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| Author | Any (former) Power Mac 7500 / 7600 owners here? (Read 60320 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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MTT
256 MB  Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer 
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Reply #15 on: November 07, 2023, 23:45
@Knezzen: Not a problem, good to know  @Bolkonskij: Sacrilegious, but sometimes usefulness outweighs form factor. Besides, it's what you see on a monitor's display that counts, not the box under the desk  Quote from: cballero: "I love the ability to go from the very first Mac OS 8 all the way up to the last Mac OS 9 version on my G3 desktop, plug in older SCSI and ADB as well as newer Firewire external drives: it has really let me play with both sides of the fence fast enough.@cballero: That's it! I can't do it. I can't throw my beige Frankenbeast out. Dammit! 
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Last Edit: November 07, 2023, 23:47 by MTT
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #16 on: November 08, 2023, 03:39
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For the life of me I couldn't find the MG post where I talked about looking for the best/fastest Mac to run something close to Mac OS 7.6.1, and everyone chimed-in the the Beige G3 was the way to go. I connected with sfp1954 and it arrived with everything working beautifully. It is such a versatile powerhouse I am so glad to have pretty much all of the Classic Mac OSes running within one Mac. Mac OS 8.1 is a speed wizard on it and is close enough to the old-school Mac feel I love, plus running Mac OS 8.6 is also a treat without the OS 9 overhead for most newer software and hardware I want to use on it. I just couldn't let you do it MTT, not with all it can do!
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023
Reply #17 on: March 10, 2024, 16:51
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Looks like I might get lucky. Someone about a 15 minute drive away is selling his Power Mac 7500/100 that "has been standing around unused for the past 25 years". I does power on though and has Mac OS 8.0 installed  I'll drive by tomorrow and have a look at it. If it's any good, I'll pick it up. Price seems reasonable.
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Knezzen
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Administrator 512 MB Posts: 608 Village idiot
Reply #18 on: March 10, 2024, 17:03
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Great! Finally a PowerPC System 7 machine at home again
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #19 on: March 10, 2024, 23:07
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Nice find! I guess it's time for you to look at some ATX cases now to ready your FrankenMac project, huh?
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #20 on: March 11, 2024, 08:25
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Yeah, I'll go there and have a look this afternoon. Given the age of the machines, if they don't come from an enthusiast, they're usually in a bad state. So I don't want to get my hopes up too much. The PSU will likely need a recap soon - or an ATX mod. Luckily, it seems like one of the more easy to service machines Apple did during the time. From what the elder gentleman described, it's a pretty stock machine ...16 MB RAM (ouch) and the original hard disk. But also includes the original software on CD and possibly the manuals even. Now I wonder if that PRAM battery is still in there ...
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #21 on: March 11, 2024, 16:25
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Aw man, lol you have your work cut-out for you with this one!
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #22 on: March 11, 2024, 19:59
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Indeed, I got the 7500 today! It's in great shape and more importantly, it works flawlessly, including floppy drive, CD drive etc. It's a base config, just like what it was if I'd bought it back in 1996 ... 16 MB RAM and a 750 MB hard disk. Only upgrade was that they replaced the 7.5.2 it came with Mac OS 8.0 The PRAM battery is bad, of course, but that came to be expected. I'll yank it out tomorrow as I get time to open it up. Also came with the original installer software and some goodies like Arple 1996 (internal Apple) as the seller was working for Apple at the time. Looking forward to spend more time with it and soon post from it here :-) Thanks everybody for sharing your advice / experience.
Last Edit: March 11, 2024, 20:02 by Bolkonskij
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #23 on: March 11, 2024, 23:25
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Congratulation on the great find. The Power Mac 7500 was one of Apple's best machines. A real workhorse of a machine known for being fast and rugged. Apple really still knew how to make a great computer. It is hard to find a machine of that vintage, that still has some of the extras, and is in operational condition. And seeing as how you are really into this vintage stuff, you can expect to have a grand time tinkering and being productive. A very nice find indeed!
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #24 on: March 12, 2024, 00:01
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WooHoo, enjoy Bolkonskij!!  I know it'll be pure joy getting your new 7500 PowerMac up and going!
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #25 on: March 12, 2024, 11:35
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Thanks guys! Really like the machine. Sturdy and serviceable. No sign of the cap plague yet. I spent some time now to open it up and cleaning it out. Had quite some dust bunnies in it from the 90s and 2000s. Should probably have called an archeologist or something to take samples ;-) I did yank out the empty PRAM battery. Made in Israel, April 1995. Yeah, it sure did its duty. Replaced it with a new one. Also upgraded the RAM to 96 MB with modules I had lying around. Should be plenty for Mac OS 7.6. Noticed the two 8 MB modules it came with were in sockets A1 and A4 ... that would prevent RAM interleaving, wouldn't it? Should be A1 and B1 IIRC? Anyway, I fixed it. Floppy drive is still going strong despite me dragging out tons of dust. No way any CD-ROM laser would survive that much. Still, it reads and writes floppies just fine (and ejects them too). More cleaning. Also cleaned the case with a magic eraser. You wouldn't believe how much dirt comes off these beige Macs after three decades. Especially since it doesn't really show unless you wipe a paper towel over them. Now running into an issue when trying to install Mac OS 7.6 on the aging Quantum HDD, but I opened up a separate thread for this issue.
Last Edit: March 12, 2024, 11:37 by Bolkonskij
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #26 on: March 20, 2024, 11:27
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Given the 90 bucks I've invested into this thing and the fun I've had with it over the past week, this 7500/100 was an excellent investment. Like two days ago I was on Hotline and we were chatting while I was streaming web radio via MpegDec and browsing Gopher (the collapsed bar to the top-right ) ... all on a 100 Mhz 2nd gen 601 PowerPC! Look here!There is so much power left in System 7 ... har har har! (imagine the howl Tim Allen made in "Home Improvement") It's been running hours on end, sometimes breathing heavily while doing some StuffIt action for half an hour and it hasn't let me down once. After 30+ years! Anyone wanna bet their new Mac Book Air will do half of the time?
Last Edit: March 20, 2024, 14:43 by Bolkonskij
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ClassicHasClass
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32 MB Posts: 39
Reply #27 on: March 21, 2024, 04:21
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The Outriggers are really good machines. I have a 7300/180 that I upgraded with a Rage Orion video card (Rage 128 GL class), a Sonnet G4/800, two 18GB SCSI drives, 24x CD-ROM, 1GB of RAM and an OrangePC 620. You can stuff them full of stuff and they're still very space-saving, though the power supply can get overwhelmed (see http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2017/11/and-now-for-something-completely.html ).
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #28 on: March 21, 2024, 11:28
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I love the way how they can be easily upgraded via swapping the CPU daughtercard. I haven't fully decided on whether or not I should add a 604 200 Mhz (or something) upgrade if I see one or keep mine as it is. It makes such a nice "middle of the road" System 7 Macintosh with a unique mid 90s feeling and the fun of trying to optimize things and squeezing out more performance. I do have a G4 and a IIci on the other side of the spectrum, so I'm not in need a G3 or something that runs OS 9. The power supply is indeed one of my main concerns right now. I'd love to replace it with a newer one, but interestingly nobody has seized the opportunity to produce new ones for old Macs (while you'll find plenty of PSU replacements for Amiga or C64 computers, for instance) And while I know about the ATX mods, I feel I know too few about PSUs to tinker with them effectively.
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lauland
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512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #29 on: April 18, 2024, 16:56
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I've got Sonnet purple g3 and g4 cpu cards and both work well in my 7600. Was able to run MacOS X on it with XPostFacto and either of those cards. Although I just leave it with the stock 604 normally, since I have actual g3 and g4 machines and I like to have it stock for reference and testing. It also has Rhapsody dr2 on it, which can't boot with the g3/g4 cards. And generic USB card, which works well in MacOS 9. I do love the outrigger designs!
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