What to do with a 7200?

Punt it.

The 7200 is pretty much the most un-upgradeable PCI Mac in existence thanks to its soldered CPU, no PDS, and limited L2 expansion capability. If you get super lucky, you might track down one of the L2/PCI hybrid upgrade cards for it, but I wouldn't bother.

If your needs are being met by your other Macs, then, seriously, punt it. It will just take up space. Or you could gut it and turn it into a fancy external SCSI case.

Peace,

Drew

Take out the motherboard.

Get a clock making kit.

Turn the motherboard into a giant wall clock.

Remove the Apple logo from the case.

Melt the case.

The 7200 should not have happened.

I'm with the others. Strip it for parts and boot the scraps out the door. Keep the PC Compatibility card if it has one.

According to LEM you can stick another logic board in there from a 73-5-600 or Beige G3. That would make it into a worthwhile computer.

Do what Bunsen says.

To the trash heap it goes.

I'll keep the power supply as a spare for my 7300. I'll also keep the memory for whatever. Not that four 8MB DIMMs will ever see much use in the "afterlife".

The hard drive can replace the 400MB unit in the Quadra 700.

The Plastic part of the case has almost no yellowing whatsoever. The plastic on my 7300, by contrast, is yellower than Mountain Dew. So I think I'm going to be owning a 7300 with a 7200 plastic cover.

The rest will become the temporary fixture of the roadside.

It is possible to upgrade a 7200 to a G3, but it requires a hard to find Sonnet upgrade that fits into a PCI slot. It really isn't worth giving up a PCI slot for a G3. In order to keep the machine reasonably usable you would have to dedicate one other PCI slot to video, and then something like a Sonnet Tempo Trio in the last one and that's it. No more slots. Even a 7500/7600/7300 allows for one additional PCI slot that won't be taken up by your G3 upgrade.

Man, it could at least have made a decent *nix computer. Ah well.

I used to use a 7200/75 as an AppleTalk file server and it did a good job of it. Gave it away eventually though as I replaced it with a G3 tower.

It'd possibly make a good doorstep...

Poor 7200 I thought we're about saving Macs here, that anyone who threw a Mac away was a Ballmer-worshipping Mac-killer? Why is the 7200 so universally hated though, when the 68ks (and even Nubus PowerMacs to some extent) seem to be much loved, despite being even older and slower than the 7200? I'm sure if I'd said I was going to throw my 6100 away for being too slow and horrible then I'd have been extremely unpopular!

Man, it could at least have made a decent *nix computer. Ah well.

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A decent *nix computer that did what? That's the question. My 7300 is running Debian Etch at the moment. It has all of my PPC *nix needs covered. What could I possibly hope to do with the 7200 and Linux or *BSD?

Man, it could at least have made a decent *nix computer. Ah well.

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A decent *nix computer that did what? That's the question. My 7300 is running Debian Etch at the moment. It has all of my PPC *nix needs covered. What could I possibly hope to do with the 7200 and Linux or *BSD?

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Well, it's true that for YOU at the moment it has no use, but have you considered that someone might want to include it in his/her collection? Heck I once came close to purchasing one years ago because it had the everything I needed at the time and the price was great. Of course, then I got the Quadra I got as a gift and after marriage and children, well, lets say that I don't have much room for anything but what's on my signature. I even had to give away my Motorola StarMax 4000 because of space concerns.

Believe me, I would take it off your hands if I could and put it to use....anything to keep it from the scrap heap. :-/

I thought we're about saving Macs here, that anyone who threw a Mac away was a Ballmer-worshipping Mac-killer?

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Hate me all you want...i've thrown a Mac away. About a month ago.

But it was my old dead 8100, and absolutely everything that could be used had been stripped off of it. By the time i was done with it, all that was left was just a frame, motherboard (which was dead, which is why i chucked it...had the mobo still been good, the Mac would still be in one piece and in use today) and metal cover.

Why is the 7200 so universally hated though, when the 68ks (and even Nubus PowerMacs to some extent) seem to be much loved, despite being even older and slower than the 7200?

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Basically, its a bit like the Hyundai Getz...it was built to a price, and to avoid cannibalizing sales of more expensive machines. Back in the day, for not much more than what a 7200 would cost, you could've gotten a 7500, which has a processor mounted on a CPU daughtercard, and twice the RAM slots, and is basically a much better machine.

Hate me all you want...i've thrown a Mac away. About a month ago.
But it was my old dead 8100, and absolutely everything that could be used had been stripped off of it. By the time i was done with it, all that was left was just a frame, motherboard (which was dead, which is why i chucked it...had the mobo still been good, the Mac would still be in one piece and in use today) and metal cover.

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Oh, a dead Mac is one thing, I could probably chuck out a dead one. But an actual working one, I could never bring myself to throw away. I can understand why no-one wants the older PPCs now, given that G3s can be picked up for nothing and are amazing machines that make all the older ones look so slow and outdated, but I could still never throw one away! I don't use my 6100 now, it's too slow and the graphics on it are horrible on my new Apple displays, but I couldn't bin it considering that it does still work.

Basically, its a bit like the Hyundai Getz...it was built to a price, and to avoid cannibalizing sales of more expensive machines. Back in the day, for not much more than what a 7200 would cost, you could've gotten a 7500, which has a processor mounted on a CPU daughtercard, and twice the RAM slots, and is basically a much better machine.

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Well, then you could say the same thing about my old Motorola StarMax 4000. The CPU was soldered onto the motherboard. But it was still a very useful and very enjoyable Mac (even if it wasn't from Apple ). It ran great with OS 9.1 and Debian Sarge, and I took advantage as much as I could of those PCI slots. Personally, I would have done the same thing with a 7200, even if it was slower compared to the StarMax.

The only reason I parted with it was because I already purchased a much faster PowerPC Mac (the iMac G5). And that one is even less upgradeable than the StarMax or the 7200! I gave it to my father and when he asked me about getting rid of it, I told him to hold it for me because I didn't want to see it misused and abused. It wasn't easy giving up that clone....and I'm seriously considering taking it back in place of a one of the PCs in my sig.

Technically, all he's throwing away is the motherboard, which isn't worth much anyway even as a functioning board. Better to either replace the 7200 motherboard with one of the other 7x00 boards or a G3 board or to recycle whatever parts are salvageable into another Mac.

I have actually had two 7200s in my possession on seperate occasions over the last few years. The first one I gave to my sister so she could use it for the internet and then ultimately she gave it to her father-in-law who had never used a computer before and wanted to learn. As far as I know he still has it and enjoys the simplicity of the machine (it was running OS 8.1). The second one I used for a while before giving to a friend who was developing an interest in older Macs and wanted one to play with.

The only machine I have ever thrown away was a Power Computing Power Tower Pro which I found minus the CPU card. After an unsuccessful hunt for a CPU I stripped it of all useful parts and threw away the rest. However the parts were used to upgrade other older machines.

Moral of this story: don't throw out a working machine. There will always be someone else in the world who will appreciate it.

My first 7200 I got at a garage sale with keyboard, mouse, and display for $10. I sold it only a few days later on LEM Swap! The guy had an old printer or something, I think it was an ImageWriter II, and he needed any old Mac that could use such a printer. The 7200 worked perfectly for that. I set it up with System 7.x and ImageWriter II driver.

My second 7200 is a PC Compatible model that I got with the huge-ass liberation a few days ago. I plan on keeping it all together since the PC card is really neat. I had a 6100 with the DOS card but I never got it to actually work. I could get it to boot but I never was able to install DOS or anything.

The point is, 7200s are capable machines, when you don't have the "G3/G4 upgrade" mentality in your head.

Move the stuff on the 7300 to the 7200. then, you'll have a free 7300 that you can upgrade.

there are also plenty of Beige G3 boards around, that with minimal hacking, will fit into the 7200s case.

Poor 7200 I thought we're about saving Macs here, that anyone who threw a Mac away was a Ballmer-worshipping Mac-killer? Why is the 7200 so universally hated though, when the 68ks (and even Nubus PowerMacs to some extent) seem to be much loved, despite being even older and slower than the 7200? I'm sure if I'd said I was going to throw my 6100 away for being too slow and horrible then I'd have been extremely unpopular!

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I think the deal is that the "older, slower" 68k macs are actually faster when running system 7.0 or 7.1, at least at booting up and running ordinary word-processing programs. Much later, when you could stick in a G3 upgrade, that was when the PPC Macs became much, much faster. Of course, there is no easy way to upgrade a 7200, so it will always be quite slow.

My birthday present to myself will be (among other things) a Sonnet G4 1ghz CPU card. My SuperMac S900 is gonna fly!

The 7200 is just nothing special. It has no unique curiosities to it that make it stand out (other than it has a 601 soldered onto a PCI motherboard, anyway). It isn't fast, it isn't expandable, it can't import video...

It's a Mac, and for collector's sake, it might be an interesting one to own to complete a collection. But it has very little value in its own right. 68k Macs, OTOH, are all getting quite a bit rarer, so virtually any 68k Mac is worth keeping around. But if you wish, the 7200 is a bit analogous to the Performa 600. It's a boring machine in a boring case. Except the Performa 600/Mac IIvx might actually be slightly more expandable.

Peace,

Drew

It's a boring machine in a boring case.

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What makes a Mac "interesting" though? For me the G3 is the most interesting because it's very very fast, can run Tiger, looks really nice, and I prefer the tower form factor as they're easier to get inside and you can fit lots more stuff inside them. But out of all the pre-G3 Macs what is "special" about most of them? - very few of the pre-G3 PowerMacs are interesting really, not just the 7200 - they're all pretty slow and most of the won't run OS X useably, only those ones in the taller version of the G3's case are especially interesting to me.

Move the stuff on the 7300 to the 7200. then, you'll have a free 7300 that you can upgrade.
there are also plenty of Beige G3 boards around, that with minimal hacking, will fit into the 7200s case.

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My 7300 is running Debian Etch. Debian will install on the 7200 and run quite nicely in console mode. I had previously used the 7200 with Debian as a netbooting machine. It worked fine for that task. Now, though, with a much more capable machine running Debian, it's more practical to just let that machine assume the 7200's duties in addition to what the 7300 is presently doing: Apache web server, Squid cache proxy, network time server, dhcp server, dns server.

The 7200 would bog down if it were to assume the 7200's duties. With only 32MB of RAM in the 7200, it would be disk swap city trying to run just Squid. That would bring Apache to a crawl. The 7200 could handle bind9, ntpd, and dhcp3 just fine, but why use two machines when just one machine can do everything?

As for freeing up the 7300, that was actually my planned project for this weekend. I'm going to move my server operations from the 7300 to an X86 PC. The PC is just a faster machine. Faster disk access, faster processor, faster bus, four times more RAM, etcetera. The 7300 is going to become my development machine -- running CodeWarrior.

EDIT: In addition to being faster, the PC is also cheaper and easier to upgrade. That makes it a much better candidate for server use.

My second 7200 is a PC Compatible model that I got with the huge-ass liberation a few days ago. I plan on keeping it all together since the PC card is really neat.

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As I understand it, the PC Compat card is a PCI card, and it will work in any PCI Mac that can boot OS 9

I think I'm going to to try to get a 7200. They may end up becoming the rarest PCI Powermacs with all the people who don't appreciate them.

Yeah, those PC Compatibility cards are awesome. I have almost all of the DOS/PC Compatible Macs, including the 7200. The only bad part about those is that the faster model cards have soldered processors...

But yes, they will run in virtually any PCI Mac. My Blue and White G3's manual says something about being able to use the 7" model, but not the 12" (it's been a while since I read this). I prefer to keep PC Compatible machines in one piece, though, and don't really have much of a reason to run a 133MHz Pentium with my 500MHz G3.

I should really experiment with replacing those wretched Pentium (or worse, Cyrix) processors with some much faster K6-2's. Anybody know how to change the clock frequencies on these cards? Hope it's just a set of resistors or something...

I think I'm going to to try to get a 7200. They may end up becoming the rarest PCI Powermacs with all the people who don't appreciate them.

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It's not that I don't appreciate the 7200, it's just that I have no use for it. It's "about as useful as a tit on a bull," as Derek Edwards would say.

My second 7200 is a PC Compatible model that I got with the huge-ass liberation a few days ago. I plan on keeping it all together since the PC card is really neat.

Click to expand...

As I understand it, the PC Compat card is a PCI card, and it will work in any PCI Mac that can boot OS 9

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Yes, but the 7200 says "PC Compatible" right on the front of it, so it's really cool to keep the card in there, as one piece. It just makes sense. More than likely I would use the PC functionality more than the Mac functionality so the fact that it's a 7200 doesn't really matter.

Finally bit the bullet and trashed the old 7200. Had a bunch of other Mac stuff to toss too. Had an Apple Design keyboard that wouldn't let you plug a mouse into it, so it's gone. A bunch of old Apple 300i internal CDROM drives found their way to the trash too. As did a few other odds and ends that aren't worthy of mention.

My Mac collection is now down to six. Two PDS Macs, two NuBus Macs, and two PCI Macs. That's all I need. Although, I'm beginning to wonder if I even need the LC. [] ]'>

You know, if the PCI G3 upgrade for these could be made to work in another machine, and run as a separate Mac a la Radius Rocket, and you could have three-six of them ....