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Author Hi from a Performa 6400! (Read 20615 times)
Tech_and_Music
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Tech&Music
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on: April 07, 2021, 21:25

Hi everyone, I'm Daniël, also known as Tech&Music. I'm a 22 year old retro Mac and computer collector, currently also the webhost for techandmusic.nl.

I'm posting this from my Performa 6400 (the computer prominently seen on S7T's frontpage, unless it's a PM and/or 6500 :P) I picked up yesterday. It's currently fully skinned, with no broken plastics (somehow!). It is a bit rough here and there, and pretty yellow, but it's still a sweet little machine. I love the fact it's a super fast System 7.5/7.6 machine, and has the potential for some neat upgrades.

I already got it with maxed out L2 cache and RAM, and this is one of the TV/FM tuner and AV input models too. I've installed a SATA/FireWire/USB2.0 PCI card. The SATA portion works under all Classic Mac OS versions, while USB and FireWire will work on later versions of 8 and 9.

Slightly cheating by currently being booted into OS 9 as I'm typing this, but I have it multibooted with the stock 7.5.3 Performa 6400 install, and OS 8.1. It's just on a test SATA SSD for now, my final plan is to give this a main SSD for (stock) 7.5, 7.6, 8, 8.1, 8.5, 8.6, 9 and 9.1, and a secondary SSD for all the quirky betas and alternative OSes.

I have plenty more of 68k and PowerPC Macs, many capable of running various flavors of System/Mac OS 7, so I'll probably stick around here for a while ;)

Glad to see this site back in action, I've come across it before, but sadly my true Mac collecting days didn't start until 2015 or so, thus by the time I found this place, it had already been frozen. But after a successful defrost from its cryogenic sleep, I'm glad to be here!
cballero
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Reply #1 on: April 08, 2021, 00:52

Welcome Daniël! :)

Your 68-ready site looks excellent so far, with plenty of things for you to add in the future ;) and you are very fortunate to have a Performa 6400, I loved my 6500-series Mac when I had it

I also like the nice aqua bg you added to your website top navigation bar. The aqua background graphic themes complimented all of the the aqua and multi-colored themed G3 iMacs and iBooks in the late-80s very nicely! And then contrasting the new with those beautiful reverse-colored 1-bit Mac icons is simply a truly perfect combination of old and new :D
Bolkonskij
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Reply #2 on: April 08, 2021, 09:08

Welcome to S7T, Daniël! That's an interesting page you have, I have to explore it :-) (btw, thanks for linking to us!)

We can live with someone using System 7's brother Mac OS 9 (in fact, many of us do too). I love the Performa 6400 (yeah, that's the one on our home page :) ) design, Apple's product design at its best! You've got a quite project ahead of you with installing (and managing) all those installs but it should be the ultimate compatibility checker Macintosh :-D

Apart from upgrading it, what kind of work are you doing with your 6400? Always happy to hear what people use them for!
Knezzen
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Reply #3 on: April 11, 2021, 11:29

Welcome Daniël!

Great to have you with us here at S7T! Always liked the look of the 6400. Really regret. not getting one instead of the 5500 ;)
Tech_and_Music
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Reply #4 on: April 11, 2021, 19:03

Quote from: cballero
I also like the nice aqua bg you added to your website top navigation bar. The aqua background graphic themes complimented all of the the aqua and multi-colored themed G3 iMacs and iBooks in the late-80s very nicely! And then contrasting the new with those beautiful reverse-colored 1-bit Mac icons is simply a truly perfect combination of old and new :D

Thanks! It's indeed kind of a fusion of the older and newer Macs I love, so the combination was rather fitting :)

Quote from: Bolkonskij
Apart from upgrading it, what kind of work are you doing with your 6400? Always happy to hear what people use them for!

For me, I mostly just use my old Macs to tinker with the old hardware and software, try out old games, apps, and various operating systems like System Software/Mac OS, A/UX and Linux among others, and also work on the electronics side, like recapping my Macs or making things like BlueSCSIs by hand.

I've recapped a bunch of my Macs already, and recently even managed a Cube PSU recap and an SE/30 analog board and PSU recap with frying myself or the Macs :D

Quote from: Knezzen
Always liked the look of the 6400.

Yes, I know some people don't, but it's definitely one of my favourites, a rather daring design during a bad time at Apple, that honestly stands out, in a good way if you ask me.

Quote from: Knezzen
Really regret. not getting one instead of the 5500 ;)

Those AIOs have always been super cool too, though! It is after all the original formfactor the Mac came in, back in '84, even if slightly less bulbous :P

I'd want a black one if I had the space to spare! 8)
Bolkonskij
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Reply #5 on: April 12, 2021, 16:43

Do i smell a hardware swap here? :-D
Tech_and_Music
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Tech&Music
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Reply #6 on: April 14, 2021, 21:39

Quote from: Bolkonskij
Do i smell a hardware swap here? :-D

You could say we're trading cards ;)
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