This story starts out as the popular Macintosh IIci to Quadra 700 conversion, but it turns into
something else entirely - a completely new beast never before seen in
the history of FrankenMac evolution.
First a little background: I have been a collector of vintage Macs
for a long time. Too long, some might say. Every time I see one for
sale in a thrift shop or yard sale or by the side of the road on trash
day, it comes home with me. I usually just clean or repair them as
necessary to keep them running in stock form and add them to my little
Mac museum. Usually.
Until the IIci arrived.
The IIci
I was out driving one day and passing through a business area when I
saw a beige box on the sidewalk outside of a real estate office.
Recognizing it as an early Mac of some sort, I circled the block and
picked it up. It turned out to be a Mac IIci.
When I got it home, it went through the usual ritual of cleaning (it
didn't need repairing) and taking it's place on the shelf among it's
classic Mac brethren.
The IIvx
As fate would have it, a neighbor was having a yard sale several
weeks later. Her daughter had an old Mac IIvx that she only wanted a few
dollars for, so that also got added to the museum shelf. It didn't even
need any cleaning!
Remember this IIvx; it will return later.
The Quadra 700 Mainboard
It was about this time that I also discovered Low End Mac. Reading
that the IIci could become a Quadra 700, I scanned
eBay for a Quadra 700 mainboard. It took about a week before
someone posted one for sale, but I got one.
I was excited when it arrived, but my excitement quickly turned
to dismay when I tried to fit it. Nothing lined up. I returned to Low
End Mac, and there they were, those words that I hoped wouldn't be
there: "case mods required". Curses!
Not having done a FrankenMac project before, I decided it wasn't
worth the bother, so the disassembled IIci went into a box, and the
Quadra 700 mainboard went into the spare parts bin.
The PPC 601 Board
Scan ahead about three years and see me scouring the vintage Mac
section on eBay. I found an Apple PPC 601 board and made
a quick visit to Low End Mac to see what it fits. Seeing that it would
work in the Quadra 700, I quickly BINned it.
My interest in Project Quadra renewed, I unpacked the Quadra
mainboard and the IIci - but horror! At some point in the past I had
moved the floppy drive and bracket out of the box they were in and put
them someplace else. Drat!
Like most techno-packrats, finding something that isn't in it's
proper place can be a monumental task. Fortunately, it had only managed
to migrate as far as the box underneath the one that it had originally
been put into, so I was in luck.
Modding the IIci Case
While waiting for the PPC board to arrive, I decided to start the
IIci case mods. I had already snapped off some tabs in the bottom that
the IIci board needed, but that weren't present on the Quadra board.
This left the fit a little loose, but workable.
The big part of the project came when I had to cut the openings for
the ports in back. A utility knife and sandpaper was used to make a
nice opening without too much of a ragged edge to it. The utility knife
was a little tough to work with and gave my hand cramps, so I tried
heating up a carpet knife, but the stench of the melted plastic was
unacceptable. (I keep birds as pets, and they die easily from bad air.)
If you decide to use the hot knife approach, do it outdoors.
I also cut away a fair portion of the metal shielding with tin
snips, as it either interfered with the fit or directly contacted metal
with the mainboard fitted - and I didn't want any short circuits.
A little sanding and the opening looks good. The mainboard fits, and
everything plugs in nicely.
The Arrival
In about four days, the PPC 601 board arrived. Anxious to try it
out, I trial fitted everything outside the case to be sure it all fit
together and worked properly.
Then I realized something. I had no hard drive to boot up with. The
IIci I found didn't come with one. I could power it up, but there would
be no OS with which to test it.
Stymied again.
Then I remembered the IIvx. It had a hard drive, so out it came for
the testing of Project Quadra.
It's Alive! It's Alive!!!
With the IIvx hard drive connected to the pile of parts, it was time
to power up. I connected an old 14" Apple monitor to the mainboard and
hit the power button, fully expecting the whole mess to blow up in my
face, but it didn't. In fact, it worked quite nicely.
There was a problem, though. The Quadra 700 board showed only 12
megs of RAM under "About This Mac". This was obviously
unacceptable.
Not wanting to spend any money, I checked all the machines at my
disposal for a RAM donator. Fortunately, the previous owner of the IIci
did me the best favor anyone possibly could and upgraded the memory
with top quality parts! The little Viking head with the horned helmet
on the four RAM SIMMs made me smile. I pulled them and plugged them in
to replace the 2 MB SIMMs that the Quadra board came with. They
were taller than the low profile Quadra SIMMs, and I had read that the
RF emissions so close to the floppy drive can cause it to fail, but I
was desperate to get this 3-year-old project finished.
Powering up with the new SIMMs gave me a very pleasant
surprise. "About This Mac" now reported 68 Megs of RAM, the full
allotment for a Quadra 700!
Now to try the PPC 601 board. Uh oh! Bombs.
Do I need a driver for the 601? Is the board bad?
I don't know. I'll be researching this issue and updating when I
know more, but for now I'm happy just to have a Quadra 700, even with
the standard 040.
The End. Or Is It??
So with a working Quadra 700 in a IIci case, we reach the end of the
story, right? Not quite.
Remember the IIvx? It reenters the picture now.
Having it's case open and it's hard drive out got me to thinking
(which usually results in a visit from the police, paramedics, or fire
department, so this is a very dangerous thing).
I was thinking how nice it would be if Project Quadra had an
internal CD-ROM drive. There is no slot in the IIci case for one, and I
didn't want to hack it up any more to make one - and there wasn't
really what I consider sufficient room for it in there, and some sort
of weird cabling would need be to be devised to reach the SCSI port as
well as a support system to keep it from resting on the mainboard.
That IIvx case was looking more and more like a better home for the
Quadra mainboard than the IIci case, but would it fit??
First I had to get everything out of the IIvx case to get a clear
view of the mainboard. It took a bit of tinkering to figure out how
everything was held in place, but I managed to get it all out, and
guess what? The IIvx mainboard is exactly the same form factor
as the Quadra 700/IIci boards.
Better still, all the port locations on the IIvx mainboard are in
exactly the same places as the Quadra 700 mainboard. No case hacking
required! Even the single screw hole in the center of the motherboard
lines up.
One tab has to be removed from the bottom of the case, but these are
held in place with clips and can be removed without breaking them. Once
you remove that tab, you have a flat surface for the Quadra 700
mainboard, and it fits more securely than in the IIci case.
The Reassembly
With the Quadra mainboard in place and securely screwed down, it was
time to put everything back together. When reassembling, it's best to
plug the drives into the mainboard before you put the power
supply back in (the IIci power supply and the IIvx power supply seem
similar enough, and both worked with this project) or else you won't
have enough room to get your hands in under the bracket that holds
everything together to plug them in.
I did hit one minor snag here. The Quadra 700 mainboard doesn't have
a set of CD audio pins to connect the audio outputs from CD-ROM drive
to. It's okay, though, as I wanted the CD-ROM drive for loading
software rather than listening to CDs.
Another point worth mentioning here, since it's related, is that the
internal speakers from the IIci and IIvx use a 2-pin plug. The Quadra
700 mainboard has a 3-pin speaker plug. No matter how I oriented the
plugs from the IIci/vx speakers, I couldn't get so much as a startup
bong out of either of them. I think a 3-pin speaker from a real Quadra
700 will be needed for sound.
With the drives and the power supply back in, we arrive at the
moment of truth (for the third time). Power up. Again, success!
Does the CD-ROM work? Let's find out.
The IIvx hard drive had System 7.5.5 installed on it. I have a Mac
OS 7.6 CD that I use for upgrading older machines that can handle it,
so in it went. It was so nice to see that CD-ROM icon appear on the
screen.
Unfortunately for me, either the hard drive that came with the IIvx
was stuffed full or it was too small to do an install of 7.6, as I got
an error message from the installer saying there was insufficient space
on the hard drive. Not knowing the capacity of the drive, I didn't want
to format it only to find out it was still too small, so I just left it
with 7.5.5 for now.
Conclusion
If you're stuck with a IIvx with it's fast 68030 and slow system bus
and have access to the parts, you can upgrade it to a full 040 (or
possibly a Apple's PPC 601 Upgrade Card, if you can find one) on a
speedy bus, and you'll have a unique (well, unique apart from mine)
machine to impress everyone down at the vintage computer club and run
your 68k Mac software faster natively than almost anything. Only the
Quadra 840AV and 950 will still outrun it with the 040,
and I have to note here that the 840AV - the fastest of all the 040
Macs - doesn't accept the 601 board, which makes this machine
faster.
There were also chipping kits sold that can make the Quadra 700 even
faster, either with or without the 601 board installed. Of course, you
can also turn your IIvx into a Power Mac 7100 (my original plan for the
IIvx), but that involves swapping the bottom of the IIvx case for the
bottom of a 7100 case or hacking up the IIvx case to make the 7100
mainboard fit.
I think I like this mod almost as much. My biggest problem now is
deciding whether I have the only IIvx with an 040 on the motherboard or
the only Quadra 700 with an internal CD-ROM.
Photos are from Low End Mac's collection.
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