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Interest in PCI Powermacs?
- Thread starter Unknown_K
- Start date
Yes - love my 9600 here, still packs a punch. Cheap to upgrade and max out if you take time searching for parts.
Problem was of course, the vast amount of machines and similar models released during this period, most of which were a bit crap. I'd much prefer a nubus PPC machine over a low-end PPC model any day, most of them were rubbish and have no worth, sadly.
JB
Problem was of course, the vast amount of machines and similar models released during this period, most of which were a bit crap. I'd much prefer a nubus PPC machine over a low-end PPC model any day, most of them were rubbish and have no worth, sadly.
JB
I have a variety of PCI Macs from c. 1995-97, which (excluding my beige G3s, which are PCI too, of course) comprise a 6500, 7200, 7500, 8600/200MP, 2 x 8600/300, and a 9500. I also have a Power Computing clone somewhere or other. So I for one am a fan of these machines, mostly because back in their day, I used a Performa 600 and yearned for one of them, read magazines, drooled liberally, etc. — all to no avail. No joy at the time, I suppose, led me to collect them with some enthusiasm in later years.
One of the 8600/300s has done sterling daily service as an ASIP 6.3/MacOS9.1 server for years. Another has been my daughter's computer for some 5 years. The rest, with the exception of the MP machine, get only occasional use, as there's only so many that one can use....
The PCI Macs are really my favourites of some 50+ Macs. I think the 604e was a great processor; I am not a particular fan of the G3. A 9600 would be bliss (I have never actually seen one, never mind owned one, despite my years of looking.)
As with any old machine, of course, much depends on what software you are running on the hardware. Though any machine from the mid-90s is very low-end these days, I find that with the appropriate system and software tools, these machines are very competent performers for most of what I do. Were it not for the web and the problem of software compatibility (files sent to me in Open Office Format, for instance, or docx Word files), I can't really see what more I would need for the work side of things. I am not a gamer, so that doesn't matter to me.
I too have noticed how cheaply this range of vintage Macs can be purchased, by comparison with both the older and newer machines. Good time to buy them, I say; the low prices can't last forever. I suppose the perception to date has been that, as they date from the peak period of Apple's financial distress, they can't be any good. Truth be told, however, the problems of the mid-90s resulted from the software drift and the abortive Copland project and associated hang-ons rather than from the defects of the hardware. Had these latter been successful, the hardware they were developed for and on would undoubtedly look better in the eye of beholders.
One of the 8600/300s has done sterling daily service as an ASIP 6.3/MacOS9.1 server for years. Another has been my daughter's computer for some 5 years. The rest, with the exception of the MP machine, get only occasional use, as there's only so many that one can use....
The PCI Macs are really my favourites of some 50+ Macs. I think the 604e was a great processor; I am not a particular fan of the G3. A 9600 would be bliss (I have never actually seen one, never mind owned one, despite my years of looking.)
As with any old machine, of course, much depends on what software you are running on the hardware. Though any machine from the mid-90s is very low-end these days, I find that with the appropriate system and software tools, these machines are very competent performers for most of what I do. Were it not for the web and the problem of software compatibility (files sent to me in Open Office Format, for instance, or docx Word files), I can't really see what more I would need for the work side of things. I am not a gamer, so that doesn't matter to me.
I too have noticed how cheaply this range of vintage Macs can be purchased, by comparison with both the older and newer machines. Good time to buy them, I say; the low prices can't last forever. I suppose the perception to date has been that, as they date from the peak period of Apple's financial distress, they can't be any good. Truth be told, however, the problems of the mid-90s resulted from the software drift and the abortive Copland project and associated hang-ons rather than from the defects of the hardware. Had these latter been successful, the hardware they were developed for and on would undoubtedly look better in the eye of beholders.
7300 in the bedroom, G4 MDD dual 1.25GHz OS 9 development system at the workstation. Another 7300 also runs the gopher server (gopher.floodgap.com).
I still have my BeigeG3MT and I will have it for many years to come as far I know right now.
It's not my daily driver - it is my link to the past.
Some of us here romanticize or reminisce about 'the good old days' of computing, and to be honest I do miss them. Gone are the days of sneakernetting things areound, but the flash drive may bring some sense of that back. The old BBS's of yore have given way to the forums of today and that lovely sound of my old 14.4 modem dialing in has been replaced by an iTunes playlist.
Yet this post is brought to you by a tablet PC with specs that are minimal at best yet I love it far more than the quad-core beast in the next room over. It is a computer with personality - something that connects with me. Being a tablet its age belies the fact that every time I use I can't help but feel that I have moved forward. This little 12" tablet is far more convergent than my dual screen computer. I interact with it and it interacts with me.
Looking to the dusty computer in the corner. That old relic of golden days gone by.
It brings a smile to my face and good memories rise to the surface of my consciousness.
It's not my daily driver - it is my link to the past.
Some of us here romanticize or reminisce about 'the good old days' of computing, and to be honest I do miss them. Gone are the days of sneakernetting things areound, but the flash drive may bring some sense of that back. The old BBS's of yore have given way to the forums of today and that lovely sound of my old 14.4 modem dialing in has been replaced by an iTunes playlist.
Yet this post is brought to you by a tablet PC with specs that are minimal at best yet I love it far more than the quad-core beast in the next room over. It is a computer with personality - something that connects with me. Being a tablet its age belies the fact that every time I use I can't help but feel that I have moved forward. This little 12" tablet is far more convergent than my dual screen computer. I interact with it and it interacts with me.
Looking to the dusty computer in the corner. That old relic of golden days gone by.
It brings a smile to my face and good memories rise to the surface of my consciousness.
To my mind, the PCI Macs are at the point that Nubus Macs were at about a decade ago. They're cheap or free to pick up, and as the standard is now deprecated, you can pick up interesting PCI cards for a relative song. Also cheap to upgrade. So it's time to start hoarding!
The truly awful ones (52xx/62xx) didn't have PCI slots. Actual PCI machines from the 90s are pretty rock solid, in general.
I kind of love the PCI PPC era because of the clones. Apple's decisions in this era as far as chassis layout and design is enough to make anyone dislike them on that basis alone and there isn't anything too special about the PCI powermacs that makes any one of them specifically desirable as a general use machine, unless you plan to pimp one out, but I digress. I use a PowerTower Pro 200 w/ a G3 upgrade a lot. Its fun because it can natively boot linux/bsd without needing to bootstrap from within MacOS (as can any machine with of1.0.5), has an awesome chassis layout, lots of PCI slots to take advantage of, all without the horror's of apple's design during this era. I know it looks like a PC. Its quite simply a PC with mac guts. Its gloooorious!.
That being said, I wouldn't turn down a Daystar Genesis MP+ 932
.
//wthww
That being said, I wouldn't turn down a Daystar Genesis MP+ 932
.//wthww
I'm running a Power Mac 7500 with a Sonnet Crescendo G3/500, 224MB RAM, 2 SCSI hard drives and Mac OS 9.1. It has been a faithful machine to me for the past 5 years. I will be looking to max out the RAM to 1GB and I also acquired a 10,000 rpm Ultra-Wide SCSI 160 LVD/SE hard drive recently. I do have a D-Link DFE-530TX+ PCI Ethernet card so I can utilize the 100Base-T speed than the slower 10Base-T included on the logic board. There also is a PCI USB card installed so I can use my 1GB thumb drive on it.
I use this machine as a digital audio workstation running Audacity, an iTunes jukebox, a soon-to-be home file server for a future web site and also as a conversation starter. The machine also came with A/V capture hardware, so I can handle some basic tasks in that category, but mostly I'll use it to watch a tiny window of live video while doing other things. I'll be on the lookout for a PCI expansion card that handles ATA/SATA/FireWire/USB all-in-one, if it exists. Also, what would you consider a great choice of video accelerator cards to put in, instead of using the built-in video?
Maybe later on, experiment with putting a *NIX OS to make a more powerful desktop system.
73s de Phreakout. :rambo:
I use this machine as a digital audio workstation running Audacity, an iTunes jukebox, a soon-to-be home file server for a future web site and also as a conversation starter. The machine also came with A/V capture hardware, so I can handle some basic tasks in that category, but mostly I'll use it to watch a tiny window of live video while doing other things. I'll be on the lookout for a PCI expansion card that handles ATA/SATA/FireWire/USB all-in-one, if it exists. Also, what would you consider a great choice of video accelerator cards to put in, instead of using the built-in video?
Maybe later on, experiment with putting a *NIX OS to make a more powerful desktop system.
73s de Phreakout. :rambo:
Its actually pretty simple. You just install Netbsd on a machine with OF 1.0.5 and it does all of it for you. One thats done, you set your boot device to /path/to/:0 and it works. Same applies to booting the cd to install. boot /path/to/:0 and it boots right up. As far as Linux, the installer should also do the dirty work for you as long as it can have an entire drive and you've specified that you either want a ~100mb ext2 file-system as /boot, or you've made your / ext2. I highly recommend that you use the first option. Ext2 is ancient and you WILL loose data if your machine doesn't unmount it cleanly. The linux installer should install quik for you, and then you would set your boot device to /path/to/:0 . Simple as that .
As far as which OS to pick, I think its too early for me to go into that conversation.
//wthww
.As far as which OS to pick, I think its too early for me to go into that conversation.
//wthww
My 7300 also boots NetBSD "native" with no MacOS installed. The only trick was figuring out the OpenFirmware string for its Tempo Trio drive, and it was too long to fit into NVRAM, so I just made it boot off floppy and transfer control to the kernel on the ATA disk I installed.
Sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like other Macs or Mac clones couldn't accomplish this feat; As ClassicHasClass mentioned, you can indeed bootstrap OF from a floppy, But I prefer to set the boot-device string. Sad that the temp trio has too long of a device path tho.
//wthww
//wthww
I had a lot of difficulty trying to install NetBSD on my 7300 with OF 1.0.5. I'd get it to boot the kernel and then the machine would reboot. It would do it so fast I couldn't see what the error was. Maybe it was a bad burn, but I got tired of fooling around with it.
It's a shame because NetBSD would be a lot more useful than OS8/9.
It's a shame because NetBSD would be a lot more useful than OS8/9.
Well, NetBSD would be great with a huge-huge-huge caveat, at least for me. You need to have a real pci video card, ATi or NVidia. The on-board video is insufficient, as well as the twin-turbo 128. NetBSD/Linux just don;t like those cards at all, plus they dont provide much in the way of acceleration.
//wthww
//wthww
Depends on what you want to use it for -- mine is a server (helsinki.floodgap.com). If you're not running X, then no worries.
Even so, however, if you stuffed it full of VRAM I should think it would be okay. Not great, because the video isn't accelerated, but it should work. Obviously with totally headless systems like the 9500 you have no choice, of course.
True. I actually used a PM9500 affectionately named stoplock as a server box for quite a while. Stoplock is now with Dog Cow; iirc it doesnt want to bootup 
. I've moved on a far better server box these days. People-eater is my current and most adorable server ever.
Back on topic.
I hope some of the neater examples of PCI powermacs get taken care of, I really do. I for one would love a MaxxBoxx to death, no matter its color or the cost of shipping
//wthww
. I've moved on a far better server box these days. People-eater is my current and most adorable server ever.Back on topic.
I hope some of the neater examples of PCI powermacs get taken care of, I really do. I for one would love a MaxxBoxx to death, no matter its color or the cost of shipping
//wthww
