[DigitalEl]

My workplace, a news wire service, has a pair of old Apple Quadra 605s laying in a storage room. They're dusty and appear to be untouched for years. The pile they're on looks like it could be thrown into a dumpster any day now. Are these worth "rescuing?" Do they have any use? What were they primarily used for back in the day? My current system at home is a G4 700 Mhz iMac. Anything the new machine and the relic could do together? Here are the machine's specs from the Apple History website.

Macintosh Quadra 605
Codename: Aladdin, Primus
CPU: Motorola MC68LC040
CPU Speed: 25 Mhz
FPU: available via 68040 upgrade
Bus Speed: 25 Mhz
Data Path: 32 bit
ROM: 1 MB
RAM Type: 72 pin SIMM
Mininum RAM Speed: 60 ns
Onboard RAM: 8 MB
RAM Slots: 1
Maximum RAM: 36 MB
Level 1 Cache: 8 kb
VRAM: 512 kb - 1 MB (2 sockets)
Maximum Resolution: 8 bit 832x768
Slots: 1 LC III PDS
Floppy Drive: 1.4 MB SuperDrive
Hard Disk: 80-250 MB
ADB: 1
Serial: 2
SCSI: DB-25
Video Out: DB-19
Audio Out: stereo 8 bit
Audio In: mono 8 bit
Speaker(s): mono
Gestalt ID: 94
Power: 30 Watts
Weight: 8.8 lbs.
Dimentions: 2.9" H x 12.2" W x 15.3" D
Minimum OS: 7.1
Maximum OS: 8.1
Introduced: October 1993
Terminated: October 1994

[rjenkinson]

not unless you want to look around for an ethernet PDS card and then use the machines for light networking duties. of course, instead of throwing them out, you could always fix them up a little (install basic applications) and donate them to a local charity.

-r.

[DigitalEl]

Not to ask a question, then reject a valid response, but my fiancee is an educator. I've read articles quoting school officials and other charity recipients saying something to the effect of "if it's not useful to you, why do you think it'd be useful to us?" The point was urging people not to use schools, libraries and churches as obsolete technology repositories. Not that there's no-one out there that would appreciate the machine. Just bringing up what I read. It may have even been in the NY Times.

Anyway, any other thoughts?

[tooki]

Quadra 605's are really fast if they have enough RAM and are running System 7.1. They make a great platform for running old software that's not compatible with more recent OS versions.

And heck, you can run ClarisWorks 4 or WordPerfect 3.5 on them beautifully.

Those systems' achille's heel is, IMHO, the stock hard drives, which were really slow. They really benefit from a faster hard drive and more RAM.

Or, with even a low-configured one, throw in a surplus LCIII PDS ethernet card, and use it to run LocalTalk bridge.

tooki

[clarkgoble]

The best thing to do with old machines is put Linux on them and run them as servers. If you have background processes you can use them to take those activities off your main machine. The big concern then becomes power use. (Make sure to turn the screen off)

For instance if you have a cable modem you could make an old Mac or PC a NAT server, put a mail server on it, and then have it run backups and so forth. You can use it as a controller for a home security system. (Easier on PCs as the X-10 stuff and similar hardware is more available there - but I believe there is stuff that'll work on a Mac)

We have a few old PCs that we use as CD servers. I have a lot of reference CDs that I use. Obviously I can't have them all open. But the software won't run off the HD. I put them on that system with old CD drives I've collected (you can find them cheap as well). Viola. I have 4 CD's on a network. Very nice.

It just takes a bit of ingenuity.

[RealMadrid]

And probably you would be able to overclock it quite nicely. Some time ago I had a 25MHz 610 and easily overclocked it to 40MHz. No soldering necesary as it is today. 60% speed gain!

Imagin doing that to my DP 1GHz. Would really be nice.

On a side not. I have just installed 10.1.5 on a 7300/200 (well not as old as your 605 but already legacy hardware). It serves as a headless test webserver with PHP and MySQL. Nice to have those old machines around. You never know what you can do with them.

Regards.

[webb3201]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by DigitalEl:
[B]My workplace, a news wire service, has a pair of old Apple Quadra 605s laying in a storage room. They're dusty and appear to be untouched for years. The pile they're on looks like it could be thrown into a dumpster any day now. Are these worth "rescuing?" Do they have any use? What were they primarily used for back in the day? My current system at home is a G4 700 Mhz iMac. Anything the new machine and the relic could do together? Here are the machine's specs from the Apple History website.

Check out this web site dedicated to 68k macs.

http://www.68kmla.com/

[bradoesch]

If you can't find any use for them, I know this guy who collects older Macs who'd be glad to pay the shipping....