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Quadra 700 upgrade idea
- Thread starter Phreakinus
- Start date
I don't think it is blasphemy. I put PowerPC upgrades in my 68ks for the same reason I enjoy collecting 68ks. They are rare and unique pieces of hardware.
If 68k Macs are to be treasured for their design and uniqueness, then so to should be the orders of magnitude rarer cards which are designed to be used in them. Besides, what other computer do you know that can dual boot between completely independent and binary incompatible (without an emulator) CPUs?! That's pretty cool, in my opinion.
Peace,
Drew
If 68k Macs are to be treasured for their design and uniqueness, then so to should be the orders of magnitude rarer cards which are designed to be used in them. Besides, what other computer do you know that can dual boot between completely independent and binary incompatible (without an emulator) CPUs?! That's pretty cool, in my opinion.
Peace,
Drew
An AVID system I have. I needed a PPC Nubus machine with slots for Nuvista card, advanced jpeg, SEIV scsi, and the card for the 442 Audio input. The only 4 slot PPC with Nubus would be a 9150 which I don't have so a 950 with a 601-100 PPC upgrade holds those cards well. Normally I think they used an 8100 with an external Nubus expansion box.
The easiest - and in my view best - way to speed up a Quadra 700 is simply to swap in the motherboard of a Quadra 800. It's the identical form factor and just goes right in.
You get a CPU speed upgrade from 25MHz to 33MHz, and in the process you also get a faster system bus, and faster 72-pin (as opposed to 30-pin) RAM. And it's a heck of a lot easier to find super-cheap/free 16MB 72-pin RAM SIMMs than it is to find 16MB 30-pin SIMMs.
As a side bonus, the RAM slots on the 800's mobo are oriented differently than on the 700's - so you can replace/upgrade RAM without having to take out the PSU and remove the drive cage.
And if you want still more speed, I would think the components on a Q800 mobo, already designed to run at 33MHz, would be much more tolerant of a 40MHz overclock than the designed-for-25MHz components on a Q700 board.
Of course, you might not want to cannibalize a perfectly good Q800 for this purpose - but on the other hand, the Q800 case is notorious for being a PIA to work on, so you could take the mobo and perhaps part out the PSU and CD drive to other 68kMLA members to help resurrect other Macs.
Best,
Matt
You get a CPU speed upgrade from 25MHz to 33MHz, and in the process you also get a faster system bus, and faster 72-pin (as opposed to 30-pin) RAM. And it's a heck of a lot easier to find super-cheap/free 16MB 72-pin RAM SIMMs than it is to find 16MB 30-pin SIMMs.
As a side bonus, the RAM slots on the 800's mobo are oriented differently than on the 700's - so you can replace/upgrade RAM without having to take out the PSU and remove the drive cage.
And if you want still more speed, I would think the components on a Q800 mobo, already designed to run at 33MHz, would be much more tolerant of a 40MHz overclock than the designed-for-25MHz components on a Q700 board.
Of course, you might not want to cannibalize a perfectly good Q800 for this purpose - but on the other hand, the Q800 case is notorious for being a PIA to work on, so you could take the mobo and perhaps part out the PSU and CD drive to other 68kMLA members to help resurrect other Macs.
Best,
Matt
Not wrong. I've owned a Q700 with a Q800 mobo in it - in fact, I did the work myself. The Q800 mobo fits in the Q700 case with no modifications. It fits physically; its rear ports line up identically; it connects to the PSU with the same connector in the same place; it has the same number and mobo location of drive ribbon connectors (SCSI and floppy).
The only differences are:
- IIRC, the speaker connector may be different, so you have to bring over the Q800 speaker, or else splice the cables of the two speakers (very easy);
- The Q800 has three NuBus slots but the Q700 has only two. So the third Q800 NuBus slot can't be used unless you cut the appropriate rectangular opening in the back of the Q700 case (again, really easy).
When I said the Q800 and Q700 have the identical form factor, I meant their motherboards - obviously the cases/computers are very different form factors.
FYI, you can also put a Power Mac 7100 mobo in a Q700 case as well - works great!
Best,
Matt
The only differences are:
- IIRC, the speaker connector may be different, so you have to bring over the Q800 speaker, or else splice the cables of the two speakers (very easy);
- The Q800 has three NuBus slots but the Q700 has only two. So the third Q800 NuBus slot can't be used unless you cut the appropriate rectangular opening in the back of the Q700 case (again, really easy).
When I said the Q800 and Q700 have the identical form factor, I meant their motherboards - obviously the cases/computers are very different form factors.
FYI, you can also put a Power Mac 7100 mobo in a Q700 case as well - works great!
Best,
Matt
If a Q800 motherboard would fit in a Q650 case then it should also fit in a Q700/IIcx/IIci case. I have a Q700 motherboard in a IIvx case which is identical to the Q650 case, but before that I had it in my IIci case. I had to hack the back panel because some things don't line up exactly, but it did go in.
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