Quadra 660AV what's with the "PowerPC" label?

[Swift Griggs]

On Mon, 13 Jun 2016, Liam Proven wrote:
> ... that looks like a 6100 case, so maybe someone re-cycled part of a 
> case cover or something?

I think that's likely. I don't see much else that could explain it. It's 
just that it's weird, since the owner didn't seem very technical. 

> A decade later, I'm still sad and annoyed that I missed a Quadra 840AV 
> on my local South London Freecycle group. I'd always wanted one.

I had one of those for a while. I have to say that, even though it was 
more expandable than the 660AV, I still had trouble warming up to the 
machine. It was too big, has the rounded-face style that I dislike, and 
can't run A/UX. Of course on the latter point, neither can a 660AV.

> I did have a Quadra 650, though. Lovely machine. I sold it when I left 
> the country -- I no longer own a house, so I don't have the space. :-(

I always thought of that machine as a "quality Performa" since it has a 
similar case style to the one many of the Performas had.

> I kept a beige G3 or two. I will revive and restore them at some point, 
> and keep the best and sell the rest. They'll at least use EIDE drives, 
> cheap plentiful SD-RAM and can run (elderly versions of) OS X, which 
> makes it dramatically easier to get stuff on and off them, either by 
> Internet or by disk, especially USB disk.

Hmm, yes, I can see how that would be an easier machine to cope with. I 
lost interest in Macs after OSX came along. It's a strange phenomenon. I 
am a dyed-in-the-wool Unix zealot. So, you'd think I'd love OSX. Many of 
my co-workers love it. I don't hate it, but I don't bother with it because 
I prefer a stock [Free|Net] BSD box. I like the 68k Macs because they 
remind me of simpler times and I love the M68k. Plus, I have a massive 
collection of M68k apps/games I can easily load onto them without much 
effort. OSX went too far off the rails for me. Plus, I find that I don't 
get along with the current OSX/Mac crowd much. System 9.x and before are 
"something different" for me, a break from my mostly hardcore CLI 
existence.
 
> It feels a tad dishonest, like cheating, but it's far easier to fire up 
> 10.3, fetch something off the Web or a thumbdrive or something, unpack 
> it, then reboot into MacOS 9 and actually use it, than it is to get 
> access to that stuff direct from classic MacOS.

I know what you mean, but that's why you wanna get your M68k Mac onto your 
network and just use FTP, instead. That helps tremendously. However, until 
that point it's floppies and CDROMs, so I know what you mean. 

USB is about the only "modern" development that I very much miss on older 
machines. It's so nice to interchange mice, keyboards, and mass storage 
devices that way. 

-Swift