I am the type of person who likes to get good deals. I read
DealMac, DealNN, and PriceWatch. If I am lucky, I can
occasionally pick up something good on eBay.
Performa 6200
I bought a Performa 6205CD off of
eBay in pretty much unknown condition. All I was told
was that it would boot to a blinking floppy disk icon.
When I first turned it on, I knew it was going to be a project.
The CD-ROM drive was bad. I realized that the hard drive was also
bad. I had a spare CD-ROM drive which had only cost me a few
dollars, so I installed that. After a long time searching, I found
that a friend had a 2 GB IDE hard drive from a dead Power Mac 5500. I bought that from him and
installed it in the 6205.
Back on eBay, I bought a Mac LC
III, which had been advertised as having 12 MB of RAM. When I
received it, I had a pleasant surprise - 32 MB of RAM and a 160 MB
hard disk, all for under $15. I installed that RAM in the 6205.
I got an ethernet card for the LC PDS slots for free so I could
hook it up to our cable modem. Lastly I installed Mac
OS 9.
That one cost me $75 total. Not bad, since that is usually about
what a base 6200 sells for. From this, you will see that sometimes
making your own system from a pretty low-end model can be cost
effective.
Of course you don't have to use a 6200, especially since they
are considered "slow" Power Macs (although when hooked up to a
cable modem, they suddenly get a lot faster) due to some issues that they have (I really
don't see them being limited that much if you install the right
upgrades).
Power Mac 7100
You may want to look into a Power Mac
7100 instead. These Macs have three NuBus slots, a special PDS
HPV video card which displays thousands of colours at 800 x 600 and
can be upgraded to display millions of colours at 1024 x 768. Some
have an AV card instead of the HPV card, allowing you to import and
export video.
The 7100 series also features a SCSI hard drive and CD-ROM, a
much nicer looking case than the 6200, and 4 RAM slots.
7100s also feature similar price tags to 6200s. You can often
get a base configuration model for under $50!
Upgrading the RAM will cost you more than the 6200, because the
7100 needs RAM to be installed in pairs of SIMMs. If you can get
four 16 MB SIMMs, you will have 72 MB total RAM. Not bad for a
six-year-old computer.
Next is the hard drive. Most came with either 250 MB or 500 MB
hard drives. Obviously that isn't enough today with system software
that takes up over 200 MB itself. eBay often has 1 GB hard
drives for as little as $10 or $15. You can buy 2 GB for about
$25-35 depending where you go.
The Mac OS
What system software should you install on your "new" Power
Mac?
I find Mac OS 8.1 the fastest of all the 8.x operating systems
(System 7.1.2 is no doubt the fastest OS on the Power Macs, but you
should have 8.x to take full advantage of the PowerPC processor).
Mac OS 8.6 is also fast and offers some additional features which I
like.
OS 9 is a little slow, but it does offer the best
compatibility with other programs. OS 9.1 can be installed only
from the upgrade CD; the download version does not install (even on
G3 upgraded NuBus Macs).
G3 Upgrades
Since I mentioned G3 upgrades,
I will go over the $150 mark to briefly talk about them. G3
upgrades were some of the most popular upgrades for the NuBus Macs,
and, in my opinion, Newer Technology made some of the best
upgrades. If you really must have a G3 upgrade, try to find a
clearance or used Newer card.
Sonnet is supposed to make some pretty good upgrades; you may
also consider some of their models. These will cost you about as
much as the computer - $200+ just for the upgrade card (which makes
it more economical to buy a used G3,
see Is it worth putting a G3 in an older
Mac).
If you want a Mac for under $150, either a 6200 or a 7100 may be
a good choice. Keep in mind these won't match G3s or G4s, though
they do a good job for word processing, Internet needs, and many
kids games. A 7100 can even play an MP3 file pretty well!
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