Is the 800/840 really that bad to work on?

[Gorgonops]

You can do that on pretty much any machine. There's nothing special about the 950 in particular when it comes to serving, except that in the early '90s when it was current, it held more internal disks than any other Mac.

Well, the WGS 95 version of it is special because it's the one system that ran A/UX and Appleshare Pro, but, yes, if you're *not* doing that it's just a Mac in a particularly monumentally-scaled case.

I've never dealt with a Quadra 800 (I had a Q650 instead) but I did years ago spend some time bringing a dysfunctional Power Mac 8500 back from the dead, and it uses the same case. And, well, everything terrible people say about that case is true. The laminated "plastic shell with aluminum shielding" construction makes it a bloodthirsty monster just waiting to take a chunk off your fingers as you fight with trying to get the *#$*ing top on and off. I especially had issues with the little tabs along the bottom of the case; they just begged to snag on things, including the lid as you tried to get it on and off, and I ended up having to cut some particularly bent ones off because of what a hassle they were causing. (It didn't help that the machine I was working with had obviously been dealt with by a less than careful hand in the past; the lid was sitting drooped loosely over it when I pulled it off the junk pile because of the mess they made when they pulled it apart.)

There's very little metal in the case other than that shielding, and I have no doubt whatsoever that shipping one now, knowing how well plastic from that era ages, is just *asking* for trouble. I second the recommendation of a Quadra 650 instead. It is literally *exactly* the same motherboard (there's actually a pin on, what is it, the speaker connector?, that tells the motherboard what case it's in for identification, so if you swap a motherboard from one to the other the ID will change according to which chassis it's living in) and while the case isn't "exciting", being very much like what you'd find on a PC clone from a company like Dell of the same era, all the important parts are *metal*, it's reasonably sturdy, and far less gimmicky.

 

[EvieSigma]

I have occasionally looked at 650s, but I haven't found very many. Seems the later machines that used that case were much more common.

 

[Gorgonops]

You could expand your search to the Centris 650, it's the same machine other than it runs at 25mhz instead of 33mhz but, well, yeah, amazingly enough there are none on eBay right now. (Not that I see any 800s either.)

The 650 was by no means rare as Macs go back in the day; the one I had came off a huge pile of the things at a local tech recycler back in, sheesh, 2003 or so. But, well, I think the fact that they were so common and relatively plain-jane probably doomed them to be forgotten by collectors. It's a shame because so far as I'm concerned they're about the best mainstream 68040 Macintosh they ever made; the 900s were too big and expensive, the Q605/610 were more awkward and limited to upgrade, and the Performa/LC 5xx and 63xs were, well, chintzy. They were good, powerful workhorses, but like most workhorses they ended up being turned into glue when they weren't able to pull the wagon anymore.

If you really want a "Tower" 68k and a 900/950 is too much get a Quadra 700 and stand it on its side. It was a supported orientation.

 

[EvieSigma]

700s are nice but man do people want a lot for them!

I dunno why, it's just a IIci with a 040.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

It's so much more than that.

It was in Jurassic Park.

 

[EvieSigma]

So you've seen that eBay auction too?

That wasn't even one from the movie, and he wanted like 225 dollars for it!

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

No, I haven't actually. I just really like my Quadra 700.

 

[EvieSigma]

I mean, there's nothing wrong with it, but I just don't understand why people want twice the price of a IIci for a 040 IIci in a slightly modified case.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

Well, to be fair, the 700 has dedicated VRAM and better internal video in general. I suspect the IIci sold more, and it doesn't look that different from the IIcx, whereas the Quadra 700 is fairly unique.

 

[MJ313]

Get the best of both worlds... stuff a 650 logic board in a 700 case. tada!

Find tedhodges on here... he had a ton of those 650's.

Here it is:

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/27688-fs-centrisquadra-650s/?hl=quadra

While we're piling on the 800/8500's... how about those pci card retainer tabs??? lol smh.

 

[Unknown_K]

Yea, I snapped a few of those PCI card retainers on an 8500 (ended up needing a new case after I snapped the start button). Add 9500's to that list as well.

I stuck a 650 motherboard in a IIvx case (same as the 650/7100 case).

 

[tsundoku]

My 68K Mac of choice is an 840AV - not because I sought one out, but because somebody gave me one and it nudged everything else out of the way for obvious reasons.

There is good and bad to be said about the case. Yes, you have to remove the logic board to install memory or replace the battery, but there is an upside in that the logic board is very easy to remove. All of the connectors (except for the 840AV's composite video jacks) are lined up on the top edge with the cables kept in place by the chassis, so they are easy to unplug, and after that you just have to remove the power button and one screw to slide it out. Compare many other period machines or even modern PCs, where removing the logic board requires hunting down cables all over the place if not gutting most of the case.

I see many mentions of the Quadra 650 (which I also have) as a friendlier alternative, but it is not without its own faults. To access the logic board, you have to remove the drive cage and the power supply. Getting the power supply back into place properly after doing this can be touchy, and if you have a CD drive installed, plugging the drive data and power cables back in can be a challenge because they are under the drives themselves, and not all of the cables are long enough to be plugged in with the drive cage out of the way (without a CD drive installed, there is enough space between the drives and the power supply to reach in and plug them in with the cage in place). The cage itself is made of cut steel and requires the usual PC case caution to avoid drawing blood.

That being said, the issues with brittle plastic are all completely true, and I share Gorgonops' disdain for "the little tabs along the bottom of the case" that very easily snag the cover as you slide it on and off. All of that plastic makes the insides friendlier to fingers, but it also makes the machine very delicate, which is why I take the 650 on the road and leave the 840AV at home. I don't feel like the 650 is all that easier to work on, but it is vastly more durable because it is mostly made of metal.

 

[Gorgonops]

I see many mentions of the Quadra 650 (which I also have) as a friendlier alternative, but it is not without its own faults.

To be clearer, probably wouldn't really argue that the 650 is that much "friendlier" to work on, outside the utter horror of getting the outer shell of the other case on and off, but if you're used to working inside of a PC its construction is at least more... straightforward? As I mentioned earlier it really reminds me of something like a early 90's Dell 486, like the Optiplex /L series: it's neater and better thought out than a standard, generic, "dump an AT motherboard into a box and stuff cards and cables at random" machine but it also doesn't try particularly hard to be innovative or "tool-less". Thus by not trying too hard it has the virtues of sturdiness and simplicity the 800 lacks.

 

[techknight]

Count me lucky so far then. I have an 8100 I picked up locally awhile back, it doesnt have 1 ounce of broken plastic on it. Yet... And I already have taken it apart once to put a Sonnet card in it, and it never chimed. So I had to put the stock CPU back in it, I eventually shelved it. 

 

[tsundoku]

if you're used to working inside of a PC its construction is at least more... straightforward?

That's fair. I was never really a PC person so it doesn't feel inherently more straightforward to me, but its simplicity does make it very sturdy. Each design has its advantages. While it's nice that the 840AV doesn't require removing any major components other than the cover to get to the logic board, the aged plastic and those awful snagging metal tabs on the floor are annoying.

Count me lucky so far then. I have an 8100 I picked up locally awhile back, it doesnt have 1 ounce of broken plastic on it. Yet...

So far I have lost a couple of the thin NuBus slot tabs and way too many of the hooks that drive bezels attach to the front case with. I've bought a few replacements, but eventually they became unavailable, and my CD bezel is now glued on.

 

[Cory5412]

Although it remains one of the easiest Macs to open and work on ever, I did want to mention that I pulled my blue-and-white G3 out today and realized that in comparison with my 840av, it has a lot more broken plastics. The top back handle has come off, the latch handle has broken, several of the plastic internal standoffs holding the outer case panels sturdily in place have fallen off, and I'm sure there are other bits missing.

Fabulously easy to work on, horrifyingly badly aged plastics.

 

[sstaylor]

I remember speaking with an Apple engineer back when the 800/840 were more or less current, and complaining about the difficulty in servicing those machines.  The engineer looked chagrined and said something like "yeah, we learned a lot with that one".  Which, fair enough I guess they did, and they innovated to make each succeeding generation far easier to work on until the return of Jobs at which time other considerations apparently took precedence.

 

[Cory5412]

Jobs did oversee the blue-and-white G3, the Power Macintosh G4 family, and the Power Macintosh G5, along with the original Mac Pro. It took over ten years for any kind of idea of unexpandable/unmaintainable Macs to truly take hold.

I think that what happened is that in the years between the 800/840 and today, the need for things like DSP photoshop accelerators and add-in networking cards and dedicated video compression cards has been reduced a lot as GPUs have been able to stand in for those things, reducing the need to fill a bunch of slots with specialized hardware.

 

[Unknown_K]

Although it remains one of the easiest Macs to open and work on ever, I did want to mention that I pulled my blue-and-white G3 out today and realized that in comparison with my 840av, it has a lot more broken plastics. The top back handle has come off, the latch handle has broken, several of the plastic internal standoffs holding the outer case panels sturdily in place have fallen off, and I'm sure there are other bits missing.

Fabulously easy to work on, horrifyingly badly aged plastics.

I don't have a problem with the plastics on the B&W G3 or the G4 towers made after. My first B&W was free because somebody let it fall off a table and broke a handle. While the handle was easy to replace the aluminum frame was slightly twisted and it is noticeable if you look (door plastic cover is slightly out of alignment towards the rear).

If I drop my working 840av from a 3 foot height I would expect plastic shrapnel all over.

 

[Cory5412]

The top/back handle on mine has always been broken, I think that it was dropped when it was first shipped to me, which was in like... 2004. I don't think that the metal is bent on it, fortunately, I just never got around to replacing the handle.

The newer breaks are all things that happened even though it hasn't been dropped or even jostled too hard of late. It's not unusably bad but I've seen a few bits of plastic fall off and so far, there are more breaks on the B&W than the 840 I've got.