All have sentimental attachment value...

NuBus & pre-NuBus:
Q630; enet, TV, oldest surviving CDRW. mostly sentimental for the TV card, and it was Baby Buzz's preschool/K-1'ish machine, been passed down through a few cousins since.

7100 & 8100; G3 cards, max RAM, 10BT/RJ45 enet card, add'l video card, bigger HD's, upgraded CDRW. good, clean workhorses. Granny (R.I.P.) lastly used the 7100 to play old style games while Gramps had moved on to their G5 iMac. 8100 has homemade dual HD bracket and 100MB zip, plus 8 RAM slots vs. 4 in 7100.

basically only one little cousin left, and the other grandkids now pretty much use the G5 iMac while visiting Gramps, so was thinking of putting the best of the best from the 71/81 into the 8100 for the little guy (still have tons of old edu software for those vintage machines), and taking one of the following for a secondary machine at Grampa's..

PCI Macs/clone:
7300, Beige G3 MT, PowerCenter Pro MT; all max RAM 1GB, 768MB & 512MB respectively, all G3'ed to 500MHz, secondary video cards from 8MB IX UltRez to 32MB PCI Mac Radeon, zips, CDRW's or DVDRW's, USB/FW combo cards, U2WSCSI or ATA133 cards, plenty of all flavor HD's. obviously XPF needed for newer OS X if desired. likely want to keep one here, move one to Gramp's, and donate the three of what's left from all the above. not sure about all the old edu software, or would consider a PCI for the little cousin. the PCI stuff is all mix and match.

does the extra RAM in the 7300 offset its slower mobo bus and memory speed? or does it even make a difference w/ the G3 cards? the Beige G3 has the best on board video, but the available PCI video cards are better anyway and would be primary monitor, regardless of machine. the PCP is caught in the middle, base spec-wise, and has the most limited RAM, but it's a great old school machine; if it would work w/ the edu software, that may bode in its favor to head to the little cousin's place. possibility too, that an out of state cousin could take one of the remaining machines, and they could certainly have it next road trip; no desire to ship it.

thoughts appreciated, thanks,

Buzz
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Sometimes it is what it is...
and then there's times when it's really better.



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1) craigslist everything thats worth nothing for free, local pickup only

2) part out ATA 133 card, radeon, DVDRWs and CDRWs and all ram

2) enjoy all the extra space

3) buy an intel mini when it moves to a core 2 duo chip

i know, its hard -- i just dumped an entire garage of stuff, much the same list as yours -- 6100, 7100, PTP, PCP, 9600, 5MP, epson 3000, etc, etc

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

If you don't need iLife products, then the G3 is still a great machine. Nothing else you have is really of much use. We still use one as our mainstay home computers, running OS9.2.2.

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"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan

Make the best Beige (and if you just can't help it, 8100) you can out of the parts and get rid of the rest.

The extra RAM doesn't address the primary speed problems in the old stuff which is Hard Drive bus speed.

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What it is, man, a low-down and funky feelin'

I would pimp out the beige G3 with the best that you have, and sell/donate/give away the rest. And maybe pimp out the Power center Pro tower,

Open a mac museum and invite the family over.

(silly ideas aside, listen to jdc)

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Pimp the Beige, it's still useful as it takes ATA drives and OS X natively. The 7300 runs OS X well if you use a Rage128 or Radeon video card and that ATA133 card. Only keep the PCP if you have an OS 9 use for it, otherwise part it out. Older machines - what others suggested.

Dump it all.

OK, I should have kept one beige G3 just to be able to check the old floppies and ZIP disks.

Another vote for getting ride of all of it. Most of the add-on cards should fetch money on ebay.

Take the money and buy Sawtooth or newer G4s. Or if you get enough, buy G4 Mac Minis (they're pretty cheap now). Just sell it all so you can get something released in this decade.

Get rid of ALL of them. Sell off the parts that can be sold. Considering how cheap lower-end G4/AGP models are these days, I can't see any reason to keep even the beige G3.

secondary video cards from 8MB IX UltRez to 32MB PCI Mac Radeon, zips, CDRW's or DVDRW's, USB/FW combo cards, U2WSCSI or ATA133 cards

You will get very little for Zip drives or SCSI cards, if you can sell them at all. But you should be able to get decent prices for the Radeon Mac Edition (as long as it's not the ubiquitous Radeon 7000). the DVD-RW drives and the ATA 133 cards, as well as a bit for the processors if they are ZIFs. The non-carrier card kind of daughtercard upgrade won't fetch much. The Ultimate Rez is worthless: doesn't even work quite right with OS 9, so unless you have a need for an OS 8 system, toss it.

I sympathize with your situation; I was there a few years ago. I gave away a couple of beige machines, including a 9600 in early 2003, and only managed to send a 7100 and a pimped out 7600 to the curb about 6 months ago. But with people giving away or dumping B&Ws and iMacs these days (I found two really nice slot-loading FW iMacs in the trash within the past 3 months), I couldn't justify letting these beige babies take up space.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2007 07:35PM by ka jowct.

I think I will keep my Powertower Pro 225 for now. I was just thinking it would make a handy dial-up and Civ II machine for my parent's place.

Quote
jdc
i know, its hard -- i just dumped an entire garage of stuff, much the same list as yours -- 6100, 7100, PTP, PCP, 9600, 5MP, epson 3000, etc, etc

You tossed an epson 3000?? MURDERER!

No, really I was thiniking the same thing, just toss everything that won't sell, and actually sell the rest. That is unless you can actually use any of it, now.

I've made a point to either put these old boxes into use or to let them go. Well, except for the PowerBook 520, that's just too small to bother with at the moment. Besides sentiment, none of these machines have any real value anymore.

yeah, gave away the 3000 for free -- it was a super workhorse for me -- i must have run thousands and thousands of prints on it, only had one $100 service its whole life

no worries, i still have an Epson 5500 sitting in the garage, might try to sell it for real money =)

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

the PCI processors are all ZIF's, the PCP & 7300 use carrier cards, and the Beige G3 has a PL 466MHz OC'ed to 535 already (the other two boxes are at an even 500MHz, plus another ZIF in a drawer here somewhere), along w/ 3 9GB U2WSCSI HD's 1x7200RPM and 2x10,000RPM that are raided, but to keep it for the long haul, swapping the SCSI card for the ATA133 and putting bigger drives in probably makes sense. I'm swapping the Beige G3 out in favor of our QS 800MHz dually for scanning and editing and pdf'ing the scans, freeing it up for something else, and we'll be moving the 7300 off of fax duty shortly in favor of the MDD, freeing it up as well. I like the 7300 because of its ease of messing with it, and it has 8 RAM slots. the PCP is sort of a work in progress, having been out of use for awhile now.

I'd like to repurpose the machines, and have no desire to deal w/ selling anything..., I'd just like to see the Mac stuff be put to good use. Baby Buzz's school, and the other local schools won't take anything less than an eMac anymore, so the education channel for local donation has dried up. we've given a few Macs to some kids, and I'll probably ask around the sports fields to see if any more kids could use them. didn't hear any votes for the Q630 or 7100, so I guess those are gone, probably the PCP as well (ouch, that hurts). pimp the 8100 for the last little cousin, then tweak out the Beige G3 and 7300 after they're out of daily service, and keep the survivor after a gut-check, w/ the loser going to Gramp's place...

thanks all, that was cathartic.

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Sometimes it is what it is...
and then there's times when it's really better.



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So they'll be *used* instead of rotting in a landfill (OK, on a barge of e-waste floating out in the Pacific). Sounds like a good thing to me.