Liberation of a First Generation PowerMacs

[BeniD82]

Hey Guys!

I figured I might as well list my recent Mac conquests (thanks Slowpoke)!

1.) Power Macintosh 6100/66: I like the low profile "pizzaboxen" design of this first generation PPC. It's definitively an interesting design. I was able to find an angle adapter and a 4MB Apple HPV card from an 8100 (granted, it only spots 2MB presently - I couldn't find any 512KB VRAM Simm's yet). Upgraded with a Sonnet Crescendo G3/NuBus 400 MHz this badboy is smoking

2.) Power Macintosh 6214CD: Uhhhh.... My first encounter with a Road-Apple (other than my Colour Classic). Wow, can you say "slow"?! Just about anything in this machine is slow as molasses... Video, Disk I/O, CPU... The stock 6100 runs better than this unfortunate fellow. I actually acquired this machine since I needed a compatible case for my 640 DOS Compatible logic board which has been collecting dust for years

I swapped out the boards, fired it up, and oh what a difference! It is now very responsive, loads significantly faster, and performs better overall (mind you this is with the stock OS still installed). This system is now spotting 132MB of RAM, Video In- and Output component, TV Tuner, and best of all, full '040 CPU and DOS Card upgraded with a Cyrix 5x86 100 MHz which improved DOS/Windows performance massively. Geeky-cool!

 

[madmax_2069]

i originally thought that the 6100 shared its ram for vram

but here is a link anyway to a 512k vram stick (shows its for LC, P475, P575, 8100, power book duo 210 and 230, and a few others)

http://www.memoryx.net/apl512v.html

It is where i bought my vram for my P475 (that exact same link) and the sodimm vram upgrade for my Beige G3 and could not be happier.

I always look at memory on their site if i cant find anything elsewhere.

You can even find the same 128mb stick of ram that works in my P475 from them.

BTW nice score

 

[Bunsen]

i originally thought that the 6100 shared its ram for vram

It does.

but here is a link anyway to a 512k vram stick http://www.memoryx.net/apl512v.html

The only place you can mount that in an x100 is on a PDS HPV video card.

Congratulations on your scores BeniD82, and on successfully upgrading both machines }

If you've never read LEM's dissection of the failtastic x200-x300 series, it's worth a look for the sheer horror.

 

[madmax_2069]

The only place you can mount that in an x100 is on a PDS HPV video card.

Which is what he has in the 6100 (from a 8100) right, so then that would help him then ?

 

[Nathan]

Congrats. I wish my 6100 was that nice! Mine seems very close to stock, basically stock except for having 72mb of ram (probably a standard upgrade option), that and the cdrom is broken. Yours is marvelous, find a good use for it. You might try Mac OS 8 or 9 on your 6100 (if you have install media to reinstall the original os), just to see how well it runs. Especially since 9 is closer to usable in this modern day and age, not that using the original os doesn't have it's merits.

 

[Bunsen]

The only place you can mount that in an x100 is on a PDS HPV video card.

Which is what he has in the 6100 (from a 8100) right, so then that would help him then ?

and a 4MB Apple HPV card from an 8100 (granted, it only spots 2MB presently

Whoop, I missed that. Yes, quite right.

Still, the motherboard video out the HDI-45 port does use system RAM as VRAM, and is consequently dang slow. Unless you have 1MB of cache, which, luckily, the Crescendo Nubus does. I'd probably still recommend not using the motherboard video unless you really need two monitors, as that will leave the cache free to speed up other stuff.

 

[madmax_2069]

Whoop, I missed that. Yes, quite right.

No Problem, heck at first i thought his was asking for vram for the 6100, so i had to edit my post.

 

[BeniD82]

I do indeed have the HPV Video Adapter from an 8100 Mac (it has 2MB soldered onboard and the capability to be expanded to 4MB). Unfortunately, it doesn't work quite right. When plugged into the crescendo I get hard lockups either on boot, sometimes it loads the system then locks up, quite random actually. But with the regular angle bracket the card appears to be working fine. On the other hand, if I do not hook up the video card to the Crescendo the system runs rock solid.

I haven't figured out what the cause to that issue may be. It could be the CPU and the fact that this particular card was not meant to be used in a 6100, but I'm not sure. I've also noticed that the HPV card has a scratch on one of the traces leading to the connector but I can't determine wheter it has actually been severed, hence that could be the cause too. So at this point I'm stuck between using either high quality video at 66MHz or ultra-slow 256 color video at 400Mhz. What to do, what to do ... *sigh*

Edit, and regarding the 6200 to 630/640 *upgrade*... OS 8, DOS, and Windows 3.11 look and work quite well on a 23" Widescreen LCD ... hehehehe }

 

[Bunsen]

HPV Video Adapter / When plugged into the crescendo I get hard lockups either on boot, sometimes it loads the system then locks up, quite random actually.

Extensions conflict?

ultra-slow 256 color video at 400Mhz

How slow is it, with the 400MHz G3 and its 1MB cache? Have you compared it with/without the G3?

the fact that this particular card was not meant to be used in a 6100

Doubtful, IMHO. As you point out, it works fine without the G3.

the HPV card has a scratch on one of the traces leading to the connector but I can't determine whether it has actually been severed

No multitester? You can make a simple continuity checker with a couple of wires, a torch lightbulb and a battery.

 

[BeniD82]

Hey Bunsen,

I've tried booting the system with just the sonnet extension enabled, but unfortunately with the same results. Right now I have OS 9 installed, but I may actually try OS 8 or System 7 to outrule a software conflict.

The onboard video isn't really that terrible when using the G3, but color depth is limited to 256 colors @ 800x600 (or the odd Apple equivalent). Also, memory performs slower with shared memory (about 25MB/s vs 31MB/s with dedicated video). Also, I do have a multimeter so I will definitively try the continuity test.

-- BeniD82

 

[ppuskari]

Hey I knew I was reading something similar about lockups and the hpv card. NOT sure if this applies to how much memory you have in your machine or not, but I will attribute this to BUGSI! Thanks a lot. Odd trivia may indeed come in handy around here. We never know when!

Odd trivia: The HPV card was officially "not supported" according to Apple in the 6100, but it ran fine. It ran fine with the Sonnet G3 card, but it locked up if I ran the 6100 with more RAM than the 72 megs Apple claimed was the maximum, but you could put 128 in it, along with the 8 on the motherboard for 136 megs. But with 136 in it and the G3 card, it locked up all the time.

So does that sound familiar? Thanks BUGSI

 

[BeniD82]

I have 72 MB in there right now - 2x32MB and 8 MB On-Board. I will give it a try to see if less memory will resolve this issue. It would be rather odd but it's definitively worth a try, thanks for the tip! I do think that it would be kind of sad though considering this machine could run with up to 264MB of RAM. Switching to the regular A/V card would probably also solve this issue since that particular card was more specific to this model (and also officially supported). The downside to that is that from what I understand the A/V card actually runs on a 32bit Bus rather than 64bits which is what the HPV cards run on. I don't think it will affect the graphics performance significantly enough, but still ...