Well, let's consider the PC industry at this point. There wasn't really a "standard" -- there was just "what IBM was doing" until the PC clones snapshotted IBM's architectural decisions at some particular point and carried on using it as a de-facto standard from then on. But over that time, we had both 9- and 25-pin serial; XT and AT keyboard protocols; AT and PS/2 keyboard connectors; MDA, CGA, and EGA on 9-pin digital connectors; analog VGA on a 15-pin connector; MFM, RLL, ESDI, IDE, and SCSI hard drive protocols, on ribbon cables with card-edge connectors, ribbon cables with IDC connectors, and board interfaces with card-edge connectors; floppy drives with board-to-board and ribbon cable interfaces with card-edge and IDC connectors, single- and double-sided 5.25" disks, double-density and high-density 3.5" and 5.25" disks, 8 or 9 sectors per track for double density, 18 sectors per track for high density, 300 or 360 RPM, FM and MFM encoding; FAT12 with no BIOS Parameter Block, FAT12 WITH a BPB, FAT16 with a 32MB limit, FAT16b with a 2GB limit; ISA vs MCA vs EISA vs VLB vs PCI... But sure, silly Apple for not getting it right with that all-in-one connector. ;-)
True, but how many times did somebody's entire software library just not work any more after a complete underlying processors ISA change? In most cases, you didn't even have to know that anything was different. Contrast that to how long it took Microsoft to shift from 16-bit real mode to 32-bit protected mode, or 32-bit to 64-bit. Just contemplate for a moment the existence of "Internet Explorer" and "Internet Explorer (64-bit)" in your Start menu, and whether your grandmother had any idea why there were two, how they differed, and why you would choose one over the other. Built-in, transparent emulation is a pretty good strategy from a UX perspective. Even if it hobbled the performance of apps, and even the OS itself, until they got around to re-writing it all. You weren't inherently stuck with poor performance (just needed software updates to unlock the potential), and/or you didn't have to clean the slate and start over with your software investment.
three. wait, how is that funny? it could have been worse, imagine they had a card or clip-on device or dongle containing a 68040 for ppc macs to continue compatibility a la the Apple //e PDS card.
@@orangejjay no one yet, but it'll almost certainly replace the entire low end PC market within the next few years. Potentially the high end, if someone bothers to make something suitable to the workstation/gamer market, and legacy compatibility issues are sorted out.
I really enjoy your Mac history, especially all these upgrade cards and machines you feature. I never paid any attention early apple computers, so it's always fun to see what was going on outside of PC land.
I had a 6100/66 in the late 90s and got a G3 accelerator in '99. It made a massive difference. I did a lot of 3D rendering on that thing. And Marathon, of course. I recently brought an SSD upgrade for my 2012 iMac and was surprised to see the same newer tech logo on the box! They're still in business!
Right in the feels. Our first ppc Mac was a 7100/66. We had upgraded from a Mac plus so it was a huge boost. I day dreamed about those cpu upgrades for years while I was in high school. We eventually replaced it with a 400mhz G4 sawtooth after I had already gone off to college.
My dad had the original 66MHz model without the internal CD drive. Mainly used it for CAD work for his civil engineering business. First computer I played Doom and Wolf 3D on. Also the first computer I remember using the internet on. Shame he trashed it years ago.
I enjoyed this video, you went to great lenghts in telling a quirky story. But this is the story of many of us late gen-X'ers that read about these things in the mags but couldn't dream of buying them. I like to think you were in a similar boat - totally aware but miles away from doing these wild things during their relevance. Love this kind of content. Looking forward to a 486SX/26 to Am5x86/133 upgrade lol
Fun fact: As you mentioned, while Apple did gradually rewrite more and more of the classic Mac OS with PPC code (especially in Mac OS 8.5, the first PPC-only version of Mac OS), some parts of even Mac OS 9 were still using 68k code, although one of the goals of the Copland rewrite was to be fully PPC native, but I think we all know what happened to that project. It took until Mac OS X for a fully native PPC version of Mac OS to be released.
Very interesting video! Compared to those times computers were more fun then our experience with todays Macs. Also, very good background music was used in this video! Makes this video truly a high quality production!
The hardware ageing was crazy in 90s. In the world of IBM PC - if your machine is 2 years old, it become hard to run newer games and after ~3 years new games refuses to run at all. There was endless itching to buy a whole new machine. And now I sit in front of PC I built back in 2018 - it runs all new games (not in highest settings, though), it runs VR and it does not cries for any immediate upgrades. And I still use digital camera from 2012 (sic!) which still produces decent pics in 4K resolution.
My main PC is on a platform from 2010 (P6X58D-E, overclocked 6c/12t Westmere, 24GB RAM and a 2015 GTX 960) and my camera is a Canon EOS 650D from 2012 with a 18mp APS-C sensor
7100/66 was my first Mac that I bought. Shortly thereafter I got a snap-on oscillator that bumped it to 80mhz... Worked great! Awesome video and overview! Thanks
Ahh, chasing performance bottlenecks. The money I poured into my LAN party rig through the late 90s and early 2000’s to battle this, well - I’d prefer not to think about it. But processor upgrades like this, in todays retro scene certainly have a huge cool factor, so finding a couple to show us is certainly appreciated. Especially with the added commentary about its history and what was happening when it first came out.
I've got one of those. unlike the 7100 CPU upgrade with the PDS ribbon cable, the one for the 6100 had its own PDS pass-through slot so you could add a graphics card. On a freakin pizza box machine!
Wow, the production quality of your videos just keeps going up every time. Love the interesting tidbits you always scatter in, like here with the one about Sagan vs Apple. Very cool!
This is quite literally the computer I grew up with! Very unusual to see the 7100/80 second revision being acknowledged, in my experience, but quite welcome. I even installed a processor upgrade to keep it running, though in my amateur hands it meant we couldn't fully close the case afterwards. The sound of its built-in CD drive struggling to load games is burned into my memory even today.
I was an Amiga user back in the day, and with the fall of Commodore, I was resigned to moving over to the PC. My employer bought a PowerMac 8100/80 and my life was changed… sort-of. I spend a lot of time in both worlds. The 8100 was an interesting introduction to the Mac world. I prefer the Mac, but I thank the Amiga for teaching me the tools to work in both environments.
Thank you so much for a great video! I used to have one of these particular Macintoshes, and would look enviously at the incredibly expensive upgrade kits. To think how far things have come today is quite mind boggling! Keep up the good work. It is much appreciated.
@@DannyBeans I think it's probably because he thought Apple would be releasing a computer with his name, and it seems nobody bothered to correct him. It's definitely an overreaction for a development name, but it wouldn't be for a commercial product.
Interesting video as always... I have two 6100s currently, one with a DOS card running a 5x86 processor upgrade and the other running a Newer G3 400/1m with an AV Card. I love the pizza box versions but definitely like all the first gen PMs. Keep up the great content!
Two points for anyone who gets one of these machines. 1) The CPU heat sink grease has almost certainly dried out and turned to chalk, unless someone has replaced it. If you get a machine that boots for a moment or moments and then crashes, it is probably overheating because the heat sink grease needs to be cleaned off and replaced. Exercise caution. Those PPC601 chips are fragile to downward pressure. 2) Get Speed Doubler. It sounds gimmicky, but the folks at Connectix knew their stuff. Speed Doubler on the 1st gen. PPC machine converts the 68K interpreter into something closer to a compiler, resulting in vastly vaster execution of emulated 68K code. And as Colin mentioned, huge portions of the Mac OS were still 68K code even though they were shipping it for PPCs. A video with Speed Doubler performance comparisions would be interesting. I think there are some old magazine articles that reviewed it.
Thanks for the memories - I had a 7200/90 back in the late 90s which I treated with a Sonnet Crescendo G3 upgrade card, it was my main Mac well into the 00s when I replaced it with a G4 MDD.
I bought an 80 MHz 7100 about a year ago for the heck of it. I was strictly PC in the '90s, so it's been an interesting machine to explore. Although I remember sometimes passing through the Apple section in stores like CompUSA or Computer City and admiring their designs; I thought they were pretty handsome, even if they were just beige.
Just beige happened to be the common color of pretty much every Windows computer too, you know. They were often times even worse. At least Apple hade bright and white computers. They stood out from the true ugly beige Windows PCs.
It’s always cool to see these 90s upgrades in action! I’m sure that upgrades like these helped out ancient (for the time) Macs. Crazy to think that a 5 year old machine was obsolete when nowadays you can use more modern but even older machines without a problem.
This was my first PC, and I had one of the Newer 300MHz cards too. I don't remember that video adapter though, I bought an educational bundle, 7100/66 with monitor and a StyleWriter printer for $2700. I agree 8.6 was the sweet spot, 7.6.1. was also a good one. I'm sure I didn't pay anywhere near $700 for the upgrade though, I never had that kind of money in those days. It must have come way down after a year or so.
Very accurate history of the era. The cpu upgrades for Macs were two thirds of the price of a new Mac and offered two thirds of the benefit. But the new Mac's could often be bought at a big discount right after new models replaced them, while the cpu upgrades never could be bought at a discount. Hence, few were sold. And few are available today. I used a used 7100/ 80 as my main Mac for about a year and felt it was a good machine. It worked well with an external modem for viewing the early Web. Any of those Power PC Macs I bought, I always used the so called "AV Card" which offered more resolution and more importantly meant avoiding that thick adapter cable. Which tended to be a mechanically flaky connection. That Mac AV monitor was a nice Tritron (flat top to bottom curved left to right), by the way, but I used standard VGA monitors. Any time you can combine things like speakers, computer, and monitor into one unit, you have an advantage in selling to schools.
I look forward to your uploads every week and haven’t missed one since I subscribed years ago. I was even a Patreon before the recent economic downturn. Keep up the good work!
I had the Mac IIci and was geeked when the Daystar PPC chip came out. It was so fast (relatively). Went to college where there was a T1 internet connection and I was blown away downloading South Park Christmas special in less than 5 mins. Archaic but revolutionary to me.
Coincidentally, I'm working on a PPC 7200 and I have the Sonnet Crescendo G3 7200 400MHz card to go into it. Thanks, Colin, for pointing out the slower drive speeds. Since I have PCI slots in my system, maybe I'll add a PCI SATA card into the mix to remedy that issue.
Personally, I’d go with something period accurate-ish and use newer, larger and faster SCSI drives, which stays within the “spirit of the machine” for me. But I can totally understand why you’d go with a PCI SATA card (for a SSD at a guess?)
History of the Mac never ceases to amaze me. This is basically the equivalent of upgrading a P5 Pentium to a late Pentium II class machine. But there were even cross-architecture (68k to PPC) upgrades in that era. Overall, the Mac survived 4 processor architectures, 4 system bus types (changed at times different to the CPU type), and a replacement of the OS - all while somehow remaining a consistent product range on the business level. That's both impressive and weirdly fascinating.
Imagine if they had offered a PPC->Intel upgrade or Intel->M-series upgrade. I suppose you could call it 5 architectures if you count the Apple IIe card, but then you could call it 6 if you count the DOS card.
Intel did make a Pentium 2 upgrade for the socket 8 Pentium Pro’s, ran up to 333mhz and had all the improvements that a Pentium 2 brought, plus a pretty big advantage compared to the standard Pentium 2’s, 256k of on die, full CPU speed L2 cache, unlike the normal Pentium 2’s which had 512k of L2 cache, but only running at half CPU speed.
I miss those days. I recall upgrading my PowerMac G4 Digital Audio with a dual 1 GHz CPU from a G4 QuickSilver model. Apple decided it was unthinkable for people to do it even though the CPUs were pin- and electrically-compatible. So they designed the QS CPU daughter card to sense the presence of 12v on one of the screw posts. Easy enough to rig up, but just needless anti-consumer shit that we've often seen from Apple over the decades.
I remember installing about 20 of these during the summer of 1999 when I worked at the general purpose computer lab at my university. They had a bunch of 7100s that had been there for years, and it was a lot cheaper to upgrade them this way and keep them going for a few more years than to buy 20 new G3 models.
Those smart-ass engineers at apple were so hilarious! It looks like apples management, at the time, was very supportive for trying new things and tweaking them as they went; socially and within their products. Love it!
I have one of these Macs with that special monitor ports.. it's a pain to find/use an adapter for it... alas... but still these old Macs are fun to play with...
I saw a motorola CPU in a Socket A motherboard on a pic around 11:03 and kind of puzzled. Does apple used their own kind of Socket A or it was some kind of freaky PowerPC upgrade for AMD Socket A motherboards?
I think it was one of these models they used as a prop when Kitty bought a computer in That 90's Show but I could be wrong, the first season on Netflix was set in the summer of 1995
I love old macs only used one in fith grade back in 09 it was a color classic, the teacher had it for kids to use when we where done with are work and we where good that day/week , I want a mac but I'm so used to windows that I don't know if I should start with a older model or a newer one
I sora wish tech still moved as fast as it did back then, cause I wasn't even born until the start of the 2000s, but it also means that you'd have to buy a new computer every few years, which would get expensive. The biggest boost in performance I was around for, and new enough about computers for was when Alder lake came out, but even that was only about 20-50% gains. When Ryzen came out, I was aware of it, but was still new to my love of computers, and therefore didn't understand just how much of a leap it was.
We added a Sonnet G4 card to our 9600. This allowed us to keep our expensive Avid Media Composer systems for 10 years and in the end we had OSX on them as well.
I wanted a 7100 bad in college, so bought one right after graduating, when I didn’t need one anymore. It ran up to MacOS 8.6 back in the day, and was eventually upgraded with a 400 MHz Sonnet G3 and Sonata Pro graphics card. That’s fast enough to play StarCraft, but these days it runs System 7.5.5, which is a blast on a system so fast. That Sagan story always reminds me even that your heroes are one kind of asshole or another.
I'm always fascinated by 90s Mac tech. I was a PC kid but my good friend always had macs and even though I knew PCs were better for games, I had a weird jealousy of his macs. Including his 68k processor laptop, with black and white monitor.
Where do you put all your upgraded max? I have a bout 100 and I have them in a storage unit but I need to move them out because I paid $323 a month or do you sell them later on down the road or do you store them? I’m curious about that. I enjoy your legacy Mac discussions because I have a lot of those that you have.
I think the most upgraded Mac I ever had was a Performa 6400. It had an Orange PC co-processor which could run Windows 95 or 98, or a PCI ethernet card (couldn't take both at once), maxed out RAM and eventually a Sonnet G3 in the L2 cache slot. Took ages to boot up, but it saw me through Marathon and OpenDoc. Remember Cyberdog?
I found the newer technology card on eBay for about $150 but it doesn’t look like it has the video card holder that you talked about in your video. Did that come with the G3 upgrade newer technology card?
The G3 upgrade was sold with and also without the PDS video pass-through adapter, IIRC. On the equivalent Sonnet card it was a separate upgrade purchase.
I've read that most 603e based machines were actually slower than 601 based ones due to the fact that they used the same chipset as 68040 based systems. They even used the same BIOS as the Power Macintosh Card.
I had forgotten about the Sagan BS. At the time, he had been trying for 15 years to get his screenplay "Contact" fully realized. An astronomer with a penchant for publicity stunts.
In the 90s, this was a grandiose upgrade. Back then, systems were outdated after 2 years. That the rest of the hardware is partly limited is not surprising. I like these old times with Overdrive, AMD 586, Amiga 1260...... etc where incredibly outdated systems were suddenly upgradeable. Today, Intel e.g. gives new sockets every few years and something like Overdrive no longer exists.
I sold these NewerTech upgrades back in the 90s - the bang for the buck was incredible IF you had a hefty investment in your current systems - memory wasn't cheap, drives weren't cheap, monitors weren't cheap. Good times!
This remembers me my first edition B&W PowerMac with the 300mhz G3, i overclocked it to 350mhz and that didn't done much difference, as the bus run at 100mhz until i found out that the bus speed in those is limited by the RAM, so i installed 133mhz ram and that increased the bus speed to 133mhz, together with extra 50mhz i was happy as i could play my games now haha
I had a PowerMac 9600 that came with a 300mhz PPC 603e but later upgraded to a G4 from Sonnet. The cpu was on a daughter card that could be swapped. Around this time a third party also sold a pci expansion with an intel cpu so you could run windows/dos natively. Eventually VirtualPC came out and you could emulate windows.
Our first home computer had a 486/66 in it and I managed to snag a 100 MHz processor to put into it a few years later. It was definitely nothing special but that plus the 32 MB of RAM we had in it was fairly good for what it was.
Funny to think how much faster the state of the art seemed to change back then. Today, you can easily use a 5-year-old PC for average computing tasks and not notice much of a performance difference over a new one. That was not at all the case in the 90s through the 2000s.
hopefully a decent SSD setup, BlueSCSI etc, can address some of the IO speed issues, there's a limit of course of how much an SSD can help of course but good thing its an option :)
Apple using proprietary video cables were just stupid, especially for schools that use those computers! My middle school had that Power Macintosh and used the dongle with their existing Apple monitors! Apple for decades have been using proprietary connectors for display, thanks for USB-C that are easy to connect Macs to non-Apple monitors!
I really think classic Mac OS held back the line for many years and needed to be put to rest years before OS X came out. I am interested in a PowerPC processor card for an even older Amiga big box system I am putting together!
By the way: PowerPC does not mean Personal Computer. It was the IBMs abbreviation for Performance Optimazation With Enhanced RISC Performance Chip and RISC means Reduced Instruction Set Computer. So, both reduced and enhanced 😉
I still have my 7200/90 powerpc.. it’s casing is in a very bad shape.. it’s still run ok but every time I open the case I broke some plastic part.. It’s my first mac so.. I’m going to look for a good replacement casing. If I can find one.. Thank you for the video.. it gave me hope…❤
If you had a great Nubus video card Like a Radius or Supermac Thunder series or were running specialty equipment which used a Nubus interface card, These upgrades were a life saver. I used to work a lot with Imagesetters from companies like Agfa, ECRM, etc. and they told the users when the PCI macs came out that PCI interface cards were 1-2 years out.
Was about to say the same thing, at a company I worked at we had $1000s of nubus mpeg and audio editing hardware in an nubus Mac, adding a sonnet card made the workflow much more efficient
There have been many specialized very expensive NuBus upgrades, especially in the audio realm. If you had several 10-thousand $ in such expansions, you would laugh at 1K. The CPU acceleration would help to recoup the investment for another few years until there was an alternative. The upgrades had their niche.
lol an upgrade from 601 to G3 is so absurd, the 90s were a wild time
LOL The Carl Sagan thing was hilarious. Oh, man.
And the LAW a perfect end 😂
Turns out Apple's love affair with dongles goes back farther than I thought.
Dongles started out WAY before these machines. Look at the PowerBooks with HDI-20 and HDI-30.
@@RichsRandomRetroReviews The first PowerBooks came out 3 years before these computers.
@@masterkamen371 That was my point. Dongles have been around much longer than people think.
Well, let's consider the PC industry at this point. There wasn't really a "standard" -- there was just "what IBM was doing" until the PC clones snapshotted IBM's architectural decisions at some particular point and carried on using it as a de-facto standard from then on.
But over that time, we had both 9- and 25-pin serial; XT and AT keyboard protocols; AT and PS/2 keyboard connectors; MDA, CGA, and EGA on 9-pin digital connectors; analog VGA on a 15-pin connector; MFM, RLL, ESDI, IDE, and SCSI hard drive protocols, on ribbon cables with card-edge connectors, ribbon cables with IDC connectors, and board interfaces with card-edge connectors; floppy drives with board-to-board and ribbon cable interfaces with card-edge and IDC connectors, single- and double-sided 5.25" disks, double-density and high-density 3.5" and 5.25" disks, 8 or 9 sectors per track for double density, 18 sectors per track for high density, 300 or 360 RPM, FM and MFM encoding; FAT12 with no BIOS Parameter Block, FAT12 WITH a BPB, FAT16 with a 32MB limit, FAT16b with a 2GB limit; ISA vs MCA vs EISA vs VLB vs PCI...
But sure, silly Apple for not getting it right with that all-in-one connector. ;-)
The shadows betray you because they belong to me
Funny how many times "Apple created a software emulator" has come up in their history to handle processor changes.
True, but how many times did somebody's entire software library just not work any more after a complete underlying processors ISA change? In most cases, you didn't even have to know that anything was different.
Contrast that to how long it took Microsoft to shift from 16-bit real mode to 32-bit protected mode, or 32-bit to 64-bit. Just contemplate for a moment the existence of "Internet Explorer" and "Internet Explorer (64-bit)" in your Start menu, and whether your grandmother had any idea why there were two, how they differed, and why you would choose one over the other.
Built-in, transparent emulation is a pretty good strategy from a UX perspective. Even if it hobbled the performance of apps, and even the OS itself, until they got around to re-writing it all. You weren't inherently stuck with poor performance (just needed software updates to unlock the potential), and/or you didn't have to clean the slate and start over with your software investment.
three. wait, how is that funny?
it could have been worse, imagine they had a card or clip-on device or dongle containing a 68040 for ppc macs to continue compatibility a la the Apple //e PDS card.
Same as Windows on ARM
@@gluttonousmaximus9048 Who uses Windows on ARM?
@@orangejjay no one yet, but it'll almost certainly replace the entire low end PC market within the next few years. Potentially the high end, if someone bothers to make something suitable to the workstation/gamer market, and legacy compatibility issues are sorted out.
I really enjoy your Mac history, especially all these upgrade cards and machines you feature. I never paid any attention early apple computers, so it's always fun to see what was going on outside of PC land.
I think it's starting to get a bit tiresome
You should also check out action retro
@@achannelhasnoname5182 Then why are you here?
I had a 6100/66 in the late 90s and got a G3 accelerator in '99. It made a massive difference. I did a lot of 3D rendering on that thing. And Marathon, of course.
I recently brought an SSD upgrade for my 2012 iMac and was surprised to see the same newer tech logo on the box! They're still in business!
Right in the feels. Our first ppc Mac was a 7100/66. We had upgraded from a Mac plus so it was a huge boost. I day dreamed about those cpu upgrades for years while I was in high school. We eventually replaced it with a 400mhz G4 sawtooth after I had already gone off to college.
My dad had the original 66MHz model without the internal CD drive. Mainly used it for CAD work for his civil engineering business. First computer I played Doom and Wolf 3D on. Also the first computer I remember using the internet on. Shame he trashed it years ago.
F
I enjoyed this video, you went to great lenghts in telling a quirky story. But this is the story of many of us late gen-X'ers that read about these things in the mags but couldn't dream of buying them. I like to think you were in a similar boat - totally aware but miles away from doing these wild things during their relevance. Love this kind of content. Looking forward to a 486SX/26 to Am5x86/133 upgrade lol
Fun fact: As you mentioned, while Apple did gradually rewrite more and more of the classic Mac OS with PPC code (especially in Mac OS 8.5, the first PPC-only version of Mac OS), some parts of even Mac OS 9 were still using 68k code, although one of the goals of the Copland rewrite was to be fully PPC native, but I think we all know what happened to that project. It took until Mac OS X for a fully native PPC version of Mac OS to be released.
Very interesting video! Compared to those times computers were more fun then our experience with todays Macs.
Also, very good background music was used in this video! Makes this video truly a high quality production!
The hardware ageing was crazy in 90s. In the world of IBM PC - if your machine is 2 years old, it become hard to run newer games and after ~3 years new games refuses to run at all. There was endless itching to buy a whole new machine.
And now I sit in front of PC I built back in 2018 - it runs all new games (not in highest settings, though), it runs VR and it does not cries for any immediate upgrades. And I still use digital camera from 2012 (sic!) which still produces decent pics in 4K resolution.
My main PC is on a platform from 2010 (P6X58D-E, overclocked 6c/12t Westmere, 24GB RAM and a 2015 GTX 960) and my camera is a Canon EOS 650D from 2012 with a 18mp APS-C sensor
7100/66 was my first Mac that I bought. Shortly thereafter I got a snap-on oscillator that bumped it to 80mhz... Worked great! Awesome video and overview! Thanks
Ahh, chasing performance bottlenecks. The money I poured into my LAN party rig through the late 90s and early 2000’s to battle this, well - I’d prefer not to think about it.
But processor upgrades like this, in todays retro scene certainly have a huge cool factor, so finding a couple to show us is certainly appreciated. Especially with the added commentary about its history and what was happening when it first came out.
I got a Power Macintosh 6100 myself last year, and was extremely lucky to find it came with a Sonnet Crescendo G3 in the PDS slot!
I've got one of those. unlike the 7100 CPU upgrade with the PDS ribbon cable, the one for the 6100 had its own PDS pass-through slot so you could add a graphics card. On a freakin pizza box machine!
Wow, the production quality of your videos just keeps going up every time. Love the interesting tidbits you always scatter in, like here with the one about Sagan vs Apple. Very cool!
Nothing more hilariously awesome than having an early woeful PPC being upgraded to a 500MHz G4. I have one in my PM 7800.
My first classic mac was a 7600. Beautiful machine, and quite powerful. I dropped a G3 in it and it was definitely an improvement
This is quite literally the computer I grew up with! Very unusual to see the 7100/80 second revision being acknowledged, in my experience, but quite welcome. I even installed a processor upgrade to keep it running, though in my amateur hands it meant we couldn't fully close the case afterwards. The sound of its built-in CD drive struggling to load games is burned into my memory even today.
For those of us who couldn't afford the upgrades, there was always the temptation of RAM-doubler and Speed-doubler (connectix)
I was an Amiga user back in the day, and with the fall of Commodore, I was resigned to moving over to the PC. My employer bought a PowerMac 8100/80 and my life was changed… sort-of. I spend a lot of time in both worlds. The 8100 was an interesting introduction to the Mac world. I prefer the Mac, but I thank the Amiga for teaching me the tools to work in both environments.
Thank you so much for a great video! I used to have one of these particular Macintoshes, and would look enviously at the incredibly expensive upgrade kits. To think how far things have come today is quite mind boggling! Keep up the good work. It is much appreciated.
To be honest, Apples' trolling with the codenames was funny as hell.
Agreed. I'm a bit of a Sagan fanboy, but he really overreacted here.
@@DannyBeans I think it's probably because he thought Apple would be releasing a computer with his name, and it seems nobody bothered to correct him. It's definitely an overreaction for a development name, but it wouldn't be for a commercial product.
@@dominateeye Yep. That's why I said he overreacted.
Sweet memories… thanks for the awesome video! 💜
Interesting video as always... I have two 6100s currently, one with a DOS card running a 5x86 processor upgrade and the other running a Newer G3 400/1m with an AV Card. I love the pizza box versions but definitely like all the first gen PMs. Keep up the great content!
Two points for anyone who gets one of these machines.
1) The CPU heat sink grease has almost certainly dried out and turned to chalk, unless someone has replaced it. If you get a machine that boots for a moment or moments and then crashes, it is probably overheating because the heat sink grease needs to be cleaned off and replaced. Exercise caution. Those PPC601 chips are fragile to downward pressure.
2) Get Speed Doubler. It sounds gimmicky, but the folks at Connectix knew their stuff. Speed Doubler on the 1st gen. PPC machine converts the 68K interpreter into something closer to a compiler, resulting in vastly vaster execution of emulated 68K code. And as Colin mentioned, huge portions of the Mac OS were still 68K code even though they were shipping it for PPCs.
A video with Speed Doubler performance comparisions would be interesting. I think there are some old magazine articles that reviewed it.
Thanks for the memories - I had a 7200/90 back in the late 90s which I treated with a Sonnet Crescendo G3 upgrade card, it was my main Mac well into the 00s when I replaced it with a G4 MDD.
I bought an 80 MHz 7100 about a year ago for the heck of it. I was strictly PC in the '90s, so it's been an interesting machine to explore. Although I remember sometimes passing through the Apple section in stores like CompUSA or Computer City and admiring their designs; I thought they were pretty handsome, even if they were just beige.
Just beige happened to be the common color of pretty much every Windows computer too, you know. They were often times even worse.
At least Apple hade bright and white computers. They stood out from the true ugly beige Windows PCs.
At my first job at an ad agency I had one of these, my colleague did have a G3 tower and it flew in comparison, huge nostalgia !!
Woo, finally a video on something I have. I've got the 80/av with a scsi2sd in it.
It’s always cool to see these 90s upgrades in action! I’m sure that upgrades like these helped out ancient (for the time) Macs. Crazy to think that a 5 year old machine was obsolete when nowadays you can use more modern but even older machines without a problem.
This was my first PC, and I had one of the Newer 300MHz cards too. I don't remember that video adapter though, I bought an educational bundle, 7100/66 with monitor and a StyleWriter printer for $2700. I agree 8.6 was the sweet spot, 7.6.1. was also a good one. I'm sure I didn't pay anywhere near $700 for the upgrade though, I never had that kind of money in those days. It must have come way down after a year or so.
Very accurate history of the era. The cpu upgrades for Macs were two thirds of the price of a new Mac and offered two thirds of the benefit. But the new Mac's could often be bought at a big discount right after new models replaced them, while the cpu upgrades never could be bought at a discount. Hence, few were sold. And few are available today.
I used a used 7100/ 80 as my main Mac for about a year and felt it was a good machine. It worked well with an external modem for viewing the early Web. Any of those Power PC Macs I bought, I always used the so called "AV Card" which offered more resolution and more importantly meant avoiding that thick adapter cable. Which tended to be a mechanically flaky connection.
That Mac AV monitor was a nice Tritron (flat top to bottom curved left to right), by the way, but I used standard VGA monitors.
Any time you can combine things like speakers, computer, and monitor into one unit, you have an advantage in selling to schools.
Great video. Love the background info on the unofficial name controversy. Sounds like both Sagan and the Apple engineers were big babies.
this channel deserves more subs
I look forward to your uploads every week and haven’t missed one since I subscribed years ago. I was even a Patreon before the recent economic downturn. Keep up the good work!
Digging your play with focus, especially in the static scenes. Gives a nice visual past while keeping the narration "in focus"
Loved these upgrade vids!
I fondly remember these days of upgrades. I had A LOT of fun spending company money to keep old machines in service longer.
I had the Mac IIci and was geeked when the Daystar PPC chip came out. It was so fast (relatively). Went to college where there was a T1 internet connection and I was blown away downloading South Park Christmas special in less than 5 mins. Archaic but revolutionary to me.
Coincidentally, I'm working on a PPC 7200 and I have the Sonnet Crescendo G3 7200 400MHz card to go into it. Thanks, Colin, for pointing out the slower drive speeds. Since I have PCI slots in my system, maybe I'll add a PCI SATA card into the mix to remedy that issue.
Personally, I’d go with something period accurate-ish and use newer, larger and faster SCSI drives, which stays within the “spirit of the machine” for me.
But I can totally understand why you’d go with a PCI SATA card (for a SSD at a guess?)
History of the Mac never ceases to amaze me. This is basically the equivalent of upgrading a P5 Pentium to a late Pentium II class machine. But there were even cross-architecture (68k to PPC) upgrades in that era. Overall, the Mac survived 4 processor architectures, 4 system bus types (changed at times different to the CPU type), and a replacement of the OS - all while somehow remaining a consistent product range on the business level. That's both impressive and weirdly fascinating.
Imagine if they had offered a PPC->Intel upgrade or Intel->M-series upgrade.
I suppose you could call it 5 architectures if you count the Apple IIe card, but then you could call it 6 if you count the DOS card.
Intel did make a Pentium 2 upgrade for the socket 8 Pentium Pro’s, ran up to 333mhz and had all the improvements that a Pentium 2 brought, plus a pretty big advantage compared to the standard Pentium 2’s, 256k of on die, full CPU speed L2 cache, unlike the normal Pentium 2’s which had 512k of L2 cache, but only running at half CPU speed.
I miss those days. I recall upgrading my PowerMac G4 Digital Audio with a dual 1 GHz CPU from a G4 QuickSilver model. Apple decided it was unthinkable for people to do it even though the CPUs were pin- and electrically-compatible. So they designed the QS CPU daughter card to sense the presence of 12v on one of the screw posts. Easy enough to rig up, but just needless anti-consumer shit that we've often seen from Apple over the decades.
I had one. It was a great machine. Loved it!
I was wondering but what do you do with all your computers?
I remember installing about 20 of these during the summer of 1999 when I worked at the general purpose computer lab at my university. They had a bunch of 7100s that had been there for years, and it was a lot cheaper to upgrade them this way and keep them going for a few more years than to buy 20 new G3 models.
I can see it being more appealing in bulk.
Those smart-ass engineers at apple were so hilarious!
It looks like apples management, at the time, was very supportive for trying new things and tweaking them as they went; socially and within their products. Love it!
I was was at university when the G3 started coming along. They absolutely blew the Power PC’s we had like this out of the water. Like night and day.
I still miss those old systems and apps!
These macs are way older than I am but for some reason I feel a bit of nostalgia hearing you talk about them
Good overview, thanks!
I have one of these Macs with that special monitor ports.. it's a pain to find/use an adapter for it... alas... but still these old Macs are fun to play with...
I miss the retro Windows/ThinkPads content this channel used to do semi-regularly.
@1108 you show a socket a with a PPC in it do you know any thing about that.
Thought that was AMD Socket A guess not. Looked that thing up and it says its a 337 pin for the g3 not a 462 pin for the AMD.
Beavis „I am cornholio!”
- or when scientists need TP for their bunghole
Interesting story about the Sagan saga. Thanks for sharing.
Very well researched. Bravo!
I saw a motorola CPU in a Socket A motherboard on a pic around 11:03 and kind of puzzled. Does apple used their own kind of Socket A or it was some kind of freaky PowerPC upgrade for AMD Socket A motherboards?
Nope, apple used socket A zif sockets for their powermac G3s. They only used it for like, two years.
I think it was one of these models they used as a prop when Kitty bought a computer in That 90's Show but I could be wrong, the first season on Netflix was set in the summer of 1995
Oh the good old days, when you could truly tinker and upgrade your computer...what fun :)
I love old macs only used one in fith grade back in 09 it was a color classic, the teacher had it for kids to use when we where done with are work and we where good that day/week , I want a mac but I'm so used to windows that I don't know if I should start with a older model or a newer one
I sora wish tech still moved as fast as it did back then, cause I wasn't even born until the start of the 2000s, but it also means that you'd have to buy a new computer every few years, which would get expensive. The biggest boost in performance I was around for, and new enough about computers for was when Alder lake came out, but even that was only about 20-50% gains. When Ryzen came out, I was aware of it, but was still new to my love of computers, and therefore didn't understand just how much of a leap it was.
We added a Sonnet G4 card to our 9600. This allowed us to keep our expensive Avid Media Composer systems for 10 years and in the end we had OSX on them as well.
I wanted a 7100 bad in college, so bought one right after graduating, when I didn’t need one anymore. It ran up to MacOS 8.6 back in the day, and was eventually upgraded with a 400 MHz Sonnet G3 and Sonata Pro graphics card. That’s fast enough to play StarCraft, but these days it runs System 7.5.5, which is a blast on a system so fast. That Sagan story always reminds me even that your heroes are one kind of asshole or another.
I'm always fascinated by 90s Mac tech. I was a PC kid but my good friend always had macs and even though I knew PCs were better for games, I had a weird jealousy of his macs. Including his 68k processor laptop, with black and white monitor.
Where do you put all your upgraded max? I have a bout 100 and I have them in a storage unit but I need to move them out because I paid $323 a month or do you sell them later on down the road or do you store them? I’m curious about that. I enjoy your legacy Mac discussions because I have a lot of those that you have.
God I I wish I NEVER got rid of my Quadra 610 or 8500 g3 upgrade. I miss those machines.
I think the most upgraded Mac I ever had was a Performa 6400. It had an Orange PC co-processor which could run Windows 95 or 98, or a PCI ethernet card (couldn't take both at once), maxed out RAM and eventually a Sonnet G3 in the L2 cache slot. Took ages to boot up, but it saw me through Marathon and OpenDoc. Remember Cyberdog?
I gotta give you a hand for the camera work against that CRT. Those shots are so sharp and lovely. :)
I found the newer technology card on eBay for about $150 but it doesn’t look like it has the video card holder that you talked about in your video. Did that come with the G3 upgrade newer technology card?
The G3 upgrade was sold with and also without the PDS video pass-through adapter, IIRC. On the equivalent Sonnet card it was a separate upgrade purchase.
I found one on the curb last year & later then sold on fbm local pickup. Same model!
I've read that most 603e based machines were actually slower than 601 based ones due to the fact that they used the same chipset as 68040 based systems. They even used the same BIOS as the Power Macintosh Card.
I had forgotten about the Sagan BS. At the time, he had been trying for 15 years to get his screenplay "Contact" fully realized. An astronomer with a penchant for publicity stunts.
In the 90s, this was a grandiose upgrade. Back then, systems were outdated after 2 years. That the rest of the hardware is partly limited is not surprising. I like these old times with Overdrive, AMD 586, Amiga 1260...... etc where incredibly outdated systems were suddenly upgradeable. Today, Intel e.g. gives new sockets every few years and something like Overdrive no longer exists.
Apple's hardware focus shows most clearly when it transitions processor architecture.
This was an exciting era for Mac users :-)
I imagine Steve Jobs would've been proud of those engineers' codenames.
I'm a Sagan fanboy, but Apple's "BHA" response is absolutely classic.
I had a 6100 I ran Linux on, it was used as a shoutcast server for a internet radio station I helped run.
I sold these NewerTech upgrades back in the 90s - the bang for the buck was incredible IF you had a hefty investment in your current systems - memory wasn't cheap, drives weren't cheap, monitors weren't cheap. Good times!
I'm thinking about learning how to program with MS-DOS basic what would be the best cheap desktop/laptop would be the best?
This remembers me my first edition B&W PowerMac with the 300mhz G3, i overclocked it to 350mhz and that didn't done much difference, as the bus run at 100mhz until i found out that the bus speed in those is limited by the RAM, so i installed 133mhz ram and that increased the bus speed to 133mhz, together with extra 50mhz i was happy as i could play my games now haha
I had a PowerMac 9600 that came with a 300mhz PPC 603e but later upgraded to a G4 from Sonnet. The cpu was on a daughter card that could be swapped.
Around this time a third party also sold a pci expansion with an intel cpu so you could run windows/dos natively. Eventually VirtualPC came out and you could emulate windows.
Would you be interested in a Power Macintosh 6500 / 250? And a monitor?
Our first home computer had a 486/66 in it and I managed to snag a 100 MHz processor to put into it a few years later. It was definitely nothing special but that plus the 32 MB of RAM we had in it was fairly good for what it was.
Funny to think how much faster the state of the art seemed to change back then. Today, you can easily use a 5-year-old PC for average computing tasks and not notice much of a performance difference over a new one. That was not at all the case in the 90s through the 2000s.
I have a g4 in my 7100/66 with the same basic design but under Daystar.
hopefully a decent SSD setup, BlueSCSI etc, can address some of the IO speed issues, there's a limit of course of how much an SSD can help of course but good thing its an option :)
Apple using proprietary video cables were just stupid, especially for schools that use those computers! My middle school had that Power Macintosh and used the dongle with their existing Apple monitors! Apple for decades have been using proprietary connectors for display, thanks for USB-C that are easy to connect Macs to non-Apple monitors!
Ah yes the 7100, the machine that is best described as neat. Especially with the Guitar for a chime.
That Sagan story is hilarious!
The story about the code name was hilarious! I have a deep respect for Carl Sagan, but ultimately he proved himself a real BHA with that lawsuit! :P
I really think classic Mac OS held back the line for many years and needed to be put to rest years before OS X came out. I am interested in a PowerPC processor card for an even older Amiga big box system I am putting together!
By the way: PowerPC does not mean Personal Computer. It was the IBMs abbreviation for Performance Optimazation With Enhanced RISC Performance Chip and RISC means Reduced Instruction Set Computer. So, both reduced and enhanced 😉
I still have my 7200/90 powerpc.. it’s casing is in a very bad shape.. it’s still run ok but every time I open the case I broke some plastic part..
It’s my first mac so.. I’m going to look for a good replacement casing. If I can find one..
Thank you for the video.. it gave me hope…❤
If you had a great Nubus video card Like a Radius or Supermac Thunder series or were running specialty equipment which used a Nubus interface card, These upgrades were a life saver. I used to work a lot with Imagesetters from companies like Agfa, ECRM, etc. and they told the users when the PCI macs came out that PCI interface cards were 1-2 years out.
Was about to say the same thing, at a company I worked at we had $1000s of nubus mpeg and audio editing hardware in an nubus Mac, adding a sonnet card made the workflow much more efficient
How do you disconnect the power supply at the bottom from the board?
That's an incredible jump in performance for an add-on upgrade. I wonder how far you could take it, could you fit a modern day processor to that slot?
could you pls install Macos Catalina to this?
There have been many specialized very expensive NuBus upgrades, especially in the audio realm. If you had several 10-thousand $ in such expansions, you would laugh at 1K. The CPU acceleration would help to recoup the investment for another few years until there was an alternative. The upgrades had their niche.