was basically supposed to be in the "center" between Performa and Quadra. Quadra 610 is very similar to Centris 610 so most parts are interchangeable. 660 AV is also the same case so (maybe) the same PSU.

 

[Patrickool93]

I have a Centris 650 and a Centris 610.

 

[LCGuy]

I'd say not many left, sadly. As Mike said, the Centris line didn't last for long, as Apple later merged it with the more successful Quadra line, and even so, they were often underpowered, with 68LC040's instead of full '040s, and often came with less RAM and smaller HDs than their Quadra counterparts, and as much I hate to say it, i'd imagine most Centrises (Centrii?) would've been crushed by now :'( But as others said, the good news is that most parts are interchangable between Centrii and their equivilent Quadra.

 

[Quadraman]

As long as there are other Centris 610's in the world, there will always be new parts for mine. Does anyone know about how many were sold?
-Apostrophe

The Centris and the Quadra are mostly the same. In fact, at this point in time, there's not much sense to leaving a Centris as a Centris when you can easily pop in a full 040 and run it as a Quadra.

 

[Franklinstein]

Centrises (Centrii?)

Ha, I had the same thought.

The only Centris that was different from the Quadra of the same name would be the 610. The Centris ran a 20MHz 'LC040, whereas the Quadra had a 25MHz '040 - their motherboards were very different. Of course, everything else (drives, cables, casing, PSU, etc) was interchangeable.

The Centris/Quadra 650 and 660av were virtually identical, however, save for some different configurations of drives or memory.

 

[Scott Baret]

I haven't seen him in a while, but I know a guy who was still using a Centris as his main machine even after it hit the decade mark. He actually wondered the same thing--how many of these are left?

My guess is that they are few and far between because...

1. As previously pointed out, the line was only produced for a few months in 1993.

2. Collectors tend to shy away from Centrises/Centrii in favor of all-in-ones (it seems people would rather have an SE/30 or Colour Classic than some modular 040 in a generic case) with the exception of LCs (a lot of people on here seem to love LCs), maybe the early Mac IIs, and Quadra 605s (hooray for feets!!!)

3. Some that are left may not be stock, I think Apple had a PPC upgrade for them.

4. I don't recall the Centris selling well. Lack of name recognition probably led to some people 86ing their Centrises/Centrii because they thought it was just some unremarkable Mac (even though we all know it's a good machine in its own right).

 

[equill]

... Centrises (Centrii?) ...

No. Centris/Centres. Centrus/Centri. Centrius/Centrii. But what's wrong with Centrises? The word was, after all, synthetic, not Latin.

de

 

[Patrickool93]

I love my Centris 650. I've had 2. The first for $.99 and he other for $20. They're unique, not only in there name, but their amazing ability to cut my foot open so cleanly.

 

[Quadraman]

Centrises (Centrii?)

Ha, I had the same thought.

The only Centris that was different from the Quadra of the same name would be the 610. The Centris ran a 20MHz 'LC040, whereas the Quadra had a 25MHz '040 - their motherboards were very different. Of course, everything else (drives, cables, casing, PSU, etc) was interchangeable.

The Centris/Quadra 650 and 660av were virtually identical, however, save for some different configurations of drives or memory.

Apple underclocked the Centris 610. The parts are actually rated for 25mhz like in the Quadra and can be overclocked beyond that.

 

[Apostrophe]

So the Quadra's were more popular...that is good, because my Centris 610 has a damaged internal Superdrive, and possibly even the hard drive. I don't want to have to keep reinstalling the OS to make it work. Actually, my first goal, before I start replacing the damaged parts, is to save all the files on its hard drive. Obviously, to do that, I'll need a working Superdrive. I'm going to try and see if an external Zip drive will work, but somehow I doubt it. Anyway, thanks everyone. Based on what you all have said, there is new hope that my '610 can be fixed after all. I'll let you know how everything goes.

-Apostrophe

 

[LCGuy]

Floppy drives and SCSI HDs are all the same, (although some later Centrises used the newer manual-inject FDDs, which you need to be careful of, FDDs can only be replaced like-for-like) so if your HD or floppy drive dies you can steal one from most other old Macs.

 

[Mike Richardson]

Centrises (Centrii?)

Ha, I had the same thought.

The only Centris that was different from the Quadra of the same name would be the 610. The Centris ran a 20MHz 'LC040, whereas the Quadra had a 25MHz '040 - their motherboards were very different. Of course, everything else (drives, cables, casing, PSU, etc) was interchangeable.

The Centris/Quadra 650 and 660av were virtually identical, however, save for some different configurations of drives or memory.

Apple underclocked the Centris 610. The parts are actually rated for 25mhz like in the Quadra and can be overclocked beyond that.

I had (have?) a Centris 610 motherboard somewhere, and I remember distinctly that the CPU was marked for 20 MHz. Not to say it probably wouldn't go up to 25 MHz without issue.

I also remember reading an article about the Centris and Quadra 610. The boards were a little different when it comes to ethernet. The Centris 610 being 20 MHz, just used every other cycle for the 10 MHz ethernet controller. This ran in software via the ROM. The Quadra was 25 MHz so it needed a hardware solution (it's own clock and a small cache).

 

[Scott Baret]

About the name--Pogue and Schorr speculated in Mac Secrets 2nd Edition that Apple wanted the name to have a pseudo-Latin sound. (See page 919, 3rd paragraph)

Apple seemed to want the computers to have snob appeal--PowerBook sounded powerful, Centris and Quadra sounded pretty high tech, Classic had a nice ring to it, and Newton sounded like something intelligent. Compare that to other computer lines of the day--Compaq DeskPro and IBM PS/2 just don't have the same ring, nor do randomly numbered Dells/Gateways.