Power Mac 8500/120 and other goodies

[bigmessowires]

Acquired today, all for free:



Power Macintosh 8500/120 system. 120 MHz 604, 160 MB RAM, 2 GB HD, CD-ROM. Also has some kind of AV panel with audio/video in/out-- not sure if that's standard.

17" Apple Multiple Scan 1705 Display

Extended Keyboard II

ADB Mouse II

ADB Wacom tablet

Zip 100 SCSI drive

AirPort Base Station

AirPort Extreme

Farallon PhoneNet LocalTalk connector

iMate USB to ADB converter (2x)

24.5W laptop power supply (for an iBook?)

PC ISA SCSI card

big pile of SCSI cables, SCSI terminators, and DIN-8 to DB-9 converters

 

[bibilit]

Also has some kind of AV panel with audio/video in/out

The kind you can find in a Beige G3 maybe ?

 

[dougg3]

Nice find! I'm pretty sure the AV ports were standard on every 8500.

 

[Temetka]

The 8500 is my all time favorite Macintosh tower computer, followed closely by the Beige G3 tower. Sadly my 8500 died a few years back. What I wouldn't give to acquire another one. There's just somethng about the design of the tower, it's aesthetics and its hardware that just calls to me. Seriously. Like no other machine on the planet ever has, the 8500 knows me. It knows that I destined to forever be in love with it. It is, pure. Machines come and machines go. Speed, ever increasing. Specs always climbing. New GUI's, new paradigms. Yet in the cold of the night I always hear the startup chime of the 8500. Come to me. Yes, thats it. Love.

/Looks around at the suddenly quiet room...

What? :O

 

[LCGuy]

Nice find! I'm pretty sure the AV ports were standard on every 8500.

Yep - its standard on the 8500, 7500, 7600, and I think 8600 too. Not sure about the 9500/9600.

 

[bigmessowires]

Yet in the cold of the night I always hear the startup chime of the 8500. Come to me. Yes, thats it. Love.

LOL! :lol:

Maybe the 8500 can keep me warm at night, after my wife kicks me out for filling the house with too many ancient Macs.

 

[kite210]

I've got an 8500/180, and it's a great machine. Mine came upgraded with a Sonnet Crescendo G3/300Mhz and 2 Hard drives.

They make great classic file servers, mine now has 3 HDDs and is hooked up as a localtalk server.

The A/V ports are standard, they are usually used for recording from VHS or as a video output.

 

[Unknown_K]

The A/V for those machines is realy dated (only works well for VCD resolution 320x240) but still nice to have.

The macines are pretty speedy with a PPC upgrade, realy the best way to run OS 7.61. You used to be able to find RAM for them cheap, no idea if you can anymore.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Maybe the 8500 can keep me warm at night, after my wife kicks me out for filling the house with too many ancient Macs.

[] ]'> I was lucky, I had a shop to keep my Macs and toys in, my ex asked me to move in with them because I was crazy! :lol:

She's still a great friend and I've now got an apartment filled with a small portion of my former collection . . .

. . . which is keeping my girlfriend from wanting me to move in with her!

Whoever said collecting paleolithic techno-toys was crazy? }

 

[bigmessowires]

All right, I got this 8500 online, and I'm posting this reply from it now. Internet Explorer 4.5 under OS 9 will render a somewhat usable version of 68kmla.org, but the formatting and layout are very broken. Anyone know what the most up-to-date web browser is that will run on a Power Mac under OS 9?

 

[bigmessowires]

To answer my own question: I found that both Classilla and iCab did a better job with modern web pages, but both are mind-numbingly slow on this machine. iCab did a nicer job of rendering graphics into 256 colors, and seemed a little faster perhaps. Classilla did a better job with the Comcast web-mail page, although neither browser was able to handle the page well enough for me to actually send email.

As I type this now (using iCab), I am easily able to type ahead 10 seconds and 30 letters ahead of what's echoed back to the form in the web page. I guess a 120 MHz 604 just isn't up to the task.

 

[PowerPup]

Yeah, AFAIK both Classilla and iCab are a bit resource hungry, mostly in ram. (You do have a nice amount for a 8500 though.)

If you go into the forum User CP, Board Preferences, you can change the board style from "prosilver" (the default,) to "subsilver2" (a more HTML4 compliant theme.) Subsilver2 works well with IE5. (Not sure about IE4.5, should be fine.)

Nice conquest, I've always thought it'd be cool to have a TowerMac. (Older than my PowerMac G4 that is.)

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

BMOW, I've got a few extra Crescendo G3s for that box if you'd like one. None were very expensive (which is a relative term when kids own you! [] ]'> ) but I'll look through my eBay snatches for a pick-me-up for that nice tower.

Maybe we can get that .txt buffer feature back to a reasonable turnaround time! :lol:

 

[kite210]

An 8500 with a Sonnet upgrade makes it such a great system, and it can still run BeOS and other OS just fine.

Classilla on my 8500 runs really great. :beige:

 

[bibilit]

I use Opera as a browser for all my fleet, and is a fair browser even for Mac Os 9.

 

[bigmessowires]

Doesn't the 8500 need a less-common daughtercard upgrade, instead of a cache slot upgrade? I thought the Sonnet and similar upgrades were all the L2 cache slot type.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/crescendo_pci.html [] ]'>