What to do with a 7200?

[Blessed Cheesemaker]

Poor 7200 I thought we're about saving Macs here, that anyone who threw a Mac away was a Ballmer-worshipping Mac-killer? Why is the 7200 so universally hated though, when the 68ks (and even Nubus PowerMacs to some extent) seem to be much loved, despite being even older and slower than the 7200? I'm sure if I'd said I was going to throw my 6100 away for being too slow and horrible then I'd have been extremely unpopular!

I think the deal is that the "older, slower" 68k macs are actually faster when running system 7.0 or 7.1, at least at booting up and running ordinary word-processing programs. Much later, when you could stick in a G3 upgrade, that was when the PPC Macs became much, much faster. Of course, there is no easy way to upgrade a 7200, so it will always be quite slow.

My birthday present to myself will be (among other things) a Sonnet G4 1ghz CPU card. My SuperMac S900 is gonna fly!

 

[alk]

The 7200 is just nothing special. It has no unique curiosities to it that make it stand out (other than it has a 601 soldered onto a PCI motherboard, anyway). It isn't fast, it isn't expandable, it can't import video...

It's a Mac, and for collector's sake, it might be an interesting one to own to complete a collection. But it has very little value in its own right. 68k Macs, OTOH, are all getting quite a bit rarer, so virtually any 68k Mac is worth keeping around. But if you wish, the 7200 is a bit analogous to the Performa 600. It's a boring machine in a boring case. Except the Performa 600/Mac IIvx might actually be slightly more expandable.

Peace,

Drew

 

[The Macster]

It's a boring machine in a boring case.

What makes a Mac "interesting" though? For me the G3 is the most interesting because it's very very fast, can run Tiger, looks really nice, and I prefer the tower form factor as they're easier to get inside and you can fit lots more stuff inside them. But out of all the pre-G3 Macs what is "special" about most of them? - very few of the pre-G3 PowerMacs are interesting really, not just the 7200 - they're all pretty slow and most of the won't run OS X useably, only those ones in the taller version of the G3's case are especially interesting to me.

 

[pee-air]

Move the stuff on the 7300 to the 7200. then, you'll have a free 7300 that you can upgrade.
there are also plenty of Beige G3 boards around, that with minimal hacking, will fit into the 7200s case.

My 7300 is running Debian Etch. Debian will install on the 7200 and run quite nicely in console mode. I had previously used the 7200 with Debian as a netbooting machine. It worked fine for that task. Now, though, with a much more capable machine running Debian, it's more practical to just let that machine assume the 7200's duties in addition to what the 7300 is presently doing: Apache web server, Squid cache proxy, network time server, dhcp server, dns server.

The 7200 would bog down if it were to assume the 7200's duties. With only 32MB of RAM in the 7200, it would be disk swap city trying to run just Squid. That would bring Apache to a crawl. The 7200 could handle bind9, ntpd, and dhcp3 just fine, but why use two machines when just one machine can do everything?

As for freeing up the 7300, that was actually my planned project for this weekend. I'm going to move my server operations from the 7300 to an X86 PC. The PC is just a faster machine. Faster disk access, faster processor, faster bus, four times more RAM, etcetera. The 7300 is going to become my development machine -- running CodeWarrior.

EDIT: In addition to being faster, the PC is also cheaper and easier to upgrade. That makes it a much better candidate for server use.

 

[Bunsen]

My second 7200 is a PC Compatible model that I got with the huge-ass liberation a few days ago. I plan on keeping it all together since the PC card is really neat.

As I understand it, the PC Compat card is a PCI card, and it will work in any PCI Mac that can boot OS 9

 

[Quadraman]

I think I'm going to to try to get a 7200. They may end up becoming the rarest PCI Powermacs with all the people who don't appreciate them.

 

[Franklinstein]

Yeah, those PC Compatibility cards are awesome. I have almost all of the DOS/PC Compatible Macs, including the 7200. The only bad part about those is that the faster model cards have soldered processors...

But yes, they will run in virtually any PCI Mac. My Blue and White G3's manual says something about being able to use the 7" model, but not the 12" (it's been a while since I read this). I prefer to keep PC Compatible machines in one piece, though, and don't really have much of a reason to run a 133MHz Pentium with my 500MHz G3.

I should really experiment with replacing those wretched Pentium (or worse, Cyrix) processors with some much faster K6-2's. Anybody know how to change the clock frequencies on these cards? Hope it's just a set of resistors or something...

 

[pee-air]

I think I'm going to to try to get a 7200. They may end up becoming the rarest PCI Powermacs with all the people who don't appreciate them.

It's not that I don't appreciate the 7200, it's just that I have no use for it. It's "about as useful as a tit on a bull," as Derek Edwards would say.

 

[Mike Richardson]

My second 7200 is a PC Compatible model that I got with the huge-ass liberation a few days ago. I plan on keeping it all together since the PC card is really neat.

As I understand it, the PC Compat card is a PCI card, and it will work in any PCI Mac that can boot OS 9

Yes, but the 7200 says "PC Compatible" right on the front of it, so it's really cool to keep the card in there, as one piece. It just makes sense. More than likely I would use the PC functionality more than the Mac functionality so the fact that it's a 7200 doesn't really matter.

 

[pee-air]

Finally bit the bullet and trashed the old 7200. Had a bunch of other Mac stuff to toss too. Had an Apple Design keyboard that wouldn't let you plug a mouse into it, so it's gone. A bunch of old Apple 300i internal CDROM drives found their way to the trash too. As did a few other odds and ends that aren't worthy of mention.

My Mac collection is now down to six. Two PDS Macs, two NuBus Macs, and two PCI Macs. That's all I need. Although, I'm beginning to wonder if I even need the LC. [] ]'>

 

[Bunsen]

You know, if the PCI G3 upgrade for these could be made to work in another machine, and run as a separate Mac a la Radius Rocket, and you could have three-six of them ....

 

[Mike Richardson]

Finally bit the bullet and trashed the old 7200. Had a bunch of other Mac stuff to toss too. Had an Apple Design keyboard that wouldn't let you plug a mouse into it, so it's gone. A bunch of old Apple 300i internal CDROM drives found their way to the trash too. As did a few other odds and ends that aren't worthy of mention.
My Mac collection is now down to six. Two PDS Macs, two NuBus Macs, and two PCI Macs. That's all I need. Although, I'm beginning to wonder if I even need the LC. [] ]'>

I'm sorry but that sucks. That just really sucks. Don't throw away working stuff. It's plain stupid.

 

[pee-air]

You know, if the PCI G3 upgrade for these could be made to work in another machine, and run as a separate Mac a la Radius Rocket, and you could have three-six of them ....

Which reminds me, Sonnet is having a huge sale on upgrades for these machines. You can get a brand new Sonnet 500MHz G3 PCI processor upgrade for $39. A brand new Crescendo 500MHz processor upgrade $49. Check out their website for more details.

Sonnet Special Offers

 

[pee-air]

I'm sorry but that sucks. That just really sucks. Don't throw away working stuff. It's plain stupid.

Yeah, well, so does keeping stuff around that never gets used. There comes a time when your home begins to look too much like a landfill and it becomes necessary to thin it out.

In the grand scheme of things, there's very little difference between my junk closet and the landfill. Anything that goes into either will never be used again. At least with the curb or the municipal landfill, there's a chance that someone might grab it. Slim though the odds are. [] ]'>

 

[Mike Richardson]

Then give it away on Craigslist or Freecycle or something. Come on. There are other people willing to scoop it up. I know if I saw any free Mac on Craigslist or Freecycle I would go get it.

 

[Mike Richardson]

http://store1.sonnettech.com/index.php?cPath=22_30&osCsid=d638e9a5f4a24e183385afdec6e7f780

Holy crap, the G3 400 MHz upgrades for the 7200 are down to a measly $19.99. They must be taking a huge loss on these!

EDIT: Wow, the 500 MHz are on eBay from Sonnet for $29.99: http://cgi.ebay.com/SONNET-CRESCENDO-7200-500-MHz-1MB-G3-UPGRADE-CARD_W0QQitemZ320166336390QQihZ011QQcategoryZ4607QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I am definitely buying one of these for my 7200.

 

[Bunsen]

I see they're also selling the video pass-through cable for their G3 upgrades for 71/8100s at $19.95, instead of their previously insane $99. And the G3 400 is only a fiddy as well.

 

[The Macster]

Holy crap, the G3 400 MHz upgrades for the 7200 are down to a measly $19.99. They must be taking a huge loss on these!

I guess there's no demand for these things now as no-ones going to bother buying a G3 card for an old 7200 when they can get a real G3 machine for nothing nowadays.

 

[Bolle]

I just trashed my 8200... even worse than the 7200 with its ugly tower case...

 

[Charlieman]

You know, if the PCI G3 upgrade for these could be made to work in another machine, and run as a separate Mac a la Radius Rocket, and you could have three-six of them ....

I spent a couple of weekends trying to get one to work in a Pippin. From the start, I doubted whether the idea would work (the Pippin uses FPM RAM and a pre-PCI memory controller, whereas the 7200/8200 uses DIMMs). In most other aspects, however, the Pippin is a PCI PowerMac. Whilst the hack failed, it did not harm to the Pippin or accelerator.

The logical Mac to try one in would be a 7500. It might be as simple as changing a couple of gestalt IDs in the Sonnet enabler. The enabler has to turn off the 601, switching instructions to the G3, and patch the memory controller so that it can address RAM on the PCI bus. Getting a single one to work in a 7500 sounds possible. Multiple processors...