Power Macintosh Broken
======================
I have a Power Macintosh 6100. I got it in 2005 from one photographer in
Prague. The computer was (and still is) in a perfect cosmetical condition. It
also worked for a long time: of course it wasn't used too often as it it
the first PowerPC-based Macintosh (previous machines were based on the famous
m68k architecture from the Motorola). Thus it has a lot of design problems:
actually, it is quite slow (being introduced in 1994 it is slower than the
original SGI Indigo from 1991, it should be noted that Indigo has 33 MHz MIPS
CPU and the Mac has 66 MHz PowerPC CPU which is much more powerful).
After some time I have got a G3 processor upgrade for the box and an add-on
graphics (thus allowing 1024x768 resolution in 256 colors! ;-)). The G3 upgrade
has CPU on 200 MHz but I'm not sure if it runs on a full speed. Anyway the
speedup is clearly visible. The another problem was memory size. The Mac has
some 8 MB of build-in memory and two SIMM slots. In theory one can find
compatible memory modules and have up to 72 MB or RAM (8+32+32 MB), in practice
I was unable to find compatible ones so my limit is 40 MB (8+16+16).
It was a good machine for some relatively light work, mostly for testing of old
Macintosh world (but it made little sense at the time because I have got an iMac
G5 with the OS 9 emulation in 2006).
Anyway, I finally found a good use for the 6100 (the main use is of course the
original Marathon [1], but pssst...): a machine to collect data from my
AlphaSmart typewriting device. Thus I did some changes in my ADB cables, I also
got a Kensighton trackball (I don't want to have more than one mouse on my
desk) and so on. Then I turned the machine on and... :-(
The device starts, there is a green LED but there is no screen signal, no
startup sound, no other sign of life. It did such things in the past, and there
were some solutions, but on one works now.
References:
[1]
http://marathon.sourceforge.net
