Is the 52xx/53xx/62xx/63xx series really bad?

lucaluca
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I have heard (from lowendmac.com) that these Macs (based on the 603, not 603e processor) were all really terrible. However, a friend of mine swears by his 5300 and says that Low End Mac's classification of the series as the "worst Macs ever" is "propaganda."



Anyone willing to voice their opinion on this series? I do know that the Performa 630 has been bad-mouthed quite a bit, yet it's a perfectly competent 68k machine.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 10
    formerlurkerformerlurker Posts: 2,686member
    Cheaply made, lots of MLB (motherboard) failures. Very high maintainence, had some recalls even (6200). Really bad HDs also (Apple's first venture into IDE instead of SCSI).



    Some people get lucky and it runs like a rock, like a 7100 or something.... but I'd personally steer clear of them.



    Hell, I have two gathering dust in my back room - want one ?
  • Reply 2 of 10
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    [quote]Originally posted by FormerLurker:

    <strong>Cheaply made, lots of MLB (motherboard) failures. Very high maintainence, had some recalls even (6200). Really bad HDs also (Apple's first venture into IDE instead of SCSI).



    Some people get lucky and it runs like a rock, like a 7100 or something.... but I'd personally steer clear of them.



    Hell, I have two gathering dust in my back room - want one ?</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Okay. Thanks for the info.



    However, the first IDE hard drive in an Apple comptuer was the Performa 630, which is why it's regarded as a crappy computer. According to my friend, the displays in the 5200s at his school are still going strong but the 5400s' displays are starting to crap out. So maybe he's used to them being really reliable.
  • Reply 3 of 10
    der kopfder kopf Posts: 2,275member
    for what it's worth, my parents, for their profession; still work on a daily basis on their Performa 630 (that means, every day, all day for, like ten years now). The comp has never needed any fixin' and the only quirk it has is that the screen turns greenish or redish at times (or was it purplish).
  • Reply 4 of 10
    spartspart Posts: 2,060member
    I think the screen changing colors has something to do with the battery...replace it and you should be good off (at least that's what the tech at my school did, and it seemed to work, with a pizza-box LC 475 though.)
  • Reply 5 of 10
    applenutapplenut Posts: 5,768member
    best model is the 6360.... very expandable... was cheap and had a new motherboard design based on the 6400



    also had a 603ev
  • Reply 6 of 10
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    the performa 630 CD was the first mac that was "mine" ::sniff:: i played civ for so many hours on that great little computer... i wish i could figure out a way to hook it up to my network at home so it doesn't just gather dust in the corner of my room...
  • Reply 7 of 10
    formerlurkerformerlurker Posts: 2,686member
    I worked for an Auth. Apple Dealer at the time these were out and saw LOTS of repairs. I've also seen a few that went strong for years but finally crapped out REAL good (one that went thru 3 hard drives in 4 months before being euthanized comes to mind).



    And yes, these were basically a 630 with a PPC instead of an '040.
  • Reply 8 of 10
    smithjoelsmithjoel Posts: 240member
    Yes, they suck. Slow, and NuBus instead of PCI, so no chance of Be or Linux. Never had any service problems with my 6200 though. Did have to take to have take it in for somthing under a recall i guess.
  • Reply 9 of 10
    stoostoo Posts: 1,490member
    The PSU in our 6300 went four years ago (at major expense) but it hasn't had any other problems. Apart from that it has been fine and now lives in the pile of old computers in my room (4x 475, 1x 6300, 2x Sun Sparc 5, 1x Compaq Prosignia (server), 1x SE30, 1x Mac Classic, 1x Duo 230). It could come close to the speed of earlier Pro Macs (like the 7100) but lost to anything with a more sensible architecture (e.g. PCI Macs).



    Replaced with a 6400 with a Sonnet G3/400 L2 upgrade, 136MB EDO RAM, 40GB hard drive, 32x12x4 CD-RW and a Voodoo 3 (as a Radeon would just be ridiculous ).
  • Reply 10 of 10
    stagflation stevestagflation steve Posts: 294member
    they are shit, they aren't even really power macs in the first place, they are for all intents and purposes Quadra's complete with 68000 bus, a PDS processor upgrade card is literally built into the motherboard, and if that isn't bad enough they literally hacked the PowerPC processor onto a 68030 bus!



    We took back the handfull of those peices of shit that we sold and wrote them off,
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