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Is the 800/840 really that bad to work on?
- Thread starter EvieSigma
- Start date
My G3's handle was busted when I got it. We're pretty sure it happened that way in shipping, started the process, but ended up giving up because it was going to be a lot more effort than to just deal with it. I ended up just taking it off. That was in 2004. Those handles shouldn't have given up the ghost with just five years of "normal use" -- the system was dropped. If I had to make a totally wild guess.
The door handle, maybe that was from use? I forget exactly when it happened but it was a lot more recent, that handle always seemed pretty sturdy.
Of late, it's the plastic bits that get used internally to coordinate opening the machine breaking off.
I'm generally fine with scuffs, and to be honest, the problems I've had with plastics have been more or less exclusively retaining clips and things like that.
The door handle, maybe that was from use? I forget exactly when it happened but it was a lot more recent, that handle always seemed pretty sturdy.
Of late, it's the plastic bits that get used internally to coordinate opening the machine breaking off.
I'm generally fine with scuffs, and to be honest, the problems I've had with plastics have been more or less exclusively retaining clips and things like that.
The 650/800 has a couple of notable advantages over the 900 & 950, if you can live without the extra 3 Nubus slots (2 really, considering the 9x0 needs a video card). They're somewhat faster, and use 72 pin RAM - far easier and cheaper to find, and larger in capacity, than 30 pin RAM.
LEM says:
LEM's Options for 040s is a decent guide to choosing a machine and what to put on it or in it, though being a 16 year old article, you can pretty much ignore anything in there about prices and availability.
* Quadra 630: Performa 630->638, 640, 640DOS: LC 630, 630DOS
LEM says:
If you don't want to have to mess around with SCSI disks, consider the 630 or one of its many variants* with internal IDE (and external SCSI).
LEM's Options for 040s is a decent guide to choosing a machine and what to put on it or in it, though being a 16 year old article, you can pretty much ignore anything in there about prices and availability.
* Quadra 630: Performa 630->638, 640, 640DOS: LC 630, 630DOS
To make it even better, the 900 and 950 only have five NuBus slots, so with the addition of a video card, you're only really up one slot from the 800/650.
The biggest advantages are really the additional capacity for internal disk bays and the 256 megabytes of RAM. There's a place for them, but not a particularly big one.
The biggest advantages are really the additional capacity for internal disk bays and the 256 megabytes of RAM. There's a place for them, but not a particularly big one.
900/950 have built in video just like the 800/840av/650 so if you need a better video card you still have 4 empty slots in a 900/950 compared to 2 in an 800/840av/650.
The 950 series has the rare 5 drive tray + cdrom + floppy. Without that special tray you can have floppy + cdrom + 2 drives internally (parity with the 800/840av).
The 950 series has the rare 5 drive tray + cdrom + floppy. Without that special tray you can have floppy + cdrom + 2 drives internally (parity with the 800/840av).
So it's not that dire. Although realistically, for most general purpose needs, the Macintosh Color Display 16 was probably enough, and any Quadra could comfortably run that display. Some LCs with enough VRAM could drive the MCD16 as well, if needed.
The 5-drive cage for the 900/950/95 is intriguing, but I can think of very few situations where that would be specifically important today. Neat, but I don't think it's important for the average 68k Mac enthusiast to have.
It is definitely a step above the rest of the 68ks, but I personally struggle to think of a situation where I would need, say, the storage prowess or the above and beyond RAM capacity of a 950, but wouldn't benefit from just moving forward to like an 8100/110 (which I believe can also run 256MB of RAM) or an x500/x600.
The 5-drive cage for the 900/950/95 is intriguing, but I can think of very few situations where that would be specifically important today. Neat, but I don't think it's important for the average 68k Mac enthusiast to have.
It is definitely a step above the rest of the 68ks, but I personally struggle to think of a situation where I would need, say, the storage prowess or the above and beyond RAM capacity of a 950, but wouldn't benefit from just moving forward to like an 8100/110 (which I believe can also run 256MB of RAM) or an x500/x600.
That 5 drive cage (optional on the WGS95, I think stock with the 9150) is good if you need to RAID a bunch of drives for retro video work, or want to run a server.
Sure a newer machine can have more drives installed or is faster, but then what is the point of collecting 68K/PPC then?
Sure a newer machine can have more drives installed or is faster, but then what is the point of collecting 68K/PPC then?
