I wanted to save the 7200. I really did. I even cannibalized a good 7500 for parts. I was putting together an old games machine where I could run games like SimTower, SimCity 2000, Duke Nukem 3D, and some old programs like Graphing Calculator. I can run these on the G5 now in Classic mode but Leopard has no Classic mode. I picked the 7200 because the G3 cards were very cheap, and it also had a PC card where I could run some old PC games too, and because the 7200 was generally unloved/unappreciated. I wanted to show how for just a bit of cash the 7200 could be made into a great Classic OS machine.

Unfortunately, this particular 7200 failed me, and I won't have another one again until I come across one locally. My first 7200 I got from a garage sale and was sold off in a matter of days on LEMSwap to someone who needed to use an ImageWriter. This second one I got in a school auction with lots of other Macs.

It's crazy the 7500 can even use the 7200's special G3 upgrade. Sure it takes a PCI slot but for a Classic Games machine I don't really need lots of PCI slots. Onboard ethernet suffices, I don't need USB or FireWire (I use ZIP disks to move data between the old Macs and the G5), the onboard video is fine for old non 3D games.

The PCI PC Compatibility card does not seem to work on any other 7x00 Macs because it needs this proprietary little slot to plug a doohickey into in order to get video.