1999 – RK writes: I just got this old Quadra 610, and the only way I am going to get rid of this wonderful box is if somebody pries my cold lifeless fingers off of it’s case. :)

I am attempting to throw off the yoke of Microshaft slavery. My PC is slowly becoming a Linux box. I was thinking of doing that to this box as well, but maybe not. My only obstacle to that, and one of two complaints that I have, is that this is the LC040 chip. I thought all the Quadras had the full blown ‘040. Live and learn, but I need to find a new CPU chip.

MicroMac has the 68040 chip. Just pull the old one out and put this one in. But it is $99 – and I just spent $200 to get this. Do you know of any cheaper place to find one?

What do you think about the upgrade board they have to turn this into a 6100 with the G3 upgrade card in one shot for $550?

Only one other thing. Do you know of a good cheap place to get a bigger hard drive? This poor little thing is only 160 MB. I could stand something a little bigger. :)

Mac Daniel writes: To make the least expensive 610 more affordable, Apple used the 68LC040 instead of the full 68040. I can’t recommend any specific places to find a 25 MHz 68040, but I’ll bet the Quadlistas would be more than happy to help out. (Every Quadra owner should subscribe to Quadlist, the only email list especially for 68040-based Macs.)

If you can get a 6100 motherboard and G3 upgrade for $550, that’s an incredible deal. I’ve seen G3 cards for the 6100 sell for $400-500 – and that’s just the card. A used 6100 still goes for about $300-400, but that usually gives you a larger hard drive and faster CD-ROM in the bargain.

You can pick up a 1.2 MB hard drive for about $100 from lots of mail order dealers these days. Newer hard drives are much faster than the old 160 MB drives Apple used.

Before investing in a 6100 upgrade, be sure to read up on the 6100. For instance, it uses system memory for video, which is slow. To overcome this, you want a 1 MB L2 cache, so avoid PowerPC upgrades that only have a 512 KB cache if you’re concerned with performance.

FLASH: Sonnet has announce a Power PPC upgrade for the Quadra and Centris computers. Using technology developed by Apple and Daystar Digital, the Power PPC places a 100 MHz PowerPC 601 processor in almost every Centris and Quadra. More details in their press release.

Keywords: #quadra610

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