• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Just a question about Mac's

Chromedome45

Veteran Member
Joined
Jul 6, 2009
Messages
3,993
Location
Central Florida
What is/was the best 68k Mac made? In as far as performance etc. Also while on the subject what was the fastest B/W Mac. You know like the original Mac with 9" screen ? Jsut wanted opinions.
 
As far as I can tell from looking at old specifications on the web, the most powerful 68k Mac was either the Quadra 950 or the Quadra 840AV, depending on whether your software supported the 840AV’s DSP chip or not. As far as the black-and-white compact Macs went, by far the most capable in terms of hardware was the SE/30 — though it couldn’t run OS 7.6.x, I’ve read indications that 7.5.5 can be made to do almost as much. If you relax your specifications to “most powerful compact Mac,” the Colour Classic II can be heavily upgraded with a more modern motherboard etc. and becomes very capable when you do.
 
As far as I can tell from looking at old specifications on the web, the most powerful 68k Mac was either the Quadra 950 or the Quadra 840AV, depending on whether your software supported the 840AV’s DSP chip or not. As far as the black-and-white compact Macs went, by far the most capable in terms of hardware was the SE/30 — though it couldn’t run OS 7.6.x, I’ve read indications that 7.5.5 can be made to do almost as much. If you relax your specifications to “most powerful compact Mac,” the Colour Classic II can be heavily upgraded with a more modern motherboard etc. and becomes very capable when you do.
Totally, SE/30 is one of my favs, can really do a lot with one as far as classic macs go (there are processor upgrades, NIC cards, video cards) it can be made into a VERY capable B&W mac. If you dump tons of upgrades and money into it it can even be forced to run OS 8.1 (though that's not an easy task, its a real hack, need IIsi or IIfx roms, and a bunch of res-editing).

The Color Classic II (and plain Color Classic for that matter) are really neat machines, and also have a good upgrade path, one person is known to have one upgraded all the way to a G3 500mhz, but that also took some serious hackery (with hacksaws and all, not a mod for most people). Most people can get it to a very capable 68040 or even low end PPC with off the shelf upgrade parts though.

Side note, I am really pissed my SE/30 rusted away beyond repair, will never leave computers in non-climate controlled storage ever again. Can't wait to get my hands on another one some day when the price is right ;-)
 
Currently I own a Mac Classic, Apple IIgs and an Apple IIe Platinum. I really like the mac classic but the 8Mhz 68000 is a little on the slow side. I did have a color classic a little while back but the main board gave out so I wound up trashing it. I wished it would have survived! I was looking at the SE/30 and a Calssic II. But funds are very tight and won't even think about possibly getting an SE/30 for a while. That's all the Apple stuff I have the rest are PC's and compatibles.
 
I myself liked the Centris 610 because of it's support for a CD rom drive build in, rather than an external one. I know you'll get many answers though as to which is best. I seem to remember there was a PowerPC 601 upgrade for the SE/30 but I can't remember.
 
The SE/30 is by far my favorite Compact Mac..
Mine has 48MB RAM Installed.. a 2GB Internal SCSI Drive.. a Network card. It runs A/UX 3.0.1.. Darn nice machine.

As far as the most expandable.. Id have to say the quadra 950.. I own one.. and its quite useful. Has room for a ton of internal hard drives- Internal CD-ROM.. Nice fast 040, Expandable to 256MB RAM.. Mine currently has 128MB RAM in it and a 2GB Drive. Its used as an IRC machine, Data recovery system and for some great 040 games
 
I love the SE/30 because it's got all the neat features of compact Macs (ultra-crisp monitor, small footprint, sweet design) backed up by computing power more comparable to a mid-range 68k desktop model. I really need to get mine up and running...

Color Classic looks like a pretty good machine, but I just cannot stand its look...that whole period in Mac industrial design never did it for me.
 
If I had a spare to get rid of I would.. One runs A/UX, the other runs my AppleShare Server.. Good rock solid reliable systems.
 
Everyone's making me want to go pay ebay prices for a SE/30 now, must resist, wait for one that's not overpriced, lol.
 
Well I broke down and got one. It had a really shakey flakey display problem. Noticed the Yoke connections on the analog board were overheated. (see Blurry pic) From I have read this is a common problem. So I cut the wires out of the connector. Removed the connector from the analog board as well and soldered Yoke wires directly to the analog board. Rock steady display now. No more shaking. Had a dead 40MB SCSI drive which I replaced with a 1GB SCSI drive. Floppy was very dirty and cleaned out as well and only had 4.5 MB RAM. Removed the 4 256k RAM chips and installed 4 4MB RAM SIMMS and now recognizes the full 20MB of RAM thanks to MODE32 extension. I will say this is a lot faster than my Mac Classic! Very nice system and now I know why you guys love them so much.:D
 

Attachments

  • 100_0654.jpg
    100_0654.jpg
    83.3 KB · Views: 1
Congrats on getting one.. Now start looking for upgrades.. Ethernet card, Micron Xceed that will display greyscale on the internal display & do vga out.. Processor upgrade, you name it. get 8 16MB SIMMS in it. You can have 128MB of ram in that thing. Add an 040 upgrade. and that thing will really fly.
 
The SE/30 is probably the single most popular 68k Mac (at least for the compacts), but shouldn't the IIci/IIcx be just as good?
 
Is it true that you can get the ROM SIMMs out of a IIsi and make it 32bit clean? And all those upgrades? damn I heard it's nearly impossible to find the Micron exceed and then what about the 040 upgrade? Know of a source AIIFan?
 
Back
Top