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Performa 6300

A

agent_js03

6502
Yesterday I got a Performa 6300 in the mail. It was sold as-is, but they said it powered on, chimed, and the cd drive opened and closed, so I figured the odds were in my favor. I was right, not only does it work, but the hard drive is still good, with system 7.5.1 installed (I believe this was the original system software for this machine) and also it has over 260mb of RAM! Wow. Anyways it needs some serious cleaning up...

I wanted to mention that on the back there are parts that are badly rusted, in particular the ethernet port looks really bad. I wondered if anyone knew how best to address that. Is it safe to use some kind of rust remover on the end of a cue tip or something along those lines? It baffles me that it could even get that bad, unless it was submerged in water or something.

 
I forgot to mention that this is a little significant to me since my first mac ever was a quadra 630, which was the same form factor. I remember upgrading that machine with a 6360 motherboard and putting in an apple tv video system, but alas, I eventually purged and it is no longer with me.

 
Isn't the 6300 part of the uber RoadApple "PowerMac x200 series"? I that case, I think the 630 is better. If you get 6360/6400/6500 which are all in the same form factor, those are nice, PCI-based PPC machines. Nice find though.

 
With regard to the original rusting issue, there are some newer products that I have seen that are supposed to be safe for surrounding materials. While I haven't used any of them on the areas that you describe, I have used one on screws that were rusted and it cleaned them up well, without messing up the remaining, original patina.

 
I read about the 62xx and 6300 series, it looks like most of the issues are related to either the modem or the memory performance. I guess I don't care too much about these; I won't be using the modem at all, possibly ethernet, but I'm not even sure about that. I find it boots up really fast and most of the games I will be playing on it are 68k so I doubt the performance will be an issue for me. The resolution is fine, 832x624 in 8-bit color is all I need.

I looked for 6400 motherboards on eBay, it looks like people are trying to charge as much for the motherboard as for the computer itself. Shame, I got a brand new 6360 motherboard 13 years ago for 20 bucks.

 
Won't work without a PSU upgrade to 6360 output spec. and the 3.3V line for PCI.

performa-and-power-mac-x200-issues

I'm hesitant to lambaste the x000 series because I have some experience using the 6290. Definitely a RoadApple, but not the worst ever when you put it into the perspective of it being the least common denominator in the PPC and PCI architectural sea changes going on in that time frame.

Calling it a 630 with a built in PPC upgrade card with more than a few I/O quirks (mostly related to multitasking and WWW use, which had yet to become universal, but was almost universally dialup anyway) is the only fair way to look at it. Performance was at least a bit better than the Quadra 630 it replaced (somebody gave it to me for some reason or other : ;D and it ran the PPC code that was needed at that point. It ran Tetris Max, Solarian II, Patriot command and ClarisWorks just fine.

Remember, the x100-x500 path to PPC adequacy was pretty damn ugly as well. I can't imagine it being slower than a PPC upgrade in anything 68K and a lot faster than most.

There are three revs of the 6300, what's the Proc speed on yours?

 
I guess I have not tried anything more than a USB card in the boards, but a 6400 and 6500 boards work in 6200 cases.  the edge connector is the same.  I will look at the wires for the power on that side.

 
they all seem to have  brown a red a yellow and black and white on the edge connector.  Without pulling it apart I guess it maybe pinned out differently.  In the road apple articles it lists the 6360 as an upgrade and it has a pci slot so what is the problem with the 3.3 volts?  Isn't that made by the board?  why would the 6360 work but not a 6400 as they are the same board just with a different backplate?  The TAM is the same as a 6400.  I proved this by making a TAM board out of a 6500 board by moving resistors.  The startup tone will only work in a TAM or 6400/6500 case as it needs the built in subwoofer.  I did not check tho to see if it "slowed" the 6500 bus to the TAM/6400 bus speed, because that didnt matter to me.

 
LEM:

If you own one, the best thing you can do is find a 6360 motherboard, which doesn’t suffer from these design flaws. [update: You will also need the power supply from a 6360. The power supply in earlier models is a bit different in configuration and not powerful enough to support PCI cards, which the 6360 can.
Click to expand...
The 6500/5500 boards roll their own 3.3V for PCI, but 6360/5400/6400 boards all require 3.3V from the PSU. You can do a mod at the MoBo/Harness connector like mj did recently.

Power budget for a PCI expansion card is a lot higher than for the LC PDS slot on a Road Apple PPC's board. It'll be interesting to see what the difference is between outputs of my 6290 and 6360 PSUs?

 
does that mean the 6500 case does not have the 3.3 volt lead from the power supply to the harness but the 6400 does? do the 630 series have the 3.3? Just asking.

 
6xx series doesn't need 3.3V, that's only for PCI. Dunno how the interboard edgecard/MedusaMess© connection is wired up. I'll see if i can dig up mj's thread, somebody explained to him how to  mod his board and it worked like a charm. Maybe he'll post pics, I'd like to see it too.

 
Why is that? Back when I had my 630, I was able to switch out the motherboard with a 6360 without any power supply swap. Why should a 6300 be any different?

 
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