Apple Macintosh Performa 6200CD - Upgrading an Old Friend
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 พ.ค. 2021
- This video documents my recent experience with the Apple Macintosh Performa 6200CD computer.
My family had one of these computers back in the day, and while it ran a lot of games, it did not run them very well.
In this video I'm going to upgrade and optimize this machine to see if I can get any better performance out of it than I had back then.
More info on the issues with this computer:
lowendmac.com/1997/performa-a...
If you enjoy this kind of content please consider supporting this channel on Patreon. It is because of the Patreon support that I am able to create this video.
You can find more information about this on the Patreon page, or by visiting my website:
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The tracker music from this video was used under the public domain license. All of these artists are absolute legends, check them out here:
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#VintageApple #Macintosh #RetroGaming - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
![The Power Macintosh 6100 [re-release + bonus]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/DlFuD4f_fEI/mqdefault.jpg)
The old VHS quality video I sampled throughout this was a promotional video for Performa computers from Apple in 1995. It was absolutely one of the most ridiculous videos I think that I’ve ever seen!
If you haven’t seen this gem, check it out after my video:
th-cam.com/video/zfPCPjj2Y9E/w-d-xo.html
I remember that infomercial vividly. It came on at like 2:30 AM! (Target audience?!) - I even remember the family name - the Martinettis. Fromage at its finest.
Lol, that was so corny.
I think the 6200CD is the quintessential 90's Mac, both in a good way and a bad way! I love mine.
Just checked out your video about your 6200CD - yours is in great shape too and that's awesome you've got the AV card as well! Nice little computer for 90s multimedia and shareware games!
@@insanelygruz I have an apple workgroup server 60 its my favorite retro mac. Doom runs well on my mac even my 68k I still have my 2 child hood macs I kept them. I have a performa 476 and a 6400 I ran them for ever in the 1990s and they still run I recently got them on eithernet and syncing with my retro servers to. What can hurt some models to is that they can forget that 32 bit addressing was on and virtual memory to.. I had no idea some cd games were crashing when the batteries died. I kept fsome of those quantom drives because they work with the HDD light I have a quadra and a Mac IISI that have an HDD light.
This was our first Mac! Before we got this, we only had an Apple IIe.
Try a quadra 950 for 68k and a 8100/110 with a G3/500 mhz upgrade, digidesign chassis. Theres more good 90s apples thats not performas
We had its close relative, the 6214CD. I was happy at first since it was a lot faster than the LC it replaced, but gradually I came to find that it was actually pretty damned slow for a PowerPC-based Mac. I got the impression that the older Power Mac 6100 with its 601 CPU was actually faster. Turns out this thing had a lower-power CPU and a slower bus.
My childhood Macintosh... My family was Windows-based, but in elementary school we had one of these in the classroom. There was always a fight between us about who got to play on it, so the teachers had to make a little schedule where you "booked" the computer for 20 min each! Many years later, the school was shut down and neglected. I got the news that it was to be completley rebuild, and for some reason I don't remember, I got access to the building by the school personel (my mom worked there so I think she helped me with it somehow) and the whole building was mostly empty... Except one storage room, where some things were thrown in, one of witch was that old computer. I got the permission to take it, and it is since in my care. I was so happy when it booted, and all our games, highscores and drawings and writings and other stuff we made in class over 20 years ago was still there to find.
That's incredible!
"is anyone even watching this channel?" I come home from a stressful day and find a new Classic Mac Gaming and it's like Mindfulness in TH-cam-form. I've always been surprised by the lack of classic Mac resources on the net, so this is really an oasis!
"Is anyone even watching this channel?" I am now!
Welcome to the channel!
Me too!
I’ve been watching it since its inception. ☺️
Parents had purchased a Performa 6200cd in '95. What a dog that thing was, but that was my first glimpse of the internet(AOL) and Power Pete, i do remember that fondly. Sadly their machine was in for repairs more often than it was correctly working. So after like 2 years it was given up on.
Did not expect you to destroy my mom like that
This is a fun video, thank you for sharing!
I say this wherever I can but Low End Mac did the Macintosh 6200 and 5200 really really dirty. Literally nothing they wrote about it until an article by one of their newer columnists in mid-2020 is outright fabrication. Literally none of it has any basis in reality whatsoever. They haven't updated any of their existing pages
The 603 runs fine on the Mac 630 platform and the revised versions of these machine, 5300/6300, 1400, PB5300, and PB2300 are all even more "basically fine" than the 6200 is.
Speed Doubler is a great plan for these, without it a 6200/75 will do 68k emulation at around 20-25% as fast as a Quadra 700 and with it it'll go at 150% of the speed of a Q700. Some of the networking stuff does help, and there's Finder multi-threading in there, but it's a little awkward and most vintage Macs (even high end ones, to be honest) perform poorly enough that it's not worth doing.
The problem with the 6200 vs. the 6100 and the 6300 is that the L1 cache where the 68k emulator runs is 16k in this model vs. 32k (or more) in basically every other extant PPC Mac. That causes the emulator to thrash in and out of cache. Nominally between SD8 and running 7.6.1 or 8.1 to get more PPC code than 7.5.x has is probably the best spot for these but IME 9.1 will run if you need for any reason. (but, not well due to the ram ceiling on these.)
Unfortunately, 23+ years of LEM not ever updating what they write about these machines has caused msot of these to be tossed as worthless in comparison to higher end machines where preservation efforts get focused. It's a big bummer for the scene as a whole because these are great basic tourism/gaming/productivity machines and they were produced in huge quantities compared to the higher end models but they all got tossed.
Darnit my apologies for so many line breaks, youtube did not make clear that it was going to cause like 3 line breaks.
Thanks for the info! Had no idea Speed Doubler was so effective until recently. Also agree that the article by LowEndMac is ridiculous. Even if it's not as fast as it potentially could be, a "Worst Mac Hardware Ever" label is something that shouldn't exist in my opinion.
@@insanelygruz I couldn’t agree more, and I also think it is such a shame that so many of these hit the scrap pile. Thank you so much for this wonderful and enlightening video; I’m so excited, you have reignited my passion for abandonware. PS - the heheheh was perfect; I was laughing right along!
No matter what computer it is, mac or PC, upgrading a childhood computer to go as fast and be as powerful as it can possibly go is always an amazing feeling. The very first computer I ever encountered in my life wasn’t the iMac’s and iBook’s we had in my school back in 2006… my first computer was a machine probably very few people have heard of. It’s called the Dell Inspiron e1405. A forgotten little Core duo laptop that was dells midrange little experiential machines from the time. However, I’ve always adored the machine, as it served as my family’s main computer well into 2012, which is also around the time I inherited it. Over the years I’ve upgraded the original, and got a second unit in mint condition to upgrade to the absolute MAXIMUM it can go, and it was so worth it. So, if you have the chance to take your childhood computer to the absolute limit, I say go for it.
(Also, for anyone who wants to know, the units original config was a 1.6Ghz Core Duo, 512mb of RAM, and a 120GB mechanical HDD. Now it has a 2.33 Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB SSD.)
I came to this video to see how to remove the faceplate from my 6300CD and stayed for the entertainment. Definitely subbed!
Edit: ah man Power Pete was the best
2nd Level Cache is the key to performance. If it's big enough for the entire screen buffer than the game get's a nice boost. I use a PM6100/66. It's 2nd Level Cache brings it up to a PPC 100Mhz without Cache.
Fantastic work - both on the machine, and on this well-constructed video!
Hey, mate
I just got done binging a whole bunch of your videos and wanted to let you know that you're really doing some excellent content here.
I've always loved retro games but I honestly never really knew about the old Mac scene so watching the videos on your channel has been really cool and enlightening.
Can't wait to see more from you.
You can tell this was a passion project. Great video!
Wicked upgrade dude.
I wish I had the space/resources to dive into old macs, so having some well-produced videos to satiate my curiosity is greatly appreciated 👍
Just amazing video. I really love to know a bit more ot those already forgotten beige macs bc of the love they shared with the people whom today collecting them. It's for me interesting pieces of technology and deserve to be remembered.
i love your videos gruz, keep 'em coming!
Nice mac :) I never had a good experience with mac, past or present. I want to change my mind and learn to love old school mac's. Your video was a good start.
I enjoyed this so much! I am now on a mission to do much the same as you did as I also grew up in the same time period with a performa and then power Mac. I was so loud exclaiming to so many things on this video, especially when you had the CPU opened up, I was just cheering. This was amazing. Thank you so much for putting this out there. My lil “Oregon Trail Generation” heart thanks you.
Great games upgrades And mainentance! Congrats !
I grew up with Performas, really underrated imo, had some amazing and creative games. Its weird to think the first time I heard of Apple was 1994, at which time only one other person I knew had even heard of Apple, he also owned one. Different world! Really enjoyed this video. I'm from the UK so you're getting those international views :)
Excellent work
I had a 636 CD growing up anacleto bunch of games on it so this is perfect thank you!😊
After watching this, I was reminded of my old apple IIs and Macs in my pile of old computers. Maybe I'll finally bring some back to life soon.
Just got a 6200, my first ever mac! and this was super helpful for someone who doesn't have a clue. Excellent vid!
Zone Warrior looks amazing. I followed the link to your channels from Action Retro. So glad I did. Thanks.
The speed issue with these 3d games is because of the 32 bit bus. The processor is capable of handling everything, but everything has to go through a funnel to get to ram, hd, PCI cards (like the video card for example). Even machines with faster processors still suffered from it. These performers needed to use an incredible 4 clock cycles to perform a single operation, thanks to the limited bus. That means the processor runs 4x slower (or needs to work 4x harder) to perform the same task as a PowerMac with the same configuration would.
There were versions of performa that had a motherboard with a 486 or pentium 1 processor, and that could run windows and pc games. Even these cards ran 4x slower than a regular computer with the same specification.
But thanks to that, those macs (which nobody wants) are disappearing, so, in a few more years, the lucky one who still has one will have a gold mine in his hands.
Who _doesn't_ like to creep on the previous owners of their Macs? I know that's the first thing I did when I got my PowerBook G4.
My Performa Mac's previous owner had text documents that dated back to 1987 and he even had an autobiography, so I got to basically know his entire life story.
Yeah, another Gruz video! It's always a treat to see what you have in store about classic Macs.
We used to have one of those in my house when I was a kid and with Ram Doubler and MacOS 8.6 that beast could run anything from Marathon 1 and Doom to Quake and even Future Cop LAPD. It always surprises me how it had a reputation for lackluster hardware.
Edit: I honestly don't remember it being so unbearably slow when playing Doom and Wolfenstein. I even used to play Marathon Infinity mods like Tempus Irae and even early versions of Marathon Eternal X on that machine and for the life of me I swear it played alright.
This video is wonderful, Gruz. Keep it up, man.
Thank you very much!
You just helped me out greatly. I've been struggling with my 6500/250 and replacement ATA/IDE drives not being recognized by Drive Setup under System 7.X. Gonna try again with System 8.1 Drive Setup. Thanks for the video!
The 6200CD was a good gaming computer once you upgraded it.
31:47 Oh, crap, I’m old. ”The computer I grew up with” is the Texas Instruments TI994A. 😂 Mac Classic and PowerBook 1400 was in college. 😊
The Mac Doom port was horribly optimized. It's not the Mac, it's the game. You needed a first gen PPC to even play it. Marathon by comparison was well optimized and used quite a bit of assembly code.
I remember replacing that battery by three simple AA. It was a really expensive battery. Thanks for the information about how to format the CF card.
I remember playing "ZOA: The Zone of Avoidance" (1993) at a friends house. There are no youtube videos for the "Zone Warrior" games, even though I consider them mac classics! Awesome video Gruz!!!
I love your channel, Gruz! You inspired me to start my own TH-cam channel. I’m currently working on my next video. Maybe one day (when I’m established) we can work on a collab together. Great name change, btw! Keep up the excellent work!
14:42 Small oversight on my part, but if you use a compact flash adapter that has exposed solder pins on the bottom for the power, they will short out when touching the metal case. I thought I blew the power supply with all the smoke. Little electrical tape fixed the issue. Lol
My first computer was the Peforma 636CD with the DOS compatible option. It played awesome games for the day, and I have great memories of it.
worth noting, I could play MP3's on my LC68040 in Mac Amp without a problem so there must be a SERIOUS bottleneck with the processor and hard drive config. I even remeber Doom and Doom II playing full screen with ZERO issues at all, even multiplayer full screen.
One of the greatest.
Thank you !
Thank you for checking out the video Thomas!
I absolutely hate these Performa comps.
However, the passion of the Mac community and your own, make me happy you were happy to play, which is what Mac was always about.
Do you have a list / links of the hardware you purchased for the upgrades? This is definitely something I'm interested in doing to my mac performa.
re: Not sending rovers to Mars with this computer.
I vaguely remember seeing a video with a crusty old NASA guy. He snarled something along the lines of, "We got to the moon on 32 kb of memory."
(In other words, we have so much computing power now-and even in the 90's-and we "waste" it on trivial stuff.)
[Edited for spelling.]
I think I’ve got a 5xxx or 6xxx in a box in the garage. Thanks for the reminder on the hardware issues.
Great video! I have the model 6230CD, almost the same model. What makes this computer interesting are its own limitations. I upgraded mine too. And install System 7.6, MacOS 8 and 9.
My goals are to always push the limits of hardware and software. I used in those last years has as my main word processor computer and communication for a while, using web proxies services. I even used MSN Messenger in 2020! (Escargot server). Please, make more videos with this Mac. :)
May I simply say: that is so cool. You rock socks!
Marathon, the prequel to Halo. I remember playing that game on my Performa, they even mentioned the forerunners. I did have a 6220 though because I had a TV tuner card with 32MB of ram and screen grabbed a ton of Beavis and Butthead pics from the show and added text. Mid 90's level Meme's. lmao
I had a look at my LC630 and the front bezel fell off when I went to lift it. I tried pushing it back on and the plastics cracked. Very brittle. Annoyingly it sat there collecting dust for well over 20 years and it fell apart when I moved it!
Man I had that computer a long time ago. Played a game similar to Outnumbered on it but you were climbing an ice mountain. Same devs just forgot the name of that game. Its a continuation of Mid Night Rescuse seires.
Awesome video! Yeah, TH-cam put it in my recommended videos after I started watching some Commodore 64 videos! I think I’ll need to build a second office just to set up my old retro computers!! I have three older Macs including a tower Preforma running OS 9.1 that sounds close to what you are using in this video! It’s not been turned on in MANY years though! Maybe soon! Anyhow, thanks for the video and recommendations!
Good stuff. There's a Gyruss type shmup I once saw but could never remember the name of.
What are some suggested shareware sites?
GRUZ!!!!!!!! HELL YEAH DUDE!
I remember upgrading from a Power Mac 6100/60 to an iMac G3 333 MHz and being extremely happy that I could play MP3s while doing other things at the same time :)
Just noticed, you changed channel name again. And yeah, I watch this channel :>
Haha, yep! I think this name fits the channel best. I'll probably do a channel update vid about it!
Great vid; super comfy. I used to love playing Glider on my family's piece of crap Performa 475. In fact, the first game I ever bought with my own money was a shareware license of Gopher Golf on said Performa.
Love the video! I just got a near mint 6200cd like yours, I work in the E-rcycling industry and got these from work. Had a quick question, where did you find your memory from? would love to max mine out at 64 mb.
5:09 No it's not weird at all. I love the old clicking sounds
Unless that means I'm weird too
Kind of like the ticking of a clock in a way. It's relaxing to me! 👍
I hit that bell! Great video now please do a Game Genie video with the following 27 codes.............
I kid. Keep up the great work.
Since i didn't see it mentioned in any comments, please, on PPC Macs, do NOT turn off Virtual Memory. In fact, some apps wont even work without it on. While, true, using VM is slow, so long as you have enough actual RAM so it doesn't need to use it, the CPU was designed for it.
Turning it off will greatly increase memory usage and load times. It also changes how the system and apps can page data in and out, causing overall slower performance.
Again, if you don't have enough RAM so it's constantly hitting the HD, then yes, it will slow things down. But, there is a reason that all systems today use virtual memory/swap based systems.
Really cool video on this Performa! What's the VGA adapter called that you were using?
Thanks! It's the Atlona AT-HD500 with the HDMI fed into an El Gato HD60S+
Emulator Retro is watching sir!
DUDE I SAW THIS SAME PERFORMA ON EBAY! NO JOKE! Or maybe it's more just common on these old things o.o
The Performa 6200CD was my first computer as well. I used to download and play all sorts of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom scenarios either made or ported by Laz Rojas. His site is still up and running, and looks just like it did way back when. I used to collect the MacAddict discs and found so much great shareware on them, especially those made by Ambrosia Software. Escape Velocity was the first piece of shareware I ever registered. With the way gaming is now, I could see that game having MMO features added to it.
Also, next to where you installed the AV card is another card of some kind. Any idea what that is? I really don't remember if mine had that or not.
Hey, i know this comment is old, but the card that look like a big ram stick next to the AV card is the rom/cache combo card, and without it the computer is not gonna boot up, i have a 6200CD myself and tested it, cheers!
I want one of these so badly. Didn't these have the original 603 without the extra L1 cache???
If I'm not mistaken, and just looking at its system specifications the biggest problem it has is its system bus, and if someone could overclock/Fix, or mitigate the low system bus speed it'd help out a whole lot. I'm getting into breadboarding, learning a lot, and my current plan is to learn enough to clone a 68000 series Performa, or Quadra, then get into programming.
The Preformer 6360 was the best in the 6200/6300 series of machines
Is there a way to look up the shareware games that came with it? I remember there being a Gyruss type space shmup.
How can I get those floppy images and the performance install CD? Is that on a website somewhere? Thanks.
Have you played Escape Velocity by Ambrosia? One of my favorite Mac games by far still run through it every now and then - Give it a bash if you havent had a go
Lol. I just realized I sold you that! Life goes full circle.
Are you Applefloppiesonline?
I had the LC630 with the FPU on the chip. I wish I could have upgraded it more. But I have all the cards for it except the TV tuner, so I have Ethernet PDS, comm slot modem 28.8k, video in card. I think the RAM was upgraded to 36MB and got a IDE 2GB hard rive upgrade. I noticed some games like Marathon tapped into a specific interlaced video mode for more speed, could you do that with this generation as well?
I have a link to a page where someone took the Performa 6360 (same case but everything inside was better like PCI slot) and upgraded it to a 6500 with G3 upgrade!
Regarding your comment about 68040 processors being slow, to be fair, they were plenty fast for the OS of their time. A full 68040 processor with FPU was pretty nice. I remember a lot of software running way better on 68040 than those early PPC's. This was because it took quite a bit of time to get PPC-native software, and also the Mac OS still had a lot of 68k code in it. The System 7 family was my favorite era of classic Mac OS. Mac OS 8 and 9 were ugly, and a transitional period before OS X.
When I bought the same computer new , it was expensive but the bundle came with Daedelus and a Rednecks game ,encarta also a bunch of Disney and other children’s software, I ran photoshop , but I believe I bought an aftermarket raid?graphics card I also maxed out the ram and separate optical disc drive
I just remembered I still have the original discs somewhere
31:53 - what is that weird crystal quest mod/clone?
Hey Gruz! What do you use to record the video output from these old Macs? I have an old Performa 631CD I am planning to restore soon and would love to be able to document it like this.
I use a setup like Mac84 describes in this vid: th-cam.com/video/moPhXQIvyiY/w-d-xo.html
I’ve seen drives with marginal sectors freeze that way, so given its age that might be what’s happening here. You could put it in another machine and pull its smart info or do a badblocks check, though your time’s worth more than that drive is.
What was the AV card's name? Also did it function as an improved graphics card or did it just serve as AV inputs?
I grew up with a 5200, so same thing really. The shareware titles it could run really were vast in number. Was it stable as you played stuff? Standout memory for me was it spitting out a Type 11 about as often as I breathed out. I remember BOOM only getting slowdown when lots of bombs went off at the same time so that must have been down to more memory.
Best thing to get the front off I found was just a standard blunt knife from the cutlery draw, they fit better as they stay flat all the way down. Tipping it forward and up while gently lifting it meant I never needed to use much force. So much easier than getting the front of a 6500. I damage the plastic every time I have to open that one up.
Make it faster by putting the 6500 motherboard in it, completely compatible! :P
Yeah it was pretty stable, thankfully, I don't think it crashed at all the entire night while I was recording this. I remember it crashing all the time back in the day, but we were running OS 8.
Also, the PowerMac 6500 logicboard will work in this 6200? I kept the logicboard from my old 6500 but I thought the voltages were different, and it was physically too tall to fit. I didn't confirm it though, I'll have to look at it again.
"cheap and easy... just like your mom" - I almost spit my drink across my keyboard!
BTW, do you have a link for that compact flash adapter? The one's I keep buying don't seem to work with my Performa 630. Thanks!
This is the one that I used for this: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Y2MSLC9
@@insanelygruz Thanks!
what is the small slot on the back of the board for? also, why compact flash instead of an SSD?
PDS-slot
I have one of those sitting in my to do collection I was finishing my work on my Performa 6500 which is a better version of the 6400 in a few ways
Also if you have a heat gun you can soften up the plastic a bit and it will help prevent the plastic from breaking
Do these have the bad capacitors like older macs
Uh, hit the - key to reduce the screen size in Doom II. It will help immensely.
would be very interesting to compare your 620075 with my 6100/66...
Omgg only 100 ;_; now I know what to look out for
zip disc's outlast a scratched CDR!
I want to do the same with my performa, however I don't have a floppy drive and I couldn't record a bootable Mac OS 8.1 cdrom . I am using windows.
I loved my old Quadra 700, but it couldn't play 3D games like Doom or Duke Nukem for anything. I don't know why, as they play fine on the equivalent of a 486. As Marathon ran fine, I'm thinking that it might be lazy coding of the ports.
I'm betting that's the 68k version of Doom II. I have several 68040-based Macs, and they can play it reasonably well; better than that, anyway. 68k software runs under emulation on a PowerPC-based Mac, and on low-end PPC Macs like that one, it is dog slow! It occurred to me that I actually have a 6200CD, and I don't think I've ever fired up Doom on it.
I dare you to try SoftWindows 95 and Hexen on that system.
How do i actually turn this thing on? There is no powerbutton?
There should be a power button on the keyboard, otherwise there is usually a very discreet one on the back of the computer.
@@insanelygruz Yes, thanks brother. I got it now, i couldn't figure it out since i live in Europe and we have different keyboards apparantly, got it working now it didn't even look like a powerbutton (wouldn't guess the powerbutton to be on the keyboard, Apple is weird). Got it to boot, then i had no screen, but it was just the brightness and contrast where off, was a matter of turning those tiny wheels on the monitor. Really have to get used to this modern technology.
Now how can i get games onto this thing? I've got a bunch of floppys but i don't think there is games on it, they are all grey too. And can i get a optical mouse on it? Got to say, it boots very quick.
I think mine is slightly different from yours, i got a LC630.
Where can I get an AV Card ?
Doom runs fine on my 6200 when I turn off the music.
Games like Doom might be CPU bound.
It maybe this bad even after the upgrade because your CPU is too slow and lacks L2 cache.
Of course it’s CPU bound. Everything was back then.
Underpowered, wasn't the case of all mac of the day? At least the performa series was afordable while the quadra was not at all.
Why is Gruz your nickname?
3:08 the actor playing grandpa in this advert is most likely dead now. Maybe the “dad” actor too.
Just think about that.
@26:35 Sir you are a masochist.
7.5 and 7.6 are going to be mediocre on a 603 non e. The 603 doesn't have enough l1 cache to load the kernel 68k emulator and any reasonable amount of code into memory, and and if this model doesn't have any L2 cache it's going to be *constantly* doing RAM operations loading code in and out of memory every other cycle, a constantly stalled pipeline.. 68000 level performance. >.< 8.6 took most of the 68k code out of the kernel, I think you should try that or 9.1 on this ^.^