Old Power Mac

[aahz19]

Wasn't sure where to post this, but...
My aunt had a 7300/180 Power Macintosh that she was going to bring to the landfill, so of course I grabbed it and brought it home. I know absolutely nothing about Macs, but figured the Anandtech forums would be a good place to find out what to do with this thing.
It works great and everything is there (no monitor, but there is a pc to mac monitor adapter). So do I sell it in the "for sale" forum, put it in the freebie section, or use it as a boat anchor? Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[phisrow]

http://www.lowendmac.com/ppc/7300.shtml

Not totally useless; but you aren't going to be running panther on that box, tiger. My advice would be: Either clean up the OS that is currently installed a bit, then see if you can get your hands on some of the excellent old-school Mac shareware, or load Linux, if you fancy a marginally useless challenge that will probably cause you some pain and give you geek bragging rights. Ditch and/or sell it cheap(given the cost of shipping, that might just mean giving it away) if you don't want the hassle.

 

[Rottie]

I have been thinking about Apple Performa 6214CD that is sitting in the closet. It lacks keyboard. I heard it valued at 20 bucks. So might have to give it for free.

 

[bearxor]

Nice site phisrow, thanks!

We still have some of those machines in service at the paper I work at. They're used basically for email and document creation, not much else. It's possible to upgrade these to G3's, b ut probably not worth it. Several of our are upgraded.

And what is this doing in the notebook section?

 

[Sonikku]

Meh. I used a Apple 8500 at my internship and it sucked to high heaven.

 

[chcarnage]

This Mac isn't won't install OS X at all (and likely a G3 upgrade won't change this) so you're limited to Mac OS 7/8/9 and Linux.

You could...
- emulate Amiga OS or MAME
- use it as an internet PC or jukebox (well MP3s should work )
- or as an electric typewriter if that's accidentally useful
- explore some old mac shareware classics and abandonware. URLs to start:

http://www.versiontracker.com/macos

http://mac.the-underdogs.org

One nice piece of abandonware (not sure if it's compatible with Mac OS 7 though):

http://homepage.mac.com/calhoun/glider.html

 

[omissible]

Originally posted by: Sonikku
Meh. I used a Apple 8500 at my internship and it sucked to high heaven.

They gave you a nine-year-old computer at your internship?

They must've hated you.

 

[imported_Woody]

The 7300 isn't very upgradable. If you had got your hands on a 7500, 7600, 8500, or a couple others of that S. Jobsless era of beige macs you could actually upgrade them to a full 1GB of RAM, a fairly fast G4 CPU, A decent PCI video card, USB and modern ATA interface and a little hardware and software tweaking you could actually run OSX at a decent speed and use it for some kind of home server or something.

Of course the expense wouldn't justify it unless you just like to tinker with that sort of thing and want to impress your friends with your ability to resurect an old Mac. Personally, I think you should rip out the insides and rig up a fast PC with some kind of fake Macintosh interface theme running on WindowsXP and then show all your friends how you can play Doom3 on a ten year old Macintosh. That would be fun for ten minutes or so.

 

[aahz19]

Heh, thanks for all the info and ideas everyone. I am surprised how much freeware is out there for the Macs. Also, I've gotta say, some pretty imaginative stuff in there. I enjoy the thoughts of loading Linux or stuffing a PC in the Mac box, LOL. Unfortunately, none of my friends know or care about computers, so the only person I could brag to would be myself...
I guess that unless my brother wants it to tinker with, it'll probably make its way to the "For Sale" forum for enough to cover my gas to the UPS warehouse (which is 30 miles away).
But thanks again everyone.

 

[BespinReactorShaft]

I wonder if there's any chance of turning it into a DC (e.g. SETI@Home) cruncher...

 

[chcarnage]

Originally posted by: BespinReactorShaft
I wonder if there's any chance of turning it into a DC (e.g. SETI@Home) cruncher...

There's an old seti client for Mac OS 9 but I don't know if it's still supported - no word on it on the official website. Present folding software hardly is released for classic Mac OS. It's a dead horse development-wise.

 

[thraxes]

Oh dear...I used to have an old PowerMac. Used it as a websurf box for myself when my GF took over my main rig every now and then but it was pretty useless. Classic Mac OS is just painfull to use, the RAM needed to make it bearable is hideously expensive (if you can even find some), Linux didn't work all that well on it either... KDE was pretty much snail pace.

 

[Justin218]

Originally posted by: Rottie
I have been thinking about Apple Performa 6214CD that is sitting in the closet. It lacks keyboard. I heard it valued at 20 bucks. So might have to give it for free.

I used that for a long time back in the day. It is really one of the worst older macs around... not really upgradable at all. It can barely play an mp3. baaaarely.