Jessenator's conquests

[Cory5412]

From the TAM gang's woes, the 6500 Gazelle architecture board and a compatible Firewire/USB card is difficult to find and targeted by deep pocket TAM types.

Worth noting. For me, I want a 6500/300 specifically for performance comparisons with a beige G3/300, an 8600/300, and just for fun I should probably get a blue-and-white G3/300 in the mix as well, to use as a baseline for thinking about what the performance of each different kind of Mac you could get in 1997 was like, numerically.

I'm not super worried about firewire/USB for most of my vintage Macs, because, to be honest, I have vtools on-site, and that's much faster than USB 1.1 is. Also, I'm I am a 7.6.1-liker, and would probably be running that on such a machine, and 7.6.1 can use neither USB nor firewire, but it can use ethernet, file server, the PC compatibility cards (if those work in the 6500) and the Avid Cinema card (if those work in the 6500.)

It's no skin off my back to get a 6500 and then run it without any PCI cards, or with only a PCI Ethernet card, to be perfectly honest.

Firewire should be a big improvement over the oddball IDE implementation of the Q630-6500/TAM series, no?

I'm actually not sure that the IDE implementation of the 630-6300 and the 6360/6400/6500 is very odd. It's my understanding that it's reliable, performant relative to the SCSI implementations Apple had at the time, and that it fairly handily works well with big disks. (For most people, this will be up to 120 gigs, but I believe johnklos has a 630 or 6200 with a 500 or 750 gig disk in it.)

Perhaps ironically, compare with the weird IDE implementations of the Beige and Blue-and-white G3s 

A 6400 with G3/L2, a nice VidCard for one slot coupled with a USB/Firewire Card in the other probably offers better performance overall than 6500. 

Here's the thing. What you are describing: 6400/G3, Video, USB/FW, a bigger IDE hard disk, and CS2 ethernet is [dramatic pause] a Power Macintosh G3, but worse.

The Beige G3 has all that and a much faster bus, onboard 3d graphics that can accomodate 6 megs of VRAM and thus 1600x1200 at 24-bit color, onboard ethernet you don't have to hunt for, no driver oddities, an extra pci slot, a more flexible case with room for more different options, and can run newer software, plus room for loads more ram. (768 megs, vs. 136 megs in a 6400.)

I get that you, and several people, like G3 upgrades, but we shouldn't talk about it in the sense of getting "a better computer than the 6400" because to be perfectly honest, there are loads of better computers than the 6400 to be had all over the place.

I think we should enjoy the 6400 for what it is -- because it's not a very good Power Mac G3.

With that in mind:

My ideal 6400 configs are the stripped out cacheless 180MHz model people would have bought basically just to run clarisworks on, or to replace some older Mac with, and the 200MHz Video Editing Edition, with a PC Compatibility card added in, each running 7.6.1.

Here's the other thing:

All of this highly depends on what software you want to run. The newer you go, the more RAM you need, and the 6400 and 6500 can't hold a lot of that stuff. (136 for 6400 and 128 for 6500, 160 for 4400.) Even the original basic iMac can officially run 384, and unofficially run 512. All Beige Power Mac G3s are known to support 768 megs of RAM, and a PowerMac G3 can run a gig. All "slot loading" iMac G3s can also run a gig of RAM.

So, like, if you want a fast vintage Mac for os8/9 and newer 9-era software, there's plenty of faster and better machines around.

from all accounts PCC did pretty well.

They did well and they were fairly well liked. Their product stack was weird, and as you can kind of tell from the price list, their pricing structure was.... also kind of weird, but each of the clone vendors had weird stuff like that going on.

He later went on to say the status quo of the licensing was more harmful than beneficial...

This is 100% true.

Traditionally, it's popular to credit The G3 (the iMac in particular) with Apple's re-discovered success in the late '90s, but a lot of different factors really went into that, and one of them was absolutely ending the clone programs.

The clone program arguably extended further than it really should have and because Apple built the boards and supplied the compoments for so many f the different models, often clone suppliers got their machines built and shipped before Apple did, for, reasons I'm not entirely clear on myself. Plus, the clone manufacturers were often quick to adopt slightly faster CPU modules than Apple was using (the 225MHz PowerComputings are a good example of this) while Apple's own machines were still at 200MHz for a couple more months. (Though, 250, 300, and 350MHz versions would follow very shortly.)

The other-other-other thing is that some of the cloners *cough* Motorola *cough* subleased their clone agreement like fifteen times. If you can pull a brand name out of your armpit, that company was slamming StarMax motherboards into PC cases in the mid-late '90s. 

I suspect if Apple had negotiated a different kind of contract and if their own distribution and product line made more sense, the program really would have had the intended effect of expanding the Mac market. Instead, what happened is that Apple let the cloners eat its 7000/8000/9000 series lunch and its 4000/5000/6000 series lunch.

The other thing is, I bet a PowerBook clone (say, one built by IBM) would have been super well liked, because laptops was something Apple was really bad at basically from 1994 to 1998.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Worth noting. For me, I want a 6500/300 specifically for performance comparisons with a beige G3/300, an 8600/300, and just for fun I should probably get a blue-and-white G3/300 in the mix as well, to use as a baseline for thinking about what the performance of each different kind of Mac you could get in 1997 was like, numerically.

Not fair as comparisons go really, I just took a look at the timeframe over on everymac for confirmation. The 6500/300 was discontinued 3/14/98, three days before the 3/17/98 G3/300 release and that very day the 8600/300 was discontinued.

As for the more upgrade friendly 6400/200 (compared to 6500/300 or TAM), it was long gone, discontinued 5/1/97, though the 5400 AIO was available until it was discontinued 11 mos. later on 3/31/98. In general, you're right about the G3, no doubt it's all about beige. But on the subject of InstaTowers (where did that name come from, BTW?) the 6400 would be more fun in general with more upgrade compatibility than a much faster, much later 6500/300 as I see it in terms of collections.

I'm actually not sure that the IDE implementation of the 630-6300 and the 6360/6400/6500 is very odd. It's my understanding that it's reliable, performant relative to the SCSI implementations Apple had at the time, and that it fairly handily works well with big disks

Keeping up with Apple's SCSI implementations of the era would be damning that odd, single device/HDD ONLY support IDE implementation with faint praise. Much better than when the faithful damned it as cheaper/implying slower than SCSI when

Apple finally implemented IDE, but no great shakes.

I guess Apple finally got SCSI right in build to order Beige G3s with available Ultra/Wide SCSI on board.  They got a lot right in Beige.

Here's the thing. What you are describing: 6400/G3, Video, USB/FW, a bigger IDE hard disk, and CS2 ethernet is [dramatic pause] a Power Macintosh G3, but worse.

Of course it was worse {even more dramatic pause} there was a three month gap between the 6400 being discontinued and the BG3/233/266 being introduced! But a 6360 refurb, a Crescendo G3/L2 and a Radius' PCI makeover of the Thunder IV GX let me wait things out until Apple finally put an additional PCI slot to the DA during the G4 era before upgrading. In the day skipping a generation by acceleration is something I did twice IRL. []

 

[Cory5412]

Incidentally, so as to avoid the toes-being-stepped-on feeling I feel like I might be generating - I want to be clear that I'm not saying people shouldn't use G3 upgrades. I'm saying that I don't like them, myself, in modern times, (and I'm on record as having thought this for at least fifteen years) because it's often cheaper and faster and you get a much more capable overall system to just get a real PowerMac/PowerBook/iMac/iBook G3.

I'm also not saying that there's a downside to using a G3-upgraded system, as much as that, there's far fewer upsides to doing so compared to just using a real G3.

Not fair as comparisons go really,

So, I'll cop to getting the "1997" part wrong, mostly. The 6500/300 was introduced in April '97 (it had taken the "first consumer desktop to 300MHz" crown and Apple was super proud about that) and the 9600/300 and /350 ran through March 97 as well, although the 9600 in particular was available at least through early 1999, at seemingly fairly wildly varying prices. The 9600 had actually already been discontinued, but was then re-introduced in February, only to be re-discontinued just one month later. One month it was like $3,500 and the next it would be $1,600. I'm extremely curious about why the 6500 wasn't discontinued along with all the other discontinuations in that moment.

I think it's perfectly fair, the 6500 would still have existed, and even without the 275 and 300, there were other speeds. It's just that 300 is a number that four platforms happened to land on and so it would be neat to compare them numerically.

Plus, someone who had bought a 6500 at some point in time might still have been looking at 300 or 333MHz PowerMac G3s as upgrades if they wanted to stay on kind of a power user track. Heck, a 6500/300 might have been perfectly justified in buying a Blue/300 when those launched in '99, especially since by then the 300MHz price point had dropped a lot.

Plus, we compare all manner of things.

And, it's not like I'm using this information to prove that a G3 is better. We know that! We've known that, solidly, for twenty years.

But a 6360 refurb, a Crescendo G3/L2 and a Radius' PCI makeover of the Thunder IV GX let me wait things out until Apple finally put an additional PCI slot to the DA during the G4 era before upgrading. In the day skipping a generation by acceleration is something I did twice IRL. []

Sure, but, again, it's not 1999 and we're trying to stretch a machine for another year. Today, acceleration is arguably something we only really need to do out of pure interest, not because it actually makes sense to accelerate an older performa/powermac instead of just getting a beige g3, or even any powermac g4.

The other thing is, getting a refurbished 6360 arguably bought you a lot of upgrade money. Many of the upgrades I see people show interest in cost nearly as much as buying an entirely new machine. (Rockets, in particular, but really it's something where you ahve to consider each scenario individually.

So, like, that's nice for you in 1999, but here in 2019, I have a Beige G3/300, a Blue G3/450, a TiBook 1000, an iMac/400, an iMac/500, a third slot-loading iMac whose speed I forget, an iBook/366, an iBook/1.33, and a QS'02 G4/800. It's quite frankly a waste of time and money for me to bother with turning a pre-G3 Mac that's interesting on its own into something I already have a half dozen of.

I guess Apple finally got SCSI right in build to order Beige G3s with available Ultra/Wide SCSI on board.  They got a lot right in Beige.

The Beige G3 family is amazing. UWSCSI was a BTO option, and it was also available packed in with an insanely high end 300MHz config, I believe list on that particular config was above either 3-grand or 4-grand. The Blue also had a UWSCSI card available, but, again, it was mostly on the higher end models.

Keeping up with Apple's SCSI implementations of the era would be damning that odd, single device/HDD ONLY support IDE implementation with faint praise.

"odd", sure, but it wasn't really bad. They're known to support big disks with essentially no caveats. There's no room for two IDE hard disks in any Mac up through the Beige anyway, and Apple famously INCREDIBLY botched the IDE implementation on the blue-and-white Rev A (like, those machines are near mandatory storage upgrade candidates), and there's weird stuff going on with Beiges, especially if you want to use OS X.

So, arguably it wasn't until 1999 and the Power Macintosh G4 Yikes/Sawtooth rolled around that Apple finally got IDE totally right.

But on the subject of InstaTowers

The same place Outrigger and K2 did. That was Apple's codename for the enclosure. Apple was particularly proud of Instatower and K2, 

 

[jessenator]

I enjoy the spirited banter

I guess i never really took stock of keeping an old Mac running in the day. In high school, while working in our IT group, rarely would we do upgrades on machines. Most of memories it are of changing out whole labs worth of computers.

1999 I want to say it was.

Anyhow, there was one holdout. My German teacher desperately wanted to keep her Macintosh TV. Other than that they all got blue G3s and matching CRTs. The mediocre lab got Bondi iMacs. The nice lab kept its molar Macs. Did my first bit of nonlinear editing on one of them.

Our yearbook team though, we kept everything. We had two radius full page displays, one on a maxed out iici that ran pagemaker like a champ, the other on a quadra of some model. But we had an 8600 solely for image editing, an 8500 for the advanced photo classes and I think another 8500 for photos. These never got changed out with the swarm of next gen machines. I think the teacher eventually held out and got a G4 yikes come graduation.

Much later on, my first employer in my field was still using his beige G3 (this was 2006) and I don't know what he did to it, but it got the job done for him. He was doing everything from heavy Photoshop work to complex InDesign work. . Still a workhorse. I wish I had gotten it from him. He said I could have it once he upgraded, that was probably the longest stretch.

My brother in law had ditched his 72/7500 (don't recall which it was now) for a sawtooth, probably when they were launched, And used it till the Intel switch, but might've had an iMac g5. Don't recall.

I wish I knew if they ever upgraded anything. I think if anything, the older stuff did get a few things here and there, maybe more than RAM, but y would've been shocked if it'd been a sonnet or daystar card.

A school friends dad's design agency or the local recording studio, maybe. I would always gawk at prices in MacMall and wonder if I'd ever afford one. By the time I got my Q610 I eyeballed the Carerra or 601 card. But even though I might've saved up enough, I don't think in the day I would've. My friends were calling me to the PC side, and then when we finally got an iMac DV SE, we had enough to keep me going.

I upgraded my mac pro to a octo in 2008 or so, when the 5355 CPUs dropped to $50 and popped in an xfx flashed 5770. Thats about all she wrote. But 2007–2014 was quite a span for a machine. It was a bit of a trick, but at least you could do it on your own.

It's fun to kind of take a small bite out of the nostalgia apple (hah) and see where the top of the line of the mid 90s could do and beyond.

That's what it's about: fun.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Yep, all in fun, and no toes stepped on at all, C. It's wonderful that we can pick and choose machines for any reason at all at this point. Your generational 300MHz comparison being a particularly interesting case in point. But having nursed systems along on a budget IRL I have a different perspective.

I'm very interested in treating everything as others do an SE/30 or TAM, blowing every possible thing out to the max just to see what might have happened in different scenarios. I'm doing that on a budget as well today. One of the things I'd love to and can't afford to explore is the history of the Mac growing into THE machine for DTP after having been the ONLY machine for that purpose. Taking a workstation modified 128k back to faux original equipment status seems an utter waste in that light. PageMaker and Fontographer (the original Illustration app) on 128k and then 512k were the tools that made the Mac in that market. After Illustrator and Plus were released it was different, not as exciting in technical terms. I got into the Mac scene with the SE and by then, pushing the envelope had become almost boring.

Be that as is may, I was weighing the merits of the 6400 architecture that arguably make it better than the 6500/TAM for expansion and ultimately, overall performance. Taking a 6400 past the 6500/TAM in that regard is a pet project of mine as is taking a IIsi past what is possible to do with the SE/30. Rocket/SCSI2 daughtercard is at the heart of that effort. :grin:

Different strokes for different collectors and those different approaches are all fascinating to me. That as well is what it's about for me and the reason I jump into so many different members projects.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I guess i never really took stock of keeping an old Mac running in the day. In high school, while working in our IT group, rarely would we do upgrades on machines. Most of memories it are of changing out whole labs worth of computers.

Take a look back at the MacWorld (more consumer oriented) and MacUser (far better technically) at vintageapple.org. The acclererator reviews are all about weighing the merits of upgrading a machine in hand vs. biting the bullet and going for Apple's latest.

 

[jessenator]

Got the last cap soldered onto the Starmax board. Gutted the 4400 with the hopes of swapping the board, and *ahem* positioned the board in mediocre fashion*. Hooked up the PSU and a keyboard, gave it a tap on the soft power and...

 

The board, even though the connectors are flush, doesn't quite fit into the case, onto the support pegs, which is meh. Guess I'm left with the decision to someday find a new case, or get out the dremel and go to town! I'm kind of inclined to dremel out the I/O panel further. The 4400 is kind of an eyesore, so I don't think modification would be too heretical.

*Here's the insulated (bubble wrap and a box) solution just to power it up anyway. without completely disassembling the 4400—I wanted to hear everything hooked up: speakers, fan, etc.

 

[jessenator]

I'll chalk up another soldering victory (took me far too long, but still).

Analog board and PSU recapped  

To save time, I just used the yoke and tube from the Classic (the connectors weren't burnt up). Close save after I blindly started peeling off hot glue:

But I found a 100nf cap on the parts, Classic analog board.

ok now it's time for bed...

 

[jessenator]

Also, after getting my Starmax 5000 board all hooked up {in a cardboard box} and booting it w/o the Sonnet, Metronome indicates this:

So it's a 5000/225… which according to Everymac runs at a 45MHz bus speed??? That's got to be a mistake. The clock multiplier is 4.5 (in order to get 225) based on the Tanzania board CPU charts, but the bus speed can't be 45 can it?

I guess if Metronome is accurate, and it really is a 603ev I could swap a few SMDs and get a 300 MHz machine.


But in other strangeness the Sonnet Crescendo crashes on boot. I've seen some workarounds I want to try on 6400Zone.

 

[jessenator]

Met up today with MOS8_030 and bought some Power Computing goodies to further my PowerWave setup!

Even included a press kit from April 1996 which i will scan once I'm home.

Also stopped by the Austin a Goodwill Computer Store and found an sata+IDE PCI card and a FireWire card. Not too much else other than a blueberry iMac which looked worse for wear.

PCC goodies https://imgur.com/a/w3YHmcQ

 

[jessenator]

After thinking I wouldn't find an ADB variant (for non stupid prices) I finally got one! Now to play some CYAC...

 

[MOS8_030]

CYAC was always my favorite.  Wish I hadn't given away my ADB joystick years ago.

 

[jessenator]

Got a few bits of miscellany tonight (had to go to two thrift stores):

::linked to larger versions::

IBM/Lenovo ThinkVision L201p — nice and hefty, weighted/counterbalanced(?) height, decent tilt and axial rotation. Incidentally, is there a way to rotate the screen orientation in classic OS? or do you have to have a portrait display to do that?



Little bit bigger than my Sony SDM monitor, native resolution of 1600x1200. Doesn't do the fun 1:1 mode that the Sony does, but very nice display.

Old HP Pavilion — I really only wanted the PSU. 14 years is better than 24 years :lol:  but it has some other things I might dabble with like a DVD-R (which Windows thinks is a DVD-RAM for some reason??) with LightScribe! Never had one, but maybe I can find some media to try out just for fun.

Interesting it had FireWire on the board with header connectors. I really wasn't into the PC world in 2006, so maybe that's not uncommon.


I'm actually surprised that this machine hadn't been pilfered. I got this one at Savers and they had a bit of reputation for having nearly gutted PCs and even a couple of B&W G3s at one point. But it was all there, super, SUPER dusty, but still functional. The PO had the sense to wipe the HDD before dropping it off, and it was nice they put the default software and config back in it. Nice flashback!

 

[Unknown_K]

I want a 20" 1600x1200 LCD monitor as well, probably a DELL but that IBM is nice.

Why would you want a PS from an OEM HP anyway?

 

[jessenator]

Yeah, I saw that monitor thinking it was really banged up or just plain didn't work, but I plugged it in and the no signal graphic started moving around the screen. Sold.

Why would you want a PS from an OEM HP anyway?

I just needed a generic ATX PSU to replace the possibly ailing supply in my PowerWave. $8 seemed reasonable.  I might sell the mobo on ebay or give it to a friend perhaps. Not that I'd make much on ebay anyway.

I just looked up LightScribe recordable media... $2+ per disc  that's a tad steep just to play with, so I might pass on it.

 

[jessenator]

Don't know how I missed this when it popped up on local not-Craigslist last week, but glad I picked it up. I thought about also getting the 6100/66 DOS they were also selling but, meh—no Houdini Y-cable and I'm already pushing hoarder status in my house :lol: .

It was very clean when I got it, leading me to believe the individual I bought it from too care of that after finding it while thrifting, but it's very clean, save for the fans, which is normal. The motherboard looked like it got the soap and IPA cleaning, so there was some work done or it was regularly cleaned out during its original run.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but is that a GIMO connector on the upper left, above the SCSI connector? It is a Catalyst reference design after all. Might be worth a test.

I also love how this is actually just a PowerCurve board—see the screen printed name. Efficiency in building systems to the last.

 

[LaPorta]

Looks just like my PT Pro, just not as many slots. Great machines, they are.

 

[jessenator]

Looks just like my PT Pro, just not as many slots. Great machines, they are.

These also have 20-pin ATX PSUs, correct?

 

[LaPorta]

Almost 100% sure will verify tonight. I’ll get you a photo.

 

[Cory5412]

a DVD-R (which Windows thinks is a DVD-RAM for some reason??) with LightScribe!

Long delay - I know. That's pretty normal. You should be able to unsheath a DVD-RAM disc or buy one that's not cased up and pop it in and use it like you'd expect a DVD-RAM disc to work. The bummer thing about that is that DVD-RAM discs aren't, as far as I know, being made any more, and this functionality became mainstream way later than I'll argue it should have, but.

Don't know how I missed this when it popped up on local not-Craigslist last week, but glad I picked it up.

This is a very handsome looking box.

Re the PowerWave and PowerTower - I had thought they were different platforms (although, that's only really relevant on a "weird niche technical details" or "writing drivers to run linux on PowerPC hardware" detail level. It's possible this board is a transplant or they weren't different platforms and the thing I'm thinking of is PowerWave vs. PowerCenter.

Ultimately though, thinking about it, it would make perfect sense for the powercenter/wave/tower to all use the same base platform, since the real differentiation was in what CPU/cache/whatever you put in it, and the case/form factor.