shaktiman

shaktiman, go for an 8500, you can easily upgrade that for a decent price and eventually run osx. plus it has av.

Thanks for the replies chaps, A bog standard 8500 will play dvd?, I think I will just buy an external dvd player, I was interested because I saw a couple of scsi dvd drives.

the 8500 & upgrading????????????? (shaktiman looks quizzical) thelip dont know me very well do he?

but having said that I gues a good mac running an st emulator may be worth the trade off, I could have the emulator as my main machine & use the apple os for just running a few apple progs(& Apple has some fine programs)

My next buys are:-

Powermac 8100/110
external tower
aaui to rj45 adapter(x2)
then a pc & run Gem on it
then a pc & run Gemulator on it
video camara
2500 stylewriter

Is the pci powermac rule the same for vcd's?

shaktiman

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A bog standard 8500 will play dvd?

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In fact, you could probably get VCD playback on a 68k, since VCD's are just data disks with simple video files on them.

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Official 68kMLA Music and NeXT Expert
Macs Liberated: SE (2), LC, IIsi, PB 145b, Quadra 700 (2), LC 575, 6100 (2), PB 5300, PowerMac 5400/200, Performa 6400/180
PCs liberated from Windoze: 3

Anyway, just about any PowerMac should be able to play VCDs if it has a CD drive which can sustain a high enough transfer rate,

unfortunetly it took a few upgrades to get the 8500 to do dvd, a g3(420 mhz and radeon) could barely do it, it would drop frames occasionally.

shaktiman, i know you well enough to say that you don't give yourself enough credit. i'm just going to suggest that you look around for a 8500 machine or some pci 604 based mac. I think in the end you'll be investing the same amount of money for a machine that's going to last longer. The 8100 is about, dare i say it, at the level of 68k macs. Of course, if the 8100 is just going to be a fun toy, then ingore what i'm saying. But I know that a g3 daughter for an 8500 is a fractiong of what it will be for an 8100, not to mention, i don't think there was ever a 3d nubus accelerator card. You might not think you'll want it now, but down the road, it might be something. The upgrade pottential on the 8500 is way above the 8100. But in the end it's what floats your boat.

Ehh.. sorry about the little rant. school is about to drive me over the edge and my rear end is still sore from my credit card screwing me retarded.

It has to be said I have no experience with it though, you should have a look in to it yourself.

Asides from that I agree with the others. Whilst obviously all Macs are cool some are less so than others :-(. At some point when I am in a position to expand my collection further I would probably add an 8100. However if you are buying something to use as your main machine I'd really go for a 7x00 (or an 8x00 if you really want a tower all though expansion is equal apart from drives)

The cost difference between an 8100 and any PPC with a 604 will be small and certainly pay off in the long run, not to mention many upgrades are cheaper and you could run any version of the Mac OS up to 9.1 without trouble. You could even get an IDE card for cheap IDE CD writers etc, etc...
If you were in Aus though I'd say go straight for a beige G3, these things are a bargin hear for about 60-80 UKP!

If you do go for one try and go for one with a lot of installed RAM as it is outrageously expensive in the UK 99UKP for 32 MB!! Failing that buy your RAM from www.macsales.com, even after VAT and shipping it is much much cheaper.

The 7x00 and 8x00 all have the options of an AV personality card to capture video like your 840 AV.

Finally the 7x00 series are really really easy to work on the 8500 is not the 8600 is and all of these are upgradeable to G3's. I'd get a 7600 o 7300 if I were you.

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Finally the 7x00 series are really really easy to work on the 8500 is not the 8600 is and all of these are upgradeable to G3's. I'd get a 7600 o 7300 if I were you.

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Lisa 2, LC475, PB145b, PB160, PB540c, IIsi.

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shaktiman, i know you well enough to say that you don't give yourself enough credit. i'm just going to suggest that you look
around for a 8500 machine or some pci 604 based mac. I think in the end you'll be investing the same amount of money for a
machine that's going to last longer. The 8100 is about, dare i say it, at the level of 68k macs. Of course, if the 8100 is just
going to be a fun toy, then ingore what i'm saying. But I know that a g3 daughter for an 8500 is a fractiong of what it will be for
an 8100, not to mention, i don't think there was ever a 3d nubus accelerator card. You might not think you'll want it now, but
down the road, it might be something. The upgrade pottential on the 8500 is way above the 8100. But in the end it's what
floats your boat.

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As others have said buying an 8100, whilst it would let you run PPC software and keep compatibility with your 840 AV parts, isn't really an upgrade in the grand scheme of things. There is currently an 8100/110 at 25 UKP on ebay.co.uk with a day to go.Ther is also an Apple PowerMac 7600/132 48 RAM no HD for 35 UKP buy it now. The 7600 without the HD is a much, much better deal. You can use one of your exisitng SCSI HD's in it and it's performance will blow the 8100 out of the water. (There is also a 7300 at 15 UKP with some time to go). When compare these machines you have to think about them in the long term. The 8100 cannot be upgraded economically or as easily as the 7600. The 8100 is harder to work on because of the case design. And once again the 7600's performance ,out of the box, is far superior. The postage on the 8100 alone is 20 UKP.

Buying older computers stops being a good idea at a certain point and is only viable if they are free or it is a hobby, this is doubly true when you can only afford one computer.

I did mention that you could run OS 9.1, I didn't say you had to though. However I am sure as an Atari user you always wanted to run the latest OS, why not apply that to the Mac?

I can also understand that you find some OS restrictive but what is it (you'll need to explain it to me) that you find easier on the Atari than the Mac? I have no choice but to deffend the Mac you realise! I haven't read all of your posts but it seems the main purposes of your mac are using the internet, some lowend AV stuff and presumably, word processing.

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I dont want a modern computer cos of this,

I have spent between £600 & £700 in the past 8 months in dribs & drabs, I cant afford to spend more than this & if I "try to keep up with the Jones's" then I get the feeling that I will be spending more than this.
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I wouldn't say that going for a 7x00 over an 8100 is "keeping up with the Jone's". No one would be trying to make you keep up with the Jones, we just feel at the end of the day the 7x00 is better long term investmant and besides everything will be faster which is a good thing! By investing in the 8100 you limit yourself to upgrades that are rarelly cost effective when you consider the cost of any mac with PCI slots. Assuming, and you say you wouldnt, that you upgrade the 7x00.

7x00 lets just call it 50 UKP
USB 15 UKP. lets you use very cheap printers, scanners, mp3 players and a wide range of storage devices.
PCI Radeon, 100 UKP more video than you will most likely no what to do with as you say you aren't a big mac gamer.
G3 upgrade 100 UKP
128 MB of RAM 30 UKP (buying from macsales.com)
IDE card so you can buy very cheap CD writers and HD's 40 UKP
Cost of HD's
SCSI 18.2 gig 120 UKP'ish (buying from US, including postage etc)
IDE 40 gig under 100 UKP. Even with all those upgrades you say you won't need anyway the cost is around 400 UKP.

The cheaper cost of RAM and the option of USB are enough reason alone to go with any PCI mac over an 8100.

Everyone is free to disagree with me but the way I see, generally speaking, there is little reason when buying a second computer not buy a better one than your existing computer. That's unless you
a) Collect
b) Want specific features, AV options, certain ports, mobility etc, etc.
c) iI will be dedicated to a particular purpose, router, TV/MP3 player, print server...

This is in situations where you are not already on the bleeding edge. They way prices are dropping all the time on computer equipment by the time you plan on buying the next computer up it is probably already cheaper than your current one. At a certain point the cost of maintaining and old computer is far more than that of buying a newer one which is cheaper to upgrade. Even for simple things.

I'm sorry but the only thing I really agree with is that you are better off buying a stand alone DVD player than upgrading a Mac to the point where it can play DVD's, in your case. Although considering nubus PPC's for the forum isn't such a bad one either....

P.s. As far as the Amiga goes have you seen the state their community is in? It's like a full scale war! Having said that I recently got an Amiga emulator to play Walker...

p.p.s Anyone mentioned PC compatibility cards to you? For about 20-30 UKP you could get a Pentium 166 on a PCI card allowing your Mac to run windows, and Gemulator, which seems to be your goal. You can flip back and forth between the Mac and PC, they can use the same monitor or seperate ones. You basically have a PC inside your Mac which saves on space too.

I dont know much about mac & certainly I dont know much about powermac. I will have to have a serious look into powermacs again, though I really wanted to keep the 800 caseing.

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I did mention that you could run OS 9.1, I didn't say you had to though. However I am sure as an Atari user you always
wanted to run the latest OS, why not apply that to the Mac?

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Once again there is often little point in buying an old computer, unless it's a hobby, it's a great hobby, but it isn't always financially viable. Whilst it's hard to turn down a 10 UKP computer when you're spending 50 - 100 UKP this can cover a wide range of computers. Most noteably people who think there machines are worth more than the going price, offer software of questionable legality which should add no value, lowend but maxed out machines or more powerful models but with a basic configuration. Of all of these the ones to go for are the high end but basic spec machines. Generally these will be as powerful as the older but maxed out models and once upgraded are capable of far more.

As far as the differences in 68k Macs and PM's the main one is speed. However because the PM's use a different chip architecture they have to emulate a 68k to run your old software (they do this transparently). This isn't a big deal except on very early PM's noteably the nubus PM's. On these nubus PM's some 68k software will run slower than it would on a highend 68k like your 840 AV. This isn't really a big deal for 2 reasons. 1)Almost all software these days is written for PM's and there are PM versions of most, but not all 68k Apps.
2) PM's running over 100 MHz (the largest majority) are fastest enough that even when running 68k software in emulation mode they are faster than the fastest 68k Macs.

What this means for you is that you will probably want to update a few App's when you get your PM. If you are running Netscape I'd either run NS 6 or ditch it all together as 4.x is pretty ropey as far as web browsers go, although I hate to say it IE isn't that bad. If you do ditch it Eudora is a great email App and I'm sure others have their favourites.

You may need to update your OS and if you have *access* to a newer copy that takes full advantage of the PM use it. Almost every Mac on eBay will have a version os the Mac OS on it that is fully functional and although it may be worth updating it it is not essential. Do take this in to account if you buy a machine without an HD and plan on putting one from your 840 AV in.

This brings me on to transfering software, IIRC your 840 AV has an AAUI ethernet port which requires something called a transciever (basically an adaptor, about 10 UKP) that will let you use a regular (RJ45) ethernet cable (You'll need a crossover one, 3-4 UKP). All PM's with PCI slots have RJ45 connectors once you have them hooked up you can set up filesharing which is pretty straigh forward but any of us can help you. This will let your new Mac see your 840 AV's HD's and copy software back and forth, much better than using floppy's.

Finally upgrading, as I've already mentioned PPC's use PCI slots instead of Nubus slots. These are the same slots found in most PC's which makes finding upgrades easy as a number of PC parts can easily be made to work in your Mac. As far as nubus cards go most are for adding ethernet, SCSI or faster SCSI devices, getting video and sound in or out of your Mac and faster graphics cards. PCI give you more options. USB card (10-15 UKP) lets you use almost any of USB scanner or printer, these are dead cheap these days. IDE lets you use cheap CD writers DVD drives and HD's as found in PC's. There are also PCI video cards (all 3DFX ones work in Mac or PC) more ethernet ports, not to mention firewire (DV cameras) and sound cards (most are expensive and professional level). Simply being able to use USB printers and IDE hard drives is a huge advantage and can deffinetly save you money down the road.

Again when looking for a Mac on eBay I think the 7x00's are where you will find the best deals. Just watch out for the 7200's, these are not the bargin they seem as the CPU is soldered on and not much better than those found in the nubus PM's although they do have PCI slots.

A lot of the 7x00's fall in the 30 - 60 UKP category they have 3 PCI slots built in video, ethernet, sound and internal and external SCSI ports a CD drive and floppy as well as space for a second HD or ZIP drive. 7x00's are some of the easiest cases to work on , two latches release the lid and the drives swing out. There are also AV cards that can be found cheaply and fit in a special slot and have simillar capabilities to the 840 AV. Try and get something with at least 32 MB of Ram. All PCI powermacs up to the first G3 share a compatible CPU card slot and the CPU's are interchangeable (adaptors are available to for G3 and G4's). If you want more skip the 8x00's and go straight for the 9600's which have 6 PCI slots. The 8x00's have the same CPU slot, number of RAM slots and PCI slots but use a tower case and can hold more drives. The 9x00's have 6 PCI slots and 12 RAM slots.

I think I've covered the most important aspects, I'm sure you'll ask if you need more and the others will chime in if I missed anything important.

Finally, if it sounds like I'm trying to put 68k Mac's down, not at all. It's just if you can only afford one machine and with many PM's at simillar prices to the 68k's you are foolish to turn them down. I do love 68k's and have my own fair share.

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