Hey thanks for taking my advice, and glad to see you here in the 68kMLA!1. There's no way to upgrade a Quadra 950 to a G3, about as far as you can take it is a 100 MHz 601 using a (rare) Daystar upgrade card. However, trust me, if you use it right a 33 MHz 040 will get the job the done.
2. Yes, the Quadra 950 makes a superb Unix/Linux server! In fact, Apple's Workgroup Server 95, which is essentialy the same as a Quadra 950, came pre-loaded with A/UX, Apple's first version of it's Unix-based OS. Nowadays, A/UX is about as easy to find as Honus Wagner baseball card, so you're better off using a newer Linux port like Minix, Debian, OpenBSD or others. You can find out more at Jag's House.
As far as other upgrades, you can...
3. ...max out the RAM at 256MB, which was unheard of in its day. It uses 30-pin SIMMS, and you'd need sixteen 16MB SIMMS to get that much. They're actually not as rare as they used to be, and you should be able to get four 16MB SIMMS for about $30 (not including shipping) off eBay. Thus, for about $120 you could max it out. Just remember: Always install RAM in a Quadra 950 in sets of four of the same size, and don't even bother buying RAM if it's not the 16MB variety, it just aint cost effective.
4. Put in a bigger SCSI hard drive. One of the amazing things about the Quadra 950 is that it has a SCSI I and a SCSI II bus on the mobo, just like my 7500 that came out years later. The SCSI II bus will support 10MB/sec thoroughput, which is plenty for just about anything that you're going to be doing on it. The SCSI I is 5MB/sec, and will handle external devices. So, try to keep all your speed-intensive devices, namely hard drives, internal. You can put in as large a capacity SCSI hard drive as you want, as long as it's a 50-pin, single-ended 3.5" drive in either 1/3 or 1/2 height variety. I'd reccomend at least 4GB, and you can partition it if you need.
5. Aside from running soem variation of Linux on it, you should have Mac OS 8.1 on one of the partitions/drives. Well, unless you're going to be using a video card that only supports certain System 7 releases. 8.1 supports the newest version of PPP and TCP/IP needed to take advantage of high-speed internet access through an ethernet Nubus card and also custom desktop pics, Kaleidoscope, a much better looking UI over-all.
There's more but I think that should help you for now. That and Firewire is Fast will get mad at me!
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Edited by - cinemafia on 14 Nov 2001 17:52:55
My new Quadra 950
Posted - 14 Nov 2001 : 16:56:47
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