now....

I have bought a powermac 7600/132 with 72MB mem, 8x cd rom 1.2 gig hard drive.

What memory do I need? well I thought I had it sussed, 168 pin but now looking on ebay there is a lot of memory saying pc 133, but I dont know about this & DDR? I dont know these terms.

What memory am I looking for?

It has 2MB of vram & if I follow correctly then I need 2 1MB vram simms to max it out to 4MB

L2 chache is 256k, which I read I can max out at 1 gig or 1 meg, not sure but how does one upgrade? replace simms? what type of simms?

I may hunt for a faster cd-rom, any restriction?

The floppy drive will most probably come out, a cable will stretch from bedroom to computer room & I will watch VCD's on my tv with my wife.

My wife is gonna kill me at first until she realises it is a good buy, it is a good buy isn't it?

She may not understand, she knows I bought the Q650 so I could pretend it's the same computer!

Unfortunatly this does mean that the Quadra 840av is having it's monitor status demoted.

The new mac will have the Compaq 140 15"
The 840av will be arguing with the 650 over which one gets which monitor, the Apple 14" & the Commodore 1084s 14"

The 840av may end up having the Commodore because how do I attach the 650 the the Commodore monitor? I'm sure it can be done but I may have to hack a cable.

I'd need Apple 15 pin D connection to RGB 9 pin D.

or perhaps I can give my wife the 7600/132 as a wedding anniversary present! & she can use it with the Commodore monitor for watching VCD's & chat room & light browsing.

I went to oneworld.com & worked out that it would cost £103 to max out the memory.

I might have to sell a few things.

This is why I wasn't keen to go for powermac cos I don't want it to swallow all my money.

shaktiman

You could probably use a normal TV as a monitor because of the AV out? am I wrong in thinking this?

You might want to go for a bigger HDD, especially if you're going for the likes of OS9 and BeOS

NOT DDR and NOT PCanythhing
it's like 5v dimms or something...

cheaper VGA monitors are really cheap these days... you could maybe get anextra unless it's a space issue

good luck!

don't you have 2 840s and a 650?

you could get spare monitors and let your kidlet use the 650, you and your wife each use an 840 and you get the 7600 to 'play around with' or pretend it's a 'server'

if you can get networking junk for all of them that'd actually be a nice setup. Extra monitors all around though.

Jag won't work, but 10.1 will!

Get a G3/4 upgrade and it'll work fine in Jag. We have a 400MHz G3 in a 7600/132 and dad uses it as his main computer at the house.

Only prob is I have a scary HD in it and it likes to scream and moan and boot into 9.

~Marchie

a) You need the special 168 pin FPM (Fast Paged Mode) DIMMs that were designed for the first PCI PowerMacs. PC133 and EDO will not work, and you may damage the RAM, your mobo, or both. However, EDO will NOT work. I learnt this from working on 7200s.

b) To max out the VRAM, you need to get the special VRAM DIMMs that came out for machines of this era. Or you could install a PCI video card, which would probably be much better.

c) I'm not sure how you would max out the L2 cache, i'm sorry.

d) There's no limit as far as CD ROM speed goes. However, if you don't get a SCSI drive, you'll need to install an IDE controller card.

e) Yes, it is a good buy.

Have fun with your new machine, and i hope you get SAF approval!

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Give your dreams a chance.™ - Apple in the mid '90s

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Give your dreams a chance.™ - Apple in the mid '90s

OSX would require that you buy an UberExpensive upgrade stuff unless you want to go reeeellllyyy slllloooowwww

and yeah, jaguar will work now on the PCI machines... they updated XPF ithink.

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Give your dreams a chance.™ - Apple in the mid '90s

quote:

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You might want to go for a bigger HDD, especially if you're going for the likes of OS9 and BeOS

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A cheap PCI video card will be 10x better than upgrading the onboard video. A good card to go for is a PC (not Mac) 3DFx Voodoo 3 2000 (or better) These go for around 20 UKP and can be made to work on a Mac 100% by running a small application. If you are worried about flashing a graphics card don't be! 3DFx Mac and PC compatible and 3Dfx encouraged the practice.

On this machine you should be able to runn fairly decent Amiga and Atari emulators on this machine.

Finally DO upgrade to OS 9 but stop at 9.0.4 (there are no real advantages in later versions unless you are running OS X). OS 9 has more features, is more stable, and will run happily in the amount of RAM you have at the moment. OS 9 is also much better regarding USB support. A USB card will set you back about 15 UKP, maybe less, almost any PC one will work 100% this means you can by cheap printers and scanners in the future. I'll hook you up with a OS 9.0.4 if you want, no charge!

In the mean time just enjoy it, personally I'd offload the Q650.

I'm glad you finally got a nice PPC Machine! This machine should server you will for quite a few years.

How do I flash an ATI video card? specifically an ATi Mach64 (got one of these and wouldn't mind having dualiemonitors on the 7300)

yeah... 9.1 is less stable on the 7300 and 9.00 was

ATI Cards

PCI + AGP Radeon 7000 flashable using a PC
AGP Radeon 8500 flashable without using a PC

Nvidia Cards

PCI GeForce 2 may work with blue and white G3 or better if at all, no chance of working on beige G3 or earlier

AGP GeForce 2, most reference based cards are flashable using a PC, even some non reference ones, TV out not supported

AGP GeForce 3 Reference based only not Ti models, flashable using a PC, has some issues with flickering text.

3Dfx cards, Voodoo 2 works out of the box on PC or Mac, Voodoo 3 4 & 5 can all be flashed on a Mac or PC

Summary

Budget PCI card -> Voodoo 3 Pros works great in old games Cons not so hot with latest OpenGL, OS X no go, no DVD support

Best PCI card -> Radeon 7000, dual monitor support, TV out, works in OS X, DVD playback

Budget AGP card -> GeForce 2 good allrounder, pretty cheap, works in OS X, better than AGP Radeon 7000, DVD playback Cons No TV out, they get hot

Best AGP card -> Radeon 8500 , Dual monitor support, TV out, great DVD playback, OS 9 and X compatible can be flashed in a Mac, no need for a PC

Hey if someone wants this on the website I can write it up with some useful links.

If you have an old PCI powermac the Radeon 7000 is a great card, it's better than the voodoo 3, more compatible, TV out, dual head (not sure that DVD playback would work on a Pre G3 though.)

I'm also running Mac OS 9.2.2 on it and there doesn't seem to be too many problems that I've run into, but everyone likes 9.0.4, so I'll have to go with that.

On the RAM: I did actually try and plug in some PC DIMMS into the 7600 in ignorance. They're actually keyed differently and therefore won't go in without several tons of force. I've got a 64Oo/18o and that uses the same RAM as the 76QQ and I like to swap it back and forth between the tw0. Right now, I've got 80 Mb in there and can run the OS quite comfortably and Internet Explorer 5 runs pretty good.

Might I sugguest that you also find a larger HD when you get the chance. Not for the size, though, but the bigger ones are usually newer and being newer, are faster. I have that same old 1.2 as you got and it's a dog.

I'm using 256k L2 right now and could probably benefit from more. The L2 cache lives between the right and left DIMM banks and is slightly offset as Master of Puppets says. You just use the little pretuberance on the one end of the L2 cache DIMM as a handle to pull up on when you decide to evict it. I've never added any onboard VRAM, so, unfortunately, I can't tell you much about it, except that you can get 800x600x32 with the 1 MB that I think is in there stock, which is fine by me.

quote:

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and yeah, jaguar will work now on the PCI machines... they updated XPF ithink.

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Lady Smith Apples:
Apple IIc 5.25"
2 Apple IIe

quote:

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I've got a 7600/233 with a Formac Proformance 3 video card that I'm extremely happy with. The reason that I recommend this one is that it has QuickTime, OpenGL, and QuickDraw acceleration! That would make it great for digitizing some old home movies, which I have yet to get around to.

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LC 2, LC 3, Q605, Perf 638, Colour Classic (160 603e) 6100, 7200, PTP 225 (Quad 604), PM 9600, G4 Cube

quote:

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If you want to upgrade your RAM seriously, as in buying anything larger than 16 MB DIMMS you can get cheap 128 MB DIMMs
from OWC, about 20 UKP (25USD) + postage which is not too bad on RAM. Don't go crazy buying 8 MB DIMMs or anything
though you only have 8 slots and would eventually have to get rid of some to upgrade even further. 256 Mb would be a nice
amount in this machine.

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The voodoo 3 does need to be flashed but it can be done in a Mac with no need for a PC. All you do is find the lastest voodoo drivers from mac3dfx.com put the PC card in your mac, run the 3dfx update as you would run any other update (claris works, OS etc) and restart! I can't remember if you get any video before you flash the card, I think you might but it's unaccelerated.

Anyway these cards should be going for about 20 UKP back home, p.s. don't buy the cheaper VooDoo 2 it only works in 3D games that run full screen, Unreal Quake etc, if you're running anything else it just lets the Mac video card t's connected to do all the work

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3409711081

if it stays under 10 UKP it's not a bad deal, to be honest it's not actually that great either when ou can get a 16 MB voodoo 3 for 25 UKP

is tere a difference between the video of the 7200 and 7300?

If I have USB, should I get a pci with 2 usb ports? does usb daisychain?, does usb daisychain successfully?

on ebay, should I look for voodoo? or 3dfx voodoo 2000? or..........

shaktiman

b) All USB cards i've seen have two ports. Also, USB doens't daisy chain. YOu need a hub.

c) If you want to run OS X or see new games like they were meant to be seen, you need at least a Rage 128 Pro or a GeForce2.

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Give your dreams a chance.™ - Apple in the mid '90s

ANY 3Dfx/voodoo card will do 3DFx made the chips but several companies made the cards. My Voodoo 5 is a genuine 3DFx made card but really it doesn;t matter.

As long as it is a PCI VooDoo 3, 2000 or better it'll do. If there is a picture of the card you can probably see 3dfx written on the chips, go with this over the name if you are unsure, or post a link here and one of us'll check it out for you.

Watch out for banshee's IIRC VooDoo banshee's might be the exception regarding Mac flashing although Villagetronic made a really crap banshee based card. They're slower than a voodoo 3 anyway.

You can add a firewire card but this is really used for high speed storage and video. I don't think this would be nearly as useful to you as the much cheaper USB card.

quote:

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A USB card will set you back about 15 UKP, maybe less, almost any PC one will work 100% this means you can by cheap printers and scanners in the future. I'll hook you up with a OS 9.0.4 if you want, no charge!

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Edited by - The Lightning Stalker on 07 Apr 2003 20:02:56

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Give your dreams a chance.™ - Apple in the mid '90s

I like my 7300 just the way it is... maybe with the addition of USB and a larger monitor and maybe a few extras for no aparent reason....

(actually that's what I want for my TiBook... a CRT monitor)

quote:

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Okay, so you're saying that a PCI to USB card that's meant for PC will work in a Mac? If this is so, then I could put in this USB card I have lying around.

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LC 2, LC 3, Q605, Perf 638, Colour Classic (160 603e) 6100, 7200, PTP 225 (Quad 604), PM 9600, G4 Cube

At the same time however I suspect a number of firewire cards say pc/mac compatible on the box.

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