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Took a chance on a Performa 475


eightbit

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With a $45 best offer (free shipping!) and it works 100%!

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Apple-Macintosh-Performa-475-M1476/322943345375?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

 

I have been looking for one of these pizza box models with the 040 for awhile but at the right price. It didn't come with a keyboard, mouse, power cable or VGA adapter...but thankfully I had all of those already :) I pulled the battery which was dated 2002 (guess someone changed it once) and thankfully it was not leaking. Of course you have to flip the power twice to get it to come on (because of the missing battery) but I am fine with that as I never re-introduce those batteries to these machines.

 

It has 4MB of memory (yes, very low) so now I guess I'll be hunting for a 32MB SIMM for this.

 

Anyone have any advice? I plan on adding a SCSI2SD to this sometime down the road and will have to figure out how to reload the OS but that is part of the fun I suppose. I am just giddy that I got it at a bargain and it is fully functional!

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Thanks! It's such a slim and light vintage PC....not used to that ;) I found someone with a 32MB compatible SIMM for $12 shipped, so I can't beat that for an easy upgrade. I have two SCSI CD-ROM drives with the proper cable as well so I am good there. I don;t plan on going crazy with the machine...just to experience some of the stuff it had that I completely missed out on.

 

The price was right and the computer seems to be relatively snappy for a 25MHz machine. There are some learning titles on there and a diary apparently written by an older lady who likes to drink Strawberry Ensure. That said, it was well taken care of! The floppy drive works fine and sounds strong and new (I tested it by formatting an 800K disk I had laying around) and the eject mechanism is smooth and satisfying.

 

I think I really lucked out on this considering it all works and is not beat to shit like most I see. It is a fine addition to my slowly growing vintage Apple collection. I also took a $33 chance on a Macintosh Classic II (which works according to the pictures, but looks like either it has no OS or a dead HDD). But the seller had to eat the shipping on that (he offered FREE shipping) so I am expecting the worst :)

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It sounds like you know what you're doing with the "old world" system. I was a pro with those things way back when ...to the point that I've had enough and don't want to give up my modern conveniences. Travistouchdown is in a similar old-Mac collecting place as you; I seem to recall we've interacted on some of his several related threads. I think you told me to stop pushing emulation over old hardware or something.

 

No OS is easily remedied if you have blank media. The Low End Mac has downloads and other resources, including a mail-in service if it comes to that.

 

VRAM is another easy upgrade that will give you thousands of colors. I had a Peter Gabriel interactive CD-ROM with lots of videos that were much nicer with that module installed.

 

Hellcats Over the Pacific is worth a look if you like flying games; it will run great on this machine. Marathon will run, but not well.

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Yeah, I'm not overly crazy about Macs to be honest (I am much more an Amiga guy and now an Apple II/IIGS fan) but they always intrigued me and I could never afford any damn Apple product back in those days. I knew the rich kids in town had them but never let me try them out...haha. I think a lot of it with me is that I like the "little monitors". That little IIGS monitor stuck in my mind for decades as being so crisp, yet so tiny and so cool. Same with the tiny built in monitor on the Macintosh.

 

As for the Performa, I chose it for a couple of reasons. One being that any VGA display can connect to it by simply buying a $4 adapter. That was something I did not know and something I was very thankful for. Coming from computers in the 80's like the Amiga that need so much to do this (scandoublers, flickerfixers, replacement video cards) to not having to do that at all to get a display on a modern monitor is just gold.

 

Second reason was that it was color. I wanted to experience old Mac stuff in color. The Macintosh Classic II coming is black and white and that is cool too, but I wanted to experience both sides of that visual spectrum.

 

And finally, it was cheap. I am a cheap ass collector and I'll make no bones about it. I can't see playing hundreds or thousands on computers like this. I did pay $300 for my Amiga 2000 but it came with a lot of stuff and I really wanted it :) I paid $150 for my IIGS and it was loaded with stuff, boxes, boxed games...and at the time I felt I paid too much there as well. So, $45 for a machine shipped free to me is a good deal. If it died tomorrow who cares. I pay this much in beer on any given weekend ;)

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Thanks for reminding me I want to make a "tate mode" emulation thingy. :D

 

The thin screen looks very odd on the old pizzabox Mac. It needs an Apple-branded (Sony Trinitron inside) VGA CRT, maybe with the Apple Microphone stuck on the side.

 

 

And if I find one for ten bucks I am all over it ;) That Dell ultrasharp was $3 at Goodwill. I told you I am cheap ;)

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Just A heads up - with the pizza box macs - plan on recapping them.

I have 5 of them and I've had to cap 4 of them.

If they won't start up any more or start squealing (really, they whine too), those are sure sign of bad caps.

Here is a list of caps for some mac models:

 

http://www.maccaps.com/MacCaps/Capacitor_Reference/Archive.html

 

Also, The video RAM has to be installed for the board to work and the DRAM has to be matches pairs.

Just some useless info that may come in handy later. :)

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I've noticed apple is really picky with what works on SCSI.

Getting non-apple stuff to work is usually a PITA.

Even getting third party CD-drives to work is a trick.

 

I don't Know 100% If a PDS network card will work with a 630.

If so, these are pretty cheap:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Apple-Computer-Macintosh-Mac-Color-Classic-PDS-Ethernet-Card-LC-Performa/272846522387?epid=2241961242&hash=item3f86eb8813:g:WloAAOSwQBFZub0Y

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Thanks for reminding me I want to make a "tate mode" emulation thingy. :D

 

The thin screen looks very odd on the old pizzabox Mac. It needs an Apple-branded (Sony Trinitron inside) VGA CRT, maybe with the Apple Microphone stuck on the side.

 

The Dell monitor can slide up and down as well as rotate 90 degrees. It slides up to allow rotation and then can be slid down to comfortable view height. I run the 19" Dell and 19" Viewsonic 4:3 LCD monitors side by side for extended desktop. The 4:3 monitor best for the older games preventing the stretch or black bands of widescreen displays. The LCDs with narrow frames and the advantage of the Dell height adjustment makes spreadsheet view match across both screens a breeze.

 

Though not in keeping with the vintage Mac Performa era, the Dell LCD can be slid down to hide the flat screen tattle tell bracket. At least until a matched beige housing CRT monitor is found.

 

My preference is usually CRT for the TVs, but an LCD/LED monitor has sharper imagery for higher resolutions of PCs and of course the Tate mode. CRTs unless specifically designed for rotation could crack the mounts inside when rotated.

2x07WFP.jpg

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I've noticed apple is really picky with what works on SCSI.

Getting non-apple stuff to work is usually a PITA.

Even getting third party CD-drives to work is a trick.

 

I don't Know 100% If a PDS network card will work with a 630.

If so, these are pretty cheap:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Apple-Computer-Macintosh-Mac-Color-Classic-PDS-Ethernet-Card-LC-Performa/272846522387?epid=2241961242&hash=item3f86eb8813:g:WloAAOSwQBFZub0Y

Well, the dongle does work (supposedly) on '030 LCs... as for PDS cards, it might be hit or miss, the 630 can't take the Apple //e card so... (I have 2 of them and wish I had a working Mac that would take it x.x)

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What kills me is that those ethernet cards predate 802.11b (slow, 11mbps max) wireless by almost a decade, and consumer Macs wouldn't have onboard Ethernet until the candy-colored iMacs in 1998, TWENTY YEARS AGO

 

star_wars.png

 

my 8500 and 9600 both had ethernet

 

now the 9600 is debatable about consumer, but the 8500 was "pro sumer"

and networking pre broad band internet was pretty nerd, I dont recall seeing many consumer grade machines with even the option before 96-97

Edited by Osgeld
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Yeah, the product lines were a mess in the Scully years. Performa was the name they used in retail stores. As a Mac enthusiast of the time, I stayed away from that line. I didn't write this wikipedia entry, but it rings true to my opinion:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Performa

 

 

 

Apple's strategy for selling Performa machines in department and electronics retail stores did not include the sort of specialized training Apple offered to its dealers. This resulted in situations where Performa display models were often poorly taken care of; the demo computers crashed, the self-running demo software not running or the display models not even powered on.[3] Consumers who may have been purchasing their first computer were steered away from the Performas because they "weren't compatible".[4][not in citation given] Apple tried to address the training issue by hiring their own sales people to aid the store sales staff, most of them recruited from Macintosh user groups. Despite this, however, many returned Performa computers could not be serviced properly because the stores were not authorized Apple service centers.

 

I suspect the current Apple retail store concept grew out of these failures. The current Apple retail stores are like car dealerships; the sales staff are well trained and service is highly valued.

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yea its kind of weird that before the scully days you had to go to an apple authorized dealer, and that was not uncommon cept for the atari's and commies of the day, then everyone and their mother sold computers just endless rows of them, then its back to their own stores again.

 

I think the worst about those years from apple was just the confusion, my parents were shopping for one, and my dad was ready to plop down cash for an apple, but every store you went to had a different model of basicly the same machine, sometimes renamed ie performa 430 vs LC2 or Color Classic or Performa 275. Then there was different packages with different stuff and yea you could not get an awnser about any of it

 

we got a packard bell 486

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  • 3 weeks later...

I just wanted to publicly thank H454 for the advice, assistance and the recapping :) I left you a good feedback man but I feel its not enough :)

 

Sure enough as H454 said, the caps were all leaking. Funny thing is that it was very hard to tell. The computer worked fine...but it did have a strange screen anomaly when I first got it in which the screen looked "fuzzy" at first. It cleared up after a few minutes of use, but now I know that was just the caps getting a charge. When I blew the system out with compressed air is when I really found out. The compressed air blew out electrolytic liquid from under some of the caps all over the board. Cleaned it up, shipped it out to H454, and now it is back...freshly capped and working (and looking) like brand new.

 

I upgraded the ram to 36MB (32MB SIMM) and the VRAM to two 512KB SIMMs. Upgraded the 68040 LC CPU to a full blown 68040, and now will be eventually looking into adding a SCSI2SD in here.

 

Really nice little machine. I am not a huge Mac fan to be honest, but this is in my opinion a super machine for someone getting into vintage computing for a little fun. The Motorola CPU, the ability to connect to VGA monitors and the small slim form factor are fantastic. And, more importantly, it didn't cost me much at all to get it fixed and get it upgraded.

Edited by eightbit
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  • 2 weeks later...

SCSI2SD is in and working! No sooner did I have the board nice and recapped that the hard drive died (like literally after the first boot with the newly recapped board)! No worries, I didn't expect it to last very long as it sounded like all hell.

 

Anyhow, it is back up and running on a nice 2GB microSD card. After painstakingly making 22 REAL floppy disks in order to install OS 7.6, its finally done. I imaged the resulting card and tested the image on a 16GB microSD I had laying around and it boots fine. This means if I ever bork the OS or need a clean reinstall all I have to do is re-image the microSD card, no more floppy madness :)

 

Now I just have to work on getting some games on here. I am contemplating picking up a SCSI Zip drive as I have a parallel drive on my PIII machine and it would make life pretty easy just moving large files back and forth. Or trying to get one of these off brand SCSI CD drives to work and burning disks. I am not sure yet. Just glad its up and running!

 

I know I thanked him before but once again I have to thank H454 for the help with this. It would have been a much longer job than a few hours to get this SCSI2SD without your help my friend!

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I have a scsi card in my pc, as long as the drive is properly partitioned and formatted to work with a real macintosh I use linux and basiliskII emulator

 

Linux has the ability to naturally support HFS which is handy and basilisk will let me drag n drop 22 disk images in its drive menu and install direct to the target hard disk, its not the most convienent thing for daily transfers but its really handy when setting up a fresh os and dropping a pile of software I know I want on the drive

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