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My first (of hopefully many) vintage Macs

EvieSigma

Young ThinkPad Apprentice
68020
I got into vintage Macs with this baby, the humble Performa 630CD. A computer that once made a list of Worst Macs Ever (unjustly, in my opinion), but to me its low price and ease of maintenance/upgrading due to the slide-out logic board and removable front bezel (though I can't get mine off) makes it a perfect starter machine, and the addition of a DB-15 to VGA adapter meant I could use this old NEC monitor I had laying around. So far all I've done to it is upgrade it to 36MB of RAM with a 32MB FPM SIMM, but I'm trying to track down a full 33MHz 68040 and some kind of hard drive upgrade.

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I don't know who ever put a 63x machine on a list of bad Macs, but it would have been a mistake. The Q/LC/Perf. 63x/64x machines were an excellent value at the time without sacrificing performance. They have full 32 bit busses on the logic board and support an adequate amount of RAM. THE 33 MHz 68040 was speedy in its day and there is an easy resistor move hack to change it to 40 MHz.

Now the Performa 6300, there was a poor bastard of a machine.

 
Nice computer! I just tracked down a full 040 @33mhz as well. The 68LC040 also offered great performance, but a few apps and games I want to run require an FPU.

What OS are you running with it?

 
It came with OS 8.1 so that's what I'm sticking with. Sure, 8.1 would probably run better on a PPC machine, but so far it runs fine.

 
Honestly I find 8.1 plenty fine on my LC575 board with the 68LC040 @33mhz (currently in a color classic, will probably go into an LC520 if I can find the back plate). Plenty responsive and I like the UI tweeks that it received. As long as it has enough RAM I think you are good (and 32mb is good... 16mb would be cutting it close).

 
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I don't know who ever put a 63x machine on a list of bad Macs, but it would have been a mistake. The Q/LC/Perf. 63x/64x machines were an excellent value at the time without sacrificing performance. They have full 32 bit busses on the logic board and support an adequate amount of RAM. THE 33 MHz 68040 was speedy in its day and there is an easy resistor move hack to change it to 40 MHz.

Now the Performa 6300, there was a poor bastard of a machine.
When you consider the context and era of the list, it's perfectly reasonable. 

http://www.floodgap.com/mirrors/worstmacs.html

 
My 575 board is actually sitting at 68mb right now (4 on board, 64 in memory slot).  I'm just one step below the 128 stick upgrade  8-) .  Maybe soon :)

 
Haha.  Yeah it was actually a spare board that came with a purchase of some other compact Macs.  Even had the video memory maxed.  Definitely fell under the category of nice find :D

 
I agree. You have a fine Mac, one of the best 68k Macs, certainly for the price that it goes for. The Quadra 840av and 700 are starting to go for silly money and the Q950 is costwise unshippable.

Do be sure to get yourself a full 040 processor. This machine has IDE. You may want to consider looking around for a 32GB IDE SSD or a Compact Flash adaptor. They're not especially fast but they are quiet and they generate no heat.

Do put in 32MB 72-pin SIMM and that will support all software that was around at the time and then some.

They were quite desirable machines in their day, although the PowerPCs has just come out and the writing was already on the wall - no new software...

 
I agree. You have a fine Mac, one of the best 68k Macs, certainly for the price that it goes for. The Quadra 840av and 700 are starting to go for silly money and the Q950 is costwise unshippable.

Do be sure to get yourself a full 040 processor. This machine has IDE. You may want to consider looking around for a 32GB IDE SSD or a Compact Flash adaptor. They're not especially fast but they are quiet and they generate no heat.

Do put in 32MB 72-pin SIMM and that will support all software that was around at the time and then some.

They were quite desirable machines in their day, although the PowerPCs has just come out and the writing was already on the wall - no new software...
I had no idea IDE SSDs existed! I might go the CompactFlash route as a CF card big enough to hold everything I'd want to put on here would be fairly cheap. 

And yeah, it's already been upgraded to 36MB memory so all games and drawing programs should run at a good pace. 

 
Well I definitely would want a full 040 with heat sink for that. Hopefully just the standard fan would be enough to keep it cool at that speed.

 
The 630 is a pretty nice machine, it's well liked by many. Your setup looks pretty nice, and should work well for nearly anything you'll want to do on a 68k. Hell, the 6200 and 6300 are nice enough, if that's what you can get your hands on.

One of the important things to remember today in 2016 (context!) when almost any old Mac is going to be available relatively inexpensively is that most of these worst Mac lists (both the liked one, and LEM's new-ishly renamed "Compromised Macs" list were written in a time when an old PowerPC Mac (like, early beige stuff) could still cost hundreds of dollars.

If you were going to pay $300-500 for either a 6200 or a 7200 and use it as your main computer, the advice to go for the 7200 or even a 6100/7100/8100 makes a fair amoutn of sense, really. Today, if you're getting them for free or nearly free, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to discriminate, especially since, you know, you're not paying hundreds of dollars for them and using them as your main computer.

The irony in all of this is that the IDE probably makes the 630 and 580 much better machines for use today in modern and preservation contexts, especially if yourh'e going to max the ram. It doesn't help all of the actual technical problems the 6200 and its bretheren have, but let's be real, there's a goodly sized contingent of people online buying these things to connect them to cheap-old LCD monitors and play Oregon Trail and similar games on them. For that task, (and even for what they cost when new) they're not bad machines.

 
Heh, I actually have copies of Super Munchers and Math Munchers Deluxe for Macintosh now thanks to thrift stores.

 
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