PB 7600s
This past week I won a bid for 9 pallets of computer stuff, 2 of which were Macs and Mac printers. I got 9 PM 7600s, all of which had the hdds removed, a couple of 12/600s printers (one busted up bad, the other in good condition), some laser writers and some ink jets too. I got about 20 HP Laserjet IIIs and a whole bunch of other Laserjets in various stages of function.
Anyway, I got a couple of questions about the 7600s and the 12/600s. 1) What is the largest HDD I can put on the 7600s? I have a bunch of 2.5 gig drives I can stick in them, but have not taken the time to figure out if I can do this. 2) Should I go the other way with a couple of them and stick in the 6.0.8 OS and then 3) where the heck is the best place to get Ram for these things? I got bunches of Ram for some old Pentium Pro boards, any idea if these would work? I crammed in 160 megs into one of them and am running 8.6 on it. have not really taken it out for a spin since most of what I've been doing the past 4 days is move printers from the auction site to the storage area and also evaluating the stuff I got. Also managed to get a 5400/180 going as well and found gobs of Friendly Net stuff in a big cardboard box :P
Anyhoo, sorry for rambling, I'm dead tired right now, those Laserjets are heavy.
Anyway, I got a couple of questions about the 7600s and the 12/600s. 1) What is the largest HDD I can put on the 7600s? I have a bunch of 2.5 gig drives I can stick in them, but have not taken the time to figure out if I can do this. 2) Should I go the other way with a couple of them and stick in the 6.0.8 OS and then 3) where the heck is the best place to get Ram for these things? I got bunches of Ram for some old Pentium Pro boards, any idea if these would work? I crammed in 160 megs into one of them and am running 8.6 on it. have not really taken it out for a spin since most of what I've been doing the past 4 days is move printers from the auction site to the storage area and also evaluating the stuff I got. Also managed to get a 5400/180 going as well and found gobs of Friendly Net stuff in a big cardboard box :P
Anyhoo, sorry for rambling, I'm dead tired right now, those Laserjets are heavy.
Comments
RAM can be had from Other World Computing (eshop.macsales.com).
You can't put OS 6.0.8 on a PowerMac 7600. The earliest OS that'll work is system 7.5.3. I'd suggest running them with OS 8.6, but of course that depends on how much RAM you have. If you have 48 MB or more, 8.6 should be fine. 9 will also work great.
That aside, They'll run OS 7.5.5 to 9.1. You want 168-pin 70ns ram. I've had a hard time getting SCSI drives to work.
If you are looking for an easy upgrade, try THIS. You can use all the cheap, new stuff in your computer. Now all you need is a processor upgrade.
EDIT: I also suggest running 8.6.
I wonder if there is a poor elementary school somewhere that could use them. Put a small hard drive in each one, a little RAM if they don't have any... hell, one school around here was thrilled just to get my brother's old Performa 630.
Keep one for yourself and get it in working condition. You can run OS 8.6 on it - it's a great OS. Or you could try messing around with Yellow Dog Linux.
Why? For the best of reasons-because I can. The 7600s came with a bunch of other stuff that I really wanted like some Hewlett Packard Scanjet 4c scanners and from the looks of it, each 7600 had a 4c attached to it at one time since the numbers were equal. The cards are not that expensive if you use a AVA-1502 or the 1505 cards. However, hooking them back up to the 7600s and using them as a work station would not be a bad idea I think.
And yeah, I'm looking at fixing some of these up for some kids that don't have any computers at all. Some of us call it The Digital Divide and their parents can't go out and buy a computer for their kid...or at least they think they can't. Fact is that I can get someone into a computer that works pretty well for under $100 using the trailing edge technology. I'm not too interested in working with a school per se, I am more interested in the one-on-one work that can be done for young people. Too many kids are not getting the preparation for college that they are going to need.
I'm glad these machines will be put to good use!
Also looking into the Sonnet Crescendo upgrade, no need to get it up to an 800 MHz G4 or anything like that, a nice 266 with an on die L2 cache should do nicely and I might be able to pick one up pretty cheaply.
A lot of the stuff does need repair/refurbishing and some of it is just junk, so I have a lot of work ahead of me just to get things sorted and organized.
The old technology still works pretty well, it is noce having something go very fast, but generally a lot of stuff can still be done with the older equipment. I'm really jazzed about running a G3 with an onboard SCSI hookup
I also have a Centris that I'll be putting together with a Centris HDD that got orphaned when the motherboard got smoked up at the shop when it went in for repairs. It'll be cool playing the old Risk game I wasted many, many hours on years ago.
The limiting factor may be the ram for these things since I've dumped most of it in this one to get it to run as good as it can. Only have another 2 machines going, one with 32 megs and the other with 64. I'll be finding more soon enough, most people think these things are not worht the effort.8)