LC475 / Power Macintosh 8200 / Performa 630

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

 Quadra 605 didn't even have a CoPro and it's still all Quadra. 

No it's not, it's a badge engineered LC at best 

The 605 is all Quadra, the LC475 is Quadra beaten unmercifully with an ugly stick and then marketed to the unwashed masses, right dana? :approve:

 

[joshc]

So, I am pretty certain there are broken traces or a faulty IC on the logicboard of my 475, unfortunately.

I've tried all methods of diagnosis, swapping things, with no luck.

I've removed C128 and C127 at the suggestion of techknight (on my separate reddit thread about this same machine) but so far I cannot see any trace damage there. Everything is pretty tiny so I'm at the point where I could really do with a microscope to see where the problem lies...

Would it be helpful to meet up (once lockdown is over, of course) and I'll bring my working LC475 and we can swap out parts until we find the culpit? I'll take that Power Mac off your hands too...

Absolutely, sounds like a great idea, hopefully that will be this year and not next year! I am certain my LC 475 will boot with a different logicboard in there, I have no reason to believe it could be any other part unless its faulty VRAM but I can't see how faulty VRAM would cause no chime at all ?

Infact, as I say that, I am pretty sure it is chiming, the sound is just garbled/non working because of a problem with a dead trace or faulty IC I think.

 

[Paulie]

Infact, as I say that, I am pretty sure it is chiming, the sound is just garbled/non working because of a problem with a dead trace or faulty IC I think.

May be an obvious question, but does it chime if you plug headphones into it? Mine doesn't chime (I think the speaker is dying/dead), although occasionally it makes a weird garbled sound. The chime comes through fine through the headphone socket, though.

 

[Cory5412]

Quadra 605 didn't even have a CoPro and it's still all Quadra.

Thought: When we discuss the Quadra-label version of the 630, I'm sure at least once you've said that the presence of the Full 040 is what makes something a Quadra. If that were true, and we were going to be internally consistent about this, then the Quadra 605 would be discontinued from being "A Quadra" for its lack of an FPU.

(Notably, the 610 also has this going on.)

I would say you could define Quadra (or at least non-AV quadras) by A/UX compatibility, which disqualifies the 630 and 605 as being True Quadras because of their [drumroll] chipset and video differences.

It's all badge engineering regardless, and the 630/605 are particularly low-rent Lexuses, in this context. Like, if Lexus badged up a Yaris.

In that "these designations aren't real, except when I want them to be" the 630 and 605 should probably have been Centrises. Centris was a model name sold to the same channels as Quadra, but it implied small-medium-business and small-office-home-office kinds of computers, which is where the 605/630 really fit. (Much more than the 650 and 800, for example.) The Centris line also inconsistently had Ethernet (And, you could argue onboard Ethernet is the sign of a True Quadra, but) and inconsistently had full/LC040s.

 

[bibilit]

Any picture of the Logic Board ?

can be related to the Egret chip, U29 in your board, causing a lot of issues. 

 

[Danamania]

Thought: When we discuss the Quadra-label version of the 630, I'm sure at least once you've said that the presence of the Full 040 is what makes something a Quadra. If that were true, and we were going to be internally consistent about this, then the Quadra 605 would be discontinued from being "A Quadra" for its lack of an FPU.

(Notably, the 610 also has this going on.)

I would say you could define Quadra (or at least non-AV quadras) by A/UX compatibility, which disqualifies the 630 and 605 as being True Quadras because of their [drumroll] chipset and video differences.

It's all badge engineering regardless, and the 630/605 are particularly low-rent Lexuses, in this context. Like, if Lexus badged up a Yaris.

In that "these designations aren't real, except when I want them to be" the 630 and 605 should probably have been Centrises. Centris was a model name sold to the same channels as Quadra, but it implied small-medium-business and small-office-home-office kinds of computers, which is where the 605/630 really fit. (Much more than the 650 and 800, for example.) The Centris line also inconsistently had Ethernet (And, you could argue onboard Ethernet is the sign of a True Quadra, but) and inconsistently had full/LC040s.

And add to the mix that the LC630 *did* come with a full 040 (at least in Australia), then it's... all whatever is defined as whatever. The only bit of internal consistency I think any company ever did was between equivalent releases at the same time.  I'd be happy with "Quadra" to mean "040" which brings the Powerbook 500s and 190 into the fold, and a bunch of LCs and Performas too.

Worked for Apple later with the G3/G4/G5 biz, which was a little more consistent.

Besides, it's a quarter century past when any of it mattered, I say the 605 stays a Quadra because it's too ace a little box to not get that ace name.

 

[Cory5412]

I'd be happy with "Quadra" to mean "040"

The Four Types of 68k Mac:
- Macintosh

- Macintosh II

- Macintosh III

- Macintosh IV

Worked for Apple later with the G3/G4/G5 biz, which was a little more consistent.

I feel like product rationalization in the G3 era is a fairly significant amount of what saved Apple. There's no single hard reason for every single 040 Mac not to have been called Quadra [number] (Or Mac IV with modifiers) except that Apple tried really hard in the early-mid '90s to separate things into segment-targeted Brands(TM) (Quadra, LC, Centris, Performa) and, across the entire desktop Mac line, none of it ever ended up being consistent.

For example, as we've found out, there are:

- Quadras with LC040s and no Ethernet

- Centrises with Full 040s and Ethernet

- Performas with full 040s

- LCs with full 040s

And so on.

Architecturally, the 630 and 605 come directly out of the LC family. Performa is just a badge that got applied to what was mostly, architecturally and feature-wise, LC-series computers for the purpose of selling them to homes. (And  Classics and the IIvx, except for the IIvi/vx was also architecturally more similar to an LC II than a Mac II, probably for the purpose of making it cheaply.

Incidentally, I have utterly no idea why the Quadra 605 exists as a discrete product with its own unique case separate from the LC475, to which it is literally identical internally. I don't think "LC" as a name had any stigma associated with it in the way Performa did. It makes sense for them to badge engineer it for the different markets (edu vs. normal mac channel retail) (I mean, tbh that doesn't even make sense, but it's what Apple was commonly doing at the time) but it doesn't strictly speaking make any sense that they gave it its own case.

It's cute and aesthetically I'm glad it does, but.

 

[Danamania]

Architecturally, the 630 and 605 come directly out of the LC family. Performa is just a badge that got applied to what was mostly, architecturally and feature-wise, LC-series computers for the purpose of selling them to homes. (And  Classics and the IIvx, except for the IIvi/vx was also architecturally more similar to an LC II than a Mac II, probably for the purpose of making it cheaply.

Incidentally, I have utterly no idea why the Quadra 605 exists as a discrete product with its own unique case separate from the LC475, to which it is literally identical internally. I don't think "LC" as a name had any stigma associated with it in the way Performa did. It makes sense for them to badge engineer it for the different markets (edu vs. normal mac channel retail) (I mean, tbh that doesn't even make sense, but it's what Apple was commonly doing at the time) but it doesn't strictly speaking make any sense that they gave it its own case.

It's cute and aesthetically I'm glad it does, but.

Even the LC name got thrown around like confetti once the original little LC was out of the way, and it was numbers all over the place on *anything*. I'm normally one to loathe model designations that are chains of numbers (even when they're secretly very descriptive, looking at you sony https://en.tab-tv.com/?p=12043 ). I give Apple a pass because hey, there weren't THAT many of them in the range I like, and I'm an unapologetic Apple fangirl.

Some of the Q605's appeal to me is that weird place it sits. Yes, it's an LC475 but it's also so much better looking. It's almost an alternate-universe Mac in itself, and I think it's as much an expression of the simplicity of the original Macintosh as you could get at the time. The case was abandoned afterwards, and when I began collecting in about 2000 there was precisely *one* photo of the Quadra 605 discoverable online, and it was *wrong*. It hid the curves, and it was such a secret looking little odd thing I had to get my hands on it. Then I covered the 'net in Q605 photos and wrote the wikipedia article on it, and all was well with the world. 

 

[Fizzbinn]

Architecturally, the 630 and 605 come directly out of the LC family.

At least for the 605 the basic form factor, port selection and expansion slot obviously come from the previous LC models.  However from the LC 475 and Quadra 605 hardware Developer Note:

“The architecture of the Macintosh LC 475 and Macintosh Quadra 605 computers is
based on the architecture of the Macintosh Centris 650.”

And the Centris 650 and Quadra 800 share a Developer Note! 

So maybe “Quadra Jr.”  ;-)  

The Architecture Block Diagrams in these old hardware Developer Notes are fun to look at/compare. Lots of other good info too:
http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/hardware2.html

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

As is the Q630, ace of spades no less. Sorry Cory, you're trying to make sense in retrospect out of something with which Apple marketing was obviously clueless about in its time. If the badge says Quadra, it's a Quadra, if not, it ain't. Right, Dana? :lol:

 

[Danamania]

I dunno, that's all changeable anyway 

 

 

[demik]

I opened up the Power Mac's PSU to find something a little different than I expected - a completely blown IC...

View attachment 31886

"Funny" enough, that's how my 8100 died. Except the PSU did blown the logic board with it  

For the LC475, try to "choke" it. Even with a good PRAM battery, this sometimes help. 

Idea is this : you power on the PSU, power it down and as soon as you heard the HDD slowing down you power it on again. Might need multiple tries. That's the trick to get it working without a PRAM battery by the way.

 

[joshc]

I sold the 8200 to @Paulie who is going to try replacing the PSU to get it working again.

The 475 still doesn't work, it needs further board-level diagnosis to seek out what's going on, it's beyond a PRAM-related issue in my opinion and currently a little beyond my skill level at this point but something worth investigating in the future as I would like a working 475 again.

The 630 is alive and well and I managed to re-attach the front bezel, I would like to do a CF conversion with it but will need to find an adapter that works with its early/crippled implementation of IDE.

 

[jimbojones]

I know this topic is a bit old now, but if you need a 8200 PSU @Paulie, I have a 8200 with no video output that you can have. The PSU seems fine.

 

[Paulie]

I know this topic is a bit old now, but if you need a 8200 PSU @Paulie, I have a 8200 with no video output that you can have. The PSU seems fine.

@jimbojones apologies I've just seen this, I haven't really visited these forums much over the last month. If you've still got the machine, I'm definitely interested.

 

[Paulie]

I know this topic is a bit old now, but if you need a 8200 PSU @Paulie, I have a 8200 with no video output that you can have. The PSU seems fine.

@jimbojones apologies I've just seen this, I haven't really visited these forums much over the last month. If you've still got the machine, I'm definitely interested.

 

[jimbojones]

@Paulie Ah, no worries. Sorry I literally chucked it on eBay last week as I needed the space back. It's still on there with a few days to go, but it's been bid on so I can't remove it.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Apple-Power-Macintosh-8200-120-for-spares-repair-see-description/233854888067

 

[Paulie]

@jimbojones No worries, I'll keep my eye on that.

 

[Kai Robinson]

@Danamania oooh, i need a label for mine! 

@joshc if you need it, i have some egret/cuda chips on the way.