Hi Dimitris
www.lowendmac.com is not a bad place to start for answers to such questions.
Here are the results from my experience:
• Are these Quadra(s) good for this purpose? Quadras were top-of-the range between 1991 and 1994. They are very good for all games that came out on and before this time range. LLS has 7 iterations that came out over a long period. To all intents and purposes, Quadras can run System 6 games superbly well, early System 7 games very well, late System 7 games well and some games games for Mac OS 8.1.
What kind of upgrades do they take? There are many Quadras: from the Performa 475 at 25Mhz (without an FPU) to the Quadra 840av running at 40MHz. I personally have a Q950 and a Performa 475 upgraded with a NewerTech Quadra Overdrive running a 40MHz 68040 at 50MHz. The Performa ran amazingly well.
• I read sth about a sonnet presto accelerator. If the machine have this card installed, is it possible to boot the machine without the drivers in order to use the motorola cpu? I imagine so.
What about the addressing mode? I really want to be able to change that from 24 to 32-bit and opposite. With the sonnet presto can you do that or not? I'm not sure, but I think that the 68040 is only 32-bit.
If 24-bit is important to you, then look at the high-end 68030, like the IIfx and IIci.
• What other upgrades can these machines do? Upgrades to Quadras include PPC upgrades (but why would one do that? A PPC8100/80 is far better and cheaper), replacing the 68LC040 with a full 68040 in those machines that have one, giving it lots more RAM, the Sonnet Presto and Newer upgrades, if you can find one, impressive NuBus graphics cards, SCSI NuBus cards that allow the use of faster drives and so on.
• Can you put an internal cd at Quadra 700? No. You need a Q900, Q950 or Q840AV. An LC or Q630 also has a CD-ROM. Why not get an external SCSI one?
www.lowendmac.com is not a bad place to start for answers to such questions.
Here are the results from my experience:
• Are these Quadra(s) good for this purpose? Quadras were top-of-the range between 1991 and 1994. They are very good for all games that came out on and before this time range. LLS has 7 iterations that came out over a long period. To all intents and purposes, Quadras can run System 6 games superbly well, early System 7 games very well, late System 7 games well and some games games for Mac OS 8.1.
What kind of upgrades do they take? There are many Quadras: from the Performa 475 at 25Mhz (without an FPU) to the Quadra 840av running at 40MHz. I personally have a Q950 and a Performa 475 upgraded with a NewerTech Quadra Overdrive running a 40MHz 68040 at 50MHz. The Performa ran amazingly well.
• I read sth about a sonnet presto accelerator. If the machine have this card installed, is it possible to boot the machine without the drivers in order to use the motorola cpu? I imagine so.
What about the addressing mode? I really want to be able to change that from 24 to 32-bit and opposite. With the sonnet presto can you do that or not? I'm not sure, but I think that the 68040 is only 32-bit.
If 24-bit is important to you, then look at the high-end 68030, like the IIfx and IIci.
• What other upgrades can these machines do? Upgrades to Quadras include PPC upgrades (but why would one do that? A PPC8100/80 is far better and cheaper), replacing the 68LC040 with a full 68040 in those machines that have one, giving it lots more RAM, the Sonnet Presto and Newer upgrades, if you can find one, impressive NuBus graphics cards, SCSI NuBus cards that allow the use of faster drives and so on.
• Can you put an internal cd at Quadra 700? No. You need a Q900, Q950 or Q840AV. An LC or Q630 also has a CD-ROM. Why not get an external SCSI one?