Good uses for old Macs

#1 Rhapsody

#1 Rhapsody

Mac Guru
What can you do with old Performa 6360 macs? I have three to do something with. One has a G3 upgrade card inside. Another might not work, I need to test it. If I get enough RAM is it possible to install Mac OS 10.1 on the G3?

Thanks in advance
 
There's a lot of stuff that you can do with old Macs. I'm using my Quadra 650 (Moto 68040 CPU at 33 MHz) to host my family homepage. :) There are some other Macs that are even older than this hosting pages as well. Check the following link for more:

http://www.ld8.org/servers/

You'll also find more tips on retro Macs on the following sites:
http://www.lowendmac.com
http://www.68kmla.com
http://www.ppcmla.com/
http://www.applefritter.com/
http://jagshouse.com/
http://www.mac512.com/macwebpages/mac512.html

If I think of any others, I'll post them here. :)
 
It's a gorgeous piece of history.

9.1 is the maximum it can deal with though. Thousands of colors with 800 x 600 resolution... not for 10.1.

http://lowendmac.com/ppc/performa-6360.html

requires System 7.5.1 through 9.1
CPU: 160 MHz PPC 603e
RAM: 16 MB (8 MB on motherboard), expandable to 136 MB using two 8, 16, 32, or 64 MB 70ns or faster 168-pin DIMM
VRAM: 1 MB
Video: thousands of colors to 800 x 600, 256 colors to 1024 x 768

I would probably run one (if they work) with eiter 7.6.1 or 8.6.
And a second one with some flavor of Linux.. Lowendmac has good start pages
http://lowendmac.com/stotler/06/0726.html
 
Yes, the 6360 is the best of the Power Macs that used that form factor. It's basically a desktop-shaped 6400. All of the ones prior to the 6360 in the same form factor were horribly crippled by Apple (we owned a Performa 6220CD back in the mid-90s so I speak from experience :p).
 
I loved my Performa 630 (68K), though. It was my first own desktop Mac. Before that, I only owned PowerBooks and used the Macs at school. 800x600 with thousands of colours was fine for OS X Public Beta on my iBook 300, though, Giaguara. :)
 
Two of the macs do work and I just heard I will get another tomorrow. From the one that doesn't work I will take out the RAM and the G3 card and try to make one really fast. Also what linux distros would you recommend The max RAM I'll probably get is 64MB and a G3 processor.

Thanks a lot
 
For the 6360? I recommend Debian. Ubuntu has too much overhead. Do a base installation and then install Xorg and <insert-favorite-DE-here>. I did that on a Compaq Presario that was comprised of an AMD K6-300, 64 MB RAM, 4 GB hard drive, and S3 Virge video. Did a basic installation of Debian Etch and then installed Xorg, XFCE, and some other apps. I was quite surprised at how usable this meager system was, although browsing "Web 2.0" sites did bring the machine to a bit of a crawl. But for general use it was quite usable.

Consider also that since this Mac is considered an "Old World" Mac, you'll need to have a small Mac OS partition somewhere and use BootX as the bootloader to Debian. You'll also need it during installation. It's not as trivial as installing it on a "New World" Mac, but it's definitely a fun process. Best place to check for installing Linux/ppc is the following site:

http://www.penguinppc.org

I installed Debian Sarge (the previous version of Debian, 3.x) on an old Motorola StarMax 4000 Macintosh clone and it ran wonderfully on it. I even installed Ubuntu 5.04 once on it but it was too much for the StarMax to handle compared to Sarge.

You could also try one of the BSDs. NetBSD runs on practically anything. There is also a FreeBSD for PowerPC, but I don't know that it supports "Old World" Macs.
 
The new mac I got was a Power Mac 7100/60AV but I think something is wrong with the HD connection. I'll check it out tomorrow. Nixgeek, how much much slower is your intranet connection because of your server?
 
#1 Rhapsody said:
The new mac I got was a Power Mac 7100/60AV but I think something is wrong with the HD connection. I'll check it out tomorrow. Nixgeek, how much much slower is your intranet connection because of your server?
Click to expand...

Not that much since my other computers are switched and the laptops are wireless.

Thanks for the compliments, VirtualTracy. :) Yeah, it's amazing that an almost-20-year-old Mac can still have such usefulness. I long for that part of Apple to return once again. ;)
 
VirtualTracy, yes I play the piano and keyboards. I have a Kawai K4 and a Yamaha S08. I'm currently just using GarageBand for the tones but I do plan on using the sounds from both keyboards in future songs once I'm able to find a decent sequencing package. I'm giving the FLOSS solutions a chance (Qtractor so far looks promising on my GNU/Linux desktop). I'm also hoping to use Ardour for recording the tracks on the Mac, but I need something to mixdown through to the Mac first. I could use my Quadra with Master Tracks Pro for sequencing as I did in the past, but I don't want to pull it from its current task. :D

#1 Rhapsody, I meant that they are all on a switch with the exception of the laptops which are on wireless. So everything connects at the speed that it requires.

BTW, I have some more songs uploaded on my MySpace Music site if you're interested in checking it out.

http://www.myspace.com/claudiomirandamusic

I'm thinking of setting up another page for my more "classically instrumental" stuff where it's just piano with possible some light pads in the background, but I need to make sure that those particular compositions are officially registered for copyright purposes. The electronic ones are under Creative Commons.
 
Nixgeek, how much RAM is in your Quadra 650 and how much RAM is allocated to MacHTTP? I tried MacHTTP on a Performa 6360 with 24MB RAM with 10MB allocated to the program and it ran out of memory on startup.
 
#1 Rhapsody said:
Nixgeek, how much RAM is in your Quadra 650 and how much RAM is allocated to MacHTTP? I tried MacHTTP on a Performa 6360 with 24MB RAM with 10MB allocated to the program and it ran out of memory on startup.
Click to expand...

I've maxed out the RAM to 136 MB on the Quadra 650. I've allocated 4096K to MacHTTP. The minimum amount I've allowed is 1024K.

That said, MacHTTP doesn't require that much RAM allocated to it (it can run on slower hardware than my Quadra and with very little RAM). Make sure that you aren't allocating too much to anything. Remember that Finder requires a certain amount of RAM, as well as anything else that's open.

I've also disabled virtual memory (I never found a need for it in OS 8.x on the Quadra).
 
Does anyone know where to get RAM cheap for the Performa 6360 like a 64MB stick for under $15? Also, I need to get a replacement HD for my Power Mac 7100/80AV cheap as well. Could you make MacHTTP just allow access for a couple of users?
 
#1 Rhapsody said:
Does anyone know where to get RAM cheap for the Performa 6360 like a 64MB stick for under $15? Also, I need to get a replacement HD for my Power Mac 7100/80AV cheap as well. Could you make MacHTTP just allow access for a couple of users?
Click to expand...

MacHTTP relies on the permissions of the directory you want to host. It also has other options but I haven't really delved into them as much..it's just a matter of going through the configuration file.

As for RAM, check out ramseeker.com. LowEndMac.com should also have some information on RAM purchasing and whatnot, especially information on the kind of hard drive you can use on the 7100.
 
Thanks for the help. The RAM I found from that link was a lot cheaper than the other places I've seen. The only problem with it is that all the RAM I can find that says it compatible with the Performa is 60ns RAM. Apple's specifications say that it requires 70ns RAM.
http://support.apple.com/kb/SP373
 
If I'm not mistaken, it should still work. I've used faster RAM than specced on my Quadra and it's still worked. No lock ups or anything. Think of it as using PC-133 RAM on a system that originally used PC-100. It would still work due to the backwards compatibility of the RAM design.
 
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