24 Nov
2009
24 Nov
'09
9:28 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Al Kossow" <aek at bitsavers.org>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 2:57 PM
Subject: Re: compact macs (was Re: Ten Year Rule)
I had been fiddling around trying to decide which of
the old 68K macs I
liked
the best. At the time, my favorite was the Q800 with a 40MHz processor,
which
was supported but never released because it was too close in performance
to
the 840AV. I hadn't played much with the Powerbooks, mostly because they
were
developed by a different group and we didn't have many prototypes around,
so
I picked up about a dozen different models the last couple of weeks on
eBay
cheap so I could get a better feel for them. It's interesting to look at
how
fast the technology advanced in them through the 90's, and how each one
seems
to be crippled in a different way so that in the end I didn't end up
liking
any of the 68K models. The 190cs should have been the best, being the
last,
but they left out ethernet, for example.
What was crippled in the Mac II and Quadra series? I think it was kind of
odd Apple didn't include some cache for the fastest machines like the
Q800/840av/950. I have an aftermarket 950 CPU upgrade that is 68040/50
(overclocked 40mhz) with some cache and it is faster then stock for sure.
Another machine has a Daystar PPC 601-80 and between that card and the 950
mainboard you can stuff 384MB of RAM and have it usable on the 68K side (no
idea what you could use it all for). While the workstations were decent
Apple did shortchange everything else so it would not be as fast as the more
expensive models (ram limits, bus speed, cpu options, upgrade slots, etc).