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Second Class Macs & Road Apples

Power Macintosh 7200, 8200

one

Dan Knight - 1998.03.18

Second Class Macs are Apple's somewhat compromised hardware designs. For the most part, they're not really bad - simply designs that didn't meet their full potential. (On our rating scale, the more brown apples, the worse the hardware.)

Like several other road apples, the Power Mac 7200 wasn't a terrible design. In fact, it was a pretty good design, sharing a lot of components and features with the 7500.

The 7200 runs faster with 2 MB or 4 MB VRAM, but Apple shipped it with 1 MB to keep costs down. Likewise, it runs significantly faster with a level 2 cache, which Apple also left out to keep the price down.

Apple promised an inexpensive motherboard upgrade, which would turn the fixed-CPU 7200 into a CPU-replaceable 7500. It didn't ship when it was supposed to, due to demand for the 7500. When it finally shipped, it was a 7600 upgrade - and it cost $1,600 with a slow CPU daughter card.

Outrageous, and definitely not inexpensive.

Despite comparable performance between the 7200/90, 7200/120, and 7500/100, the 7200s are less desirable because they cannot be upgraded for a reasonable price. This is reflected on the used market, where a used 7500 sells for roughly 50% more than a comparably equipped 7200. (A used 7500 also sells for less than the cost of Apple's upgrade.)

The Power Mac 7200 was not a bad computer - more a promise poorly fulfilled.

It wasn't until late 2000 that Sonnet managed to create an accelerator for these computers, a $500 PCI card with a 400 MHz G3 processor.

Details

7200/75 introduced 1995.08, discontinued 1996.03
7200/90 introduced 1995.08, discontinued
7200/120 introduced 1996.03, discontinued
requires System 7.5.2 or later
CPU: 75/90/120 MHz PPC 601
bus: 37.5/45/40 MHz
performance:
ROM: 4 MB
RAM: 8 MB, expandable to 512 KB using DIMMs (4 sockets available)
VRAM: 1 MB, expandable to 4 MB
Video: supports resolutions to 1152 x 870
L2 cache: optional
ADB: 1 port for keyboard and mouse
serial: 2 DIN-8 GeoPorts on back of computer
SCSI: DB-25 connector on back of computer
ethernet: AAUI and 10Base-T connectors on back of computer
upgrade path: 7300 or 7500/7600 motherboard + CPU daughtercard for 7200; 8500 motherboard for 8200; possibly to G3

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: MacBook Core Duo, May 2006. The iBook's replacement has a 13" widescreen display and a 1.83-2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo CPU.
Group of the Day: StarMax List is for anyone using Motorola StarMax Mac clones.
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