Performa 5200CD mouse nest

[Chuckdubuque]

I just acquired a Performa 5200 CD. Decent shape, expected brittle plastics, but when I pulled out the logic board it was full of shredded tissue and mouse poop.

Beyond the fact that I have to clean and disinfect everything, is it even worth it given this machine’s “road apple” reputation to try to get it up and running?

At the same time I got a Performa 575 that needs comprehensive recaps that maybe a better investment of time.

Anyone rescued an all-in-one Mac from a literal rodent nest?

 

[robin-fo]

is it even worth it given this machine’s “road apple” reputation to try to get it up and running?

Don‘t listen to Low End Mac. It‘s a decent machine. Maybe give it some good hard drive.

 

[finkmac]

yeah rule #1 is that low end mac is more like low quality information

 

[mikes-macs]

So did it come with a mouse? LOL

 

[Chuckdubuque]

No mouse but definitely bed and droppings. And residue that’s probably urine.

I also discovered through disassembly that my friend had chewed through a bunch of wires both RGB data and high voltage stuff. Way above my pay grade to try to fix.

I will probably finish disassembly, clean, and offer parts on this forum before going on eBay. The tube will have to go to electronics disposal.

 

[Cory5412]

+1, the 5200 is a fine overall machine, especially if you feel you can clean/disinfect and do any needed maintenance without too badly compromising the remaining structure. The plastics are for sure the worst thing about this machine, today.

Low End Mac was both "extremely factually incorrect" about almost all of the technical details of the 5200/6200, and also "writing from the perspective of 1997", when 5200/6200s were still hundreds of dollars on the used market, sitting next to PCI-based Macs for similar money that had much more mid-term utility and upgradeability into the OS 9 and early OS X era. The other piece is, for whatever reason, none of the LEM authors had ever bothered to try to use one until like 2022 or so, and the conclusion on the piece in 2022 is "oh this thing is way better than everyone says it is" - something I'd been saying for like a decade at that point.


I have a 6200 with a Mac Color Display 16 that's my primary "sit on my desk next to my main computer" vintage Mac these days. It's not overly slow for something from 1995 and if you set your expectations reasonably, given that this was a cost-optimized consumer/K-12 educational computer, I suspect you'll find it's basically fine at all the most commonly wanted retro tourism things.

It's main weakness is emulated 68k code so just run that on your 575 and use the 5200 for ~1995-1998-era software that's native to PPC. It should run fine with 7.6.1 or 8.1. System7Today has some notes about Speed Doubler 8 which can help as well. TBH, Speed Doubler 8 should basically fix the 68k emulation issue too so it's kind of down to how you want to split things up. 7.6.1 on a fast 68k and a slow PPC can, by and large, feel pretty similar and have a fairly large overlap in terms of what runs reasonably on them, so it can be a judgement call on whether that's Of Value to you or if you want to, say, fix 'em both up and then decide which you personally like better and pass the other one onward.

 

[nathall]

I can’t say anything bad about Low End Mac; they’ve been a go-to site for me for decades. And I can’t fault anyone who has a genuine passion for electronics.

I think they are wrong about these machines, however. I’ve never owned any of the 5x00 versions, but my third Mac was a 6300/120 that I still own to this day. Maxed out with the “AV” and TV cards, this thing has some pretty unique capabilities. Back in the day it was in my home “office” and I’d have it playing Seinfeld or Comedy Central while I did other work. I run 9.1 on it with the faster 9.2 Finder and a Barracuda 7200RPM SATA drive and and it’s a pleasure to use, even today. I have recently been experimenting with digitizing old VHS tapes so I can reclaim space and while video input playback is flawless, it’s not quite fast enough to digitize at an acceptable frame rate at full resolution.

In the ”Great UW Haul” of 2003 I acquired a 6200 that I immediately turned around and gave to my sister as she was doing web design at the time and needed a Mac to see how sites might render on them. I finally got it back earlier this year. I booted it up of course, expecting a snail, and it didn’t strike me as particularly slow at all. I think it’s got 8.1 or 8.5 on it.

 

[Brett B.]

Wild that a mouse found a way in... was there a port cover missing on the back or something? Too bad that it's not fixable, the 5x00 Power Macs are rarely seen in the wild these days.

I think whether or not these deserve the Road Apple label really depends on whose perspective you're looking at it from. In the eyes of a 90's school tech admin, they look pretty good: cheap, usable for ClarisWorks, easily upgraded with an Ethernet card. My school hung onto a lot of PCs that ran DOS up until the late 90's for that reason. There were a couple computer labs full of LCII's until around 2001... the ONLY reason they got upgraded then was because the state gave all the schools a whole bunch of free Gateway desktops.

In the eyes of someone who both used and supported them as an IT staff member, I don't really have fond memories outside of a little nostalgia. You didn't want to be the kid waiting on a file to load when everyone else was using a 5400... you didn't want to be the IT guy trying to make a crippled computer hang on just a little longer.

My view as a collector 25 years later is that they are still not interesting at all. I don't collect old Celeron based PCs either for the same reason - maybe they served a purpose where very low cost was the only goal, so the only spot they would hold in my collection would be as a tribute to the massive amount of e-waste that exists in the world.

I think as time goes on that is further cemented in my mind. I have a HP desktop at home that came with Windows Vista - I literally found it in the trash behind my office in around 2010 or so and it still works perfectly after replacing the hard drive. Windows 10 runs great on it. I suppose you could consider it "obsolete" but capable AND efficient for modern tasks after almost 20 years is pretty impressive. Applying that standard to a "road apple" would make it totally incapacitated after about 5 years.

 

[Cory5412]

With apologies for longposting and to an extent, repeating a couple things:

perspective

100%.

I very much understand why LEM wrote what they wrote, because at the time it was about maximizing then-modern functionality per dollar of spend, and, hands down, if you're at Computer Renaissance in 1997 and a 6200/75 and 7200/75 are both sitting in front of you and each cost $500 or so, the 7200 is a better deal.

But it's not 1997 any more and it hasn't been for over 25 years and the value in the 5200/6200 from a vintage computing standpoint, I would personally argue, is that most people's tourism ends up centering around things these machines do very well - ClarisWorks, HyperCard, basic OS navigation, and period edutainment or other low end games that either run well regardless or are specifically targeted at this hardware.

As the number of working machines dwindles, if someone doesn't have specific needs, the 5200/6200 is a great option for someone who wants to touch that specific nostalgia or want something that does most basic stuff fine.

(Of course, there's also just QEMU-PPC so it can depend on which specific things you want to tour, I suppose.)

Pulling back, I'd say low end systems (this applies to all hobbies) have a genuine spot in the hobby, because not everybody who's vintage computing is doing high performance technical computing, or necessarily even, say, playing the highest-end games or whatever.

And, so I'd say it's great that systems like these are around to meet the needs of people whose needs they can meet.

6300/120

So, two major points.

1. LEM is great, however they have spent over 25 years doubling down on a lot of stuff about the 5200/6200 that is just straight-up factually incorrect. Literally to this very day the 6200 page still claims it doesn't have hardware handshaking on its serial ports, which is false. They left "left32/right32" up until at least 2022 or 2023, and it's probably still on their page somewhere.

If you can distinguish between what's purchasing advice for if it's 1997 and what's useful in today's context, and weed the actual truth out of stuff they just fabricated for whatever reason, then yes the site's great.

LEM also fails to acknowledge that, say, the PB5300/2300/1400, which IIRC it doesn't categorize for this reason, is the same underlying "68k LC platform with a preintegrated PPC upgrade" architecture.

2. LEM doesn't really acknowledge this the 6200/75 and a 6300/100/120 are AFAIK fairly different experiences, for legitimate and real technical reasons. The main problem with the 75MHz 603 is that it has too little L1 cache When doing 68k emulation, especially with the stock 7.5.x releases, lots of work exceeds that cache's size and the machine spends a bunch of time waiting for stuff to enter/leave cache. All faster 603s have more.

System7Today recommends Speed Doubler 8 or prioritizing running PPC-native code to avoid that problem, and when you do, the 6200/75 benches and feels the same as a 6100/66 or so. IME on my own 6200/75, 9.1 feels way slower overall than 7.6.1, even though if you fire up MacBench 4, the 9.1 install will return faster benchmark results.

The other beat LEM missed is that the PowerBooks 5300/2300 and 1400 all use the same underlying architecture, albeit with faster CPUs that almost all have the bigger L1 cache (but with their own problems, may have less or no L2 cache) and with some parts swapped to new parts.

(But the 1400/166, 6300/120, and 5200/75 all share the common architecture of being a Mac 630 platform with a PPC603 upgrade pre-integrated.)

The main downside even once you get to machines that are much faster and don't have the L1 problem is that the PCI machines are just faster. 7600/120 outbenches a 1400/166. And of course, as you look to newer software the ability to run more RAM and use PCI hardware helps.

But - speed isn't always everything and even if they win at MacBench numbers a 7600/120, 9600/300, or a G4@2GHz doesn't do anything meaningful in ClarisWorks 4, HyperCard 2.x or Oregon Trail any faster than a 6200. My 1400 does everything I need it to do fast enough even though a 2400/3400 or even 7200 would be faster, etc etc.

Applying that standard to a "road apple" would make it totally incapacitated after about 5 years.

Some of this is just that The Plateau means computers last longer now.

But I'd fully agree that a lot of what LEM defines as a road apple maybe makes sense in 1997 but not today.

When I joined here and AppleFritter in 2002, on either my Performa 578 or my 840av (forget which TBH, but both would've been ~8 years old) both were considered resoundingly obsolete by modern standards because of office document compatibility and because v5 and v6 web browsers were becoming the norm and 68k support was left behind on v4. Plus, low memory ceilings and slow systems overall meant that multi-tasking was tougher even on a high end 68k than it might have been on a midrange PPC or something then-new.

OTOH today a moderately upgraded 10-15 year old system has no real trouble keeping up with basic tasks. The only reasons I'm upgrading from a 10 y/o system to a 7 y/o one are to stay on the Windows 11 HCL, but even that's bypassable in a few ways without much change to a given piece of hardware. (And of course: Linux.)

My personal day-to-day is easily doable on a system from ~2010, albeit with upgrades like a quad-core CPU, 8-16GB of RAM a discrete GPU and an SSD.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Yep, LEM Fables are definitely a thing to be aware of, but it's a very good site and even great sites like everymac miss the boat on some issues as well.

The one thing I cannot forgive is LEM's incessant comparison of high end "Accelerated NuBus VidCards" as being "slower" than "Onboard Video." That's a no kidding Sherlock kinda thing. Onboard and NuBus video are two entirely different kettles of fish for cooking up far different display recipes.

I used a Performa 5200 for years, albeit as a VCR Display on the TelCo Rack for the most part. Someone gave me a 6290 in the day and it was a perfectly serviceable PPC code running replacement for the Q630 in the rug rat's custom A/V-HomeWorkStation, but it has some cache to perk it up a bit.

Rodent outputs can be problematic, but give it a look see, might also be worth some TLC and a replacement logic board won't be expensive if the high voltage bits are in working order. If you can source a 5260 board you can add the 256K of L2 Cache of my 6290.

 

[Brett B.]

The 5260 was a great machine, especially in the 120MHz flavor. I had a bunch of those that were broken and donated their logic boards for upgrades but regardless they just worked well and didn't operate at a snail's pace. I think I sold off one of those a few years ago, it's one that I sort of wish I had held onto.

But it's not 1997 any more and it hasn't been for over 25 years and the value in the 5200/6200 from a vintage computing standpoint, I would personally argue, is that most people's tourism ends up centering around things these machines do very well - ClarisWorks, HyperCard, basic OS navigation, and period edutainment or other low end games that either run well regardless or are specifically targeted at this hardware.

As the number of working machines dwindles, if someone doesn't have specific needs, the 5200/6200 is a great option for someone who wants to touch that specific nostalgia or want something that does most basic stuff fine.

I've always been curious what percentage of the collector community has gotten into it recently rather than old hands like us. As time goes on it seems like there are more newer collectors. As I've been selling stuff off, a lot of the items I've sold locally have gone to younger folks. I think there were only a couple of interactions with long time collectors. Kind of cool that the hobby is gaining a new generation.

I was always into squeezing every last bit of performance out of my hardware so I guess my collection gravitated towards somewhat higher end stuff or trying to max things out, or all the upgrades... with that goal, the inexpensive low end machines just didn't really peak my interest.

 

[beachycove]

When I first read the topic a few days ago, I thought it was about one of those boxes that people used to stick to the sides of their Macs to put the mouse in when not in use…. You know, a mouse nest.

Turns out it was about something else, and then morphed into something else, as things do. So, I did have a 5200 as my main machine way back when, and I have to say that I hated the thing. A mouse nest is not a bad use for one, in my opinion.

As was just observed, mind, the 5260 is a somewhat better bet, but in general, I have tried to avoid these AIOs from the mid-90s like the plague, after my first experience of them.

 

[Chuckdubuque]

When I first read the topic a few days ago, I thought it was about one of those boxes that people used to stick to the sides of their Macs to put the mouse in when not in use…. You know, a mouse nest.

Turns out it was about something else, and then morphed into something else, as things do. So, I did have a 5200 as my main machine way back when, and I have to say that I hated the thing. A mouse nest is not a bad use for one, in my opinion.

As was just observed, mind, the 5260 is a somewhat better bet, but in general, I have tried to avoid these AIOs from the mid-90s like the plague, after my first experience of them.

That is funny! I was trying to be humorous, but yes, it was an actual rodent mouse.

Unfortunately, the damage to the cable harnesses was quite extensive. I will try to salvage what I can, but I think the machine is beyond my capability to repair, and unless you are local to Portland Maine it is probably not worth shipping to someone with more extensive repair skills.

 

[adespoton]

Just to add a bit of context to LEM: when Dan first set up the site, he got permission from a bunch of us who had been maintaining newsgroup FAQs and mail lists to take that information and concentrate it in one place. While he added content (and additional writers) later, a lot of that original content has survived in pretty much its original state, even though we've learned since that some of the details were incorrect.

Some of that stuff came from actually working with the hardware; some of it, however, came from reading manuals and various other documents and drawing conclusions. I don't know about others, but I tried to make the sources clear in the FAQs I maintained at the time and credit the contributors. However, I didn't maintain the one for the 5200.

As for the mouse... I've had run-ins with nests before. It's the urine that tends to really mess things up (aside from chewing on stuff). Unless you have a really good ventilator and a miracle solvent that doesn't damage electronics, I'd personally give those bits up as a lost cause.