I was wondering if there was any speed/ performance benefit from dumping pretty much everything from my current 7600 into an 8500:
144MB RAM
300 MHz G3
two hard drives
CD-ROM

Or spend the cash on RAM

Thanks

[zac4mac]

Unless you feel you need the room for expansion(read more drives)the 7600 case is much easier to work on than the 8500 is. It took me less time to add a stick of RAM and a second hard drive to my new G4 than it takes to get the cover off my 8500... adding RAM is at LEAST a 20 minute job to an 8500, but should take less than a minute on your 7600. Big advantage is the extra AV circuitry on the 8500 MoBo, it has full s-video and RCA audio/video in/out. Your best plan for this setup would be to put the 8500 MoBo and all the choice parts in the 7600 case.(providing that the 8500 MoBo will fit in the 7600 case, not sure if it will, I did at one time put my 8500's guts in a 7500 case for RAM troubleshooting) Also of benefit when setting up this genre Mac, be sure to use matched pairs of 60 ns EDO RAM and interleave, ie, put like sticks in like slots: A4/B4, A3/B3, etc. Doing so will give you a noticeable boost in performance over non-interleaved FPM 70 ns RAM.

EDO memory doesn't interleave, the 7600 and 8500's use SDRAM.

I doubt that the 8500 logic board will fit inside the 7600 case. The power connector on the 8500 logic board is near the top back part of the case (when installed in the 8500 case) and the connector faces upward (sideways if you were to put it in the 7600 case). This is the same with the audio ports, floppy and one of the SCSI busses. You would have to extend some vital cables, like the power lines from the power supply to the connector, to get the thing to work - and you'd have to probably get new SCSI and floppy ribbons.



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Eliott Wolfe
Winnetka, Calif