Tried a really old Mac PowerPC today...

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It was hilarious...Had 3 connections from the PC to the Screen.

Took me a while to find the plugs (this was in school).

Switching it on was weird. I saw two buttons in the centre of the front of the Computer tower. Pressed them, nothing happened. I then realised they were the volume control.

Ended up swithching it on, by pressing the top reight key on the board. I swear on normal mac's, the newer ones, this opens the drive or something?

Annyhow, twas a fun experience. Never actually got to use the mac. By the time it was up and running I had to go.
 
Do you remember what model Power Mac it was?

Most of the OldWorld based Power Macs (OldWorld meaning they still use an Apple ROM chip as opposed to OpenFirmware on NewWorld Macs) were turned on from the keyboard, although most did have a kill switch on the back in case something went wrong. On some Power Macs (mainly the PPC Performas) you have to look carefully to actually find the switch on the back. :p I think the only one that couldn't be shutdown from the keyboard was the 6100.

Sure, they are obsolete, but those machines still have a place in my heart. Maybe they won't run OS X at all (or well for that matter), but there are other *nix options...or you could stick with Mac OS 9.2.2 if it can handle it. Heck, my 68K-based Quadra is more proof of anything to me that no machine is truly obsolete. That sucker's running 7.6.1 and still running strong. :)
 
I remember playing with a Classic and a Plus a year or so ago with a friend of mine. We were chuckling at the manuals, and noticed that one of them (think it was the plus) came with 1mb of memory, but to upgrade it you had to go and cut a resistor off the mother board!

I think my first mac experience was playing that game where you had to drop a little bloke off a helicopter onto a hay cart on one on the early all-in-on macs (i was too young to know which one) in the office of a publishing company in 86 or 86.

Even after those days, my mum did her work on a tiny little performa 200 for quiet a long time. 68k was 'da bomb' for a long time- heck my amiga had a 68xxx series chip in it.
 
Sounds like an all-in-one performa or something due to the volume keys being below the monitor.

That button on the keyboard is the power button. No too long ago (2000 and before), Macintosh computers had keyboards with power buttons on them. You could power up the computer from the keyboard without ever having to reach over/across/down to the actual computer itself.
 
Yea that's the beauty of it.

When I tried out an imac with a wireless keyboard I loved the fact it had the open CD tray button.

It made the wirelessness more useful. I could be far away from the imac, and still use it well.
Then I ran off with the keyboard to piss my friend off.
 
nixgeek said:
I think the only one that couldn't be shutdown from the keyboard was the 6100.
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any of the ones in that form factor such as the centris 6xx were that way. you could still shut them down from the "special" menu or by hitting the power button on the keyboard and then choosing your option, but when it got powered down it gave a screen telling you that you had to push the power button on the CPU case.

if you couldn't tell i still use alot of old hardware from time to time.

and belive it or not i really miss having the power button on the keyboard. i really hate the power button on my dual 867. it is the only thing about that computer i dont like.
 
You guys mentioned that they can't run OS X well you have to go check out Otherworldcomputing.com and see that OSX Xpostfacto is running old world macs on OS X at the moment IM using my PowerTower Pro 200 upgraded with 800mhz sonnet card and IM running OS X 10.3.5 check it out.
 
Jeffo said:
any of the ones in that form factor such as the centris 6xx were that way. you could still shut them down from the "special" menu or by hitting the power button on the keyboard and then choosing your option, but when it got powered down it gave a screen telling you that you had to push the power button on the CPU case.
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I knew about the Centris 610 having the same form factor, but since we were discussing Power Macs, I figured I would just keep it to the 6100. :)

Jeffo said:
if you couldn't tell i still use alot of old hardware from time to time.
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I have a wonderful Mac Quadra (that about this time I'm sure everyone is tired of hearing about... :p) that is still kicking strong. I've got it loaded with 112 MB of RAM and a 9 GB SCSI hard drive. Currently I have it hosting our homepage .

Jeffo said:
and belive it or not i really miss having the power button on the keyboard. i really hate the power button on my dual 867. it is the only thing about that computer i dont like.
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I know what you mean. :D I loved having the power button on the keyboard. I would show it to other people that weren't familiar with the Mac and they thought it was cool that they didn't have to hit the power on the computer to get it started. Hopefully Apple will bring this little feature back.
 
watchall said:
You guys mentioned that they can't run OS X well you have to go check out Otherworldcomputing.com and see that OSX Xpostfacto is running old world macs on OS X at the moment IM using my PowerTower Pro 200 upgraded with 800mhz sonnet card and IM running OS X 10.3.5 check it out.
Click to expand...

yeah the guy that writes that software is awesome, i think his name is ryan. I have X on my 8500 thanks to him.
 
watchall said:
You guys mentioned that they can't run OS X well you have to go check out Otherworldcomputing.com and see that OSX Xpostfacto is running old world macs on OS X at the moment IM using my PowerTower Pro 200 upgraded with 800mhz sonnet card and IM running OS X 10.3.5 check it out.
Click to expand...

Sure you can use XPF, but it doesn't always work. I tried using the latest one in order to install Panther on my work laptop (300 MHz PowerBook G3 "WallStreet II") and it was a no-go. Maybe I didn't put enough time into it, but whatever. It's OK though...Jag runs decent on it.

Plus, you are using a faster processor card. Try running Panther on a 601, 603, or 604 processor, even with all the RAM maxed out. Not a pretty picture... Even a beige G3 won't run Panther speedily, although it will run.
 
i had jag on my 8550 with a g3 card. the g3 card went south so i put the original proc back in as a temporary solution and it booted up fine. i did not try to install with it installed but it did run with the original 120 mhz proc installed.
 
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