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What's a Quadra 700 good for?

The 700 is fairly speedy and comes in an adorable, smallish case. It's not very good for the highest-end 68k tasks like video editing, but still has nice expandability.

It is a nice midway between compact machines like the Q605 and larger multislot Macs like the 900 and 950.

That MacProteus card is basically a late 80s digital synthesizer on a NuBus card.

 
What TylerEss said. It's a decent box to run A/UX on, if you're looking for a potential use for it. The biggest drawback there is no built-in CD-ROM.

 
Good things about the Quadra:

- Full 68040 processor

- Two NuBus expansion slots

- Built-in ethernet (though you will need a transceiver)

- Mini tower design that can also be used as a flat desktop case

Etc etc.

 
I like the case I think it will be good for fitting in neatly.

No cd rom???

A synthesiser on a card? Do I need a musical keyboard to attatch to the 700?

Cool info, thanks everyone.

 
Nope, sadly no CD ROM. It was still early days when the Quadra 700 was made so any CD ROMs have to be external units. The AppleCD 300e fits very neatly on top of the Quadra 700 tower.

 
The Quadra 900 that was introduced at the same time as the 700 had an optional CDROM, but very few people wanted or needed them back then.

 
... as the scarcity of CD-ROM bezels for the 900/950 in the early 21st Century makes clear. Why didn't Apple predict the retro appeal of its creations, and stockpile gear for aftermarket purchase? All right ... just wishing. But for the kindness of bigD I'd have two 950s with toothy grins.

de

 
A synthesiser on a card? Do I need a musical keyboard to attatch to the 700?
Not necessarily. You can most likely sequence songs on the card using purely software. If you decide you're having fun, you can always get a keyboard later on. You'll need a Mac serial MIDI converter, or a keyboard with a Mac/PC serial port (yes, there are some, mostly older ones)

The first thing to find of course are drivers for the card. Then you'll most likely need Apple MIDI Manager or OMS (depending on the OS and the card's compatibility) and a sequencer program. Have a search for the Shareware Music Machine for old free- and shareware sequencers for Mac.

 
I remember watching Jurassic Park back in like 1992 and it had a bunch of these, sitting on a desk, looking WICKED badass. I may have actually been visibly excited by them. :) I bugged my parents for like a year to get one, and they woudln't because of the price. Oh well. I finally used one in like 2001 for the first time. But it just wasn't the same.

 
A Q700 is my main (old) machine. Does almost everything. I've got a Digidesign 442 card & box for it, can run protools and record 4 tracks of simultaneous audio. Really neat. Gonna get a CD burner for it and have it be a second tracking setup.

I have Finale and SoundDesigner on it, too. It's the digital retro workstation.

But I'm getting the Q950 that was on ebay a few days ago to pop in my second 442 card and the accelerator so I can get 8 tracks of simultaneous CD quality audio recording.

Anybody selling a MacProteus or SampleCell card?

 
There was a 3rd party company that made bezels for most of Apples beige machines (maybe they purchased the dies from Apple), think they went out of business a few years back. I recall some place having a blowout sale for bezels (snagged some for my 8500 and 7500 at the time), then the company disapeared.

 
A Q700 is my main (old) machine. Does almost everything. I've got a Digidesign 442 card & box for it, can run protools and record 4 tracks of simultaneous audio. Really neat. Gonna get a CD burner for it and have it be a second tracking setup.
I have Finale and SoundDesigner on it, too. It's the digital retro workstation.
That sounds like a very nice setup. I dearly love the look of my Q700, and wish I had a 16 bit sound card for it of some description.

 
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