[sine -''-..-]

i just want to express my affinity for old macs. old as in the good ol beiges. i have a network of 601 powermacs that i run 24/7 and sofar have given me 0 problems...
ive owned a rev D imac, have a imac dvse400 and an ibook (on the new mac side of the matter) and the only that has been working as/better than i hope has been the ibook. the rest were disappointing. ive had little contact with g4s and the like, but from what i hear, they have similar and or other problems.

anyhow, i just think apple has gone downhill in terms of quality and overall apple-ness. i love my ibook to death but mind you she is the rev a. jobs screwed me with the death of newton, and is now giving a bad name to apple with the poor imac line.

<rant engine disengaged>

what do you all think?

s i n e
-''-..-

[TheDoctor]

I really appreciate the older Macs (I've got 7 or 8 floating around here somewhere), particularly the SE/30. I've also got a soft spot in my heart for the 6100-series. I used a 6115 (which I later swapped for a 6150 with a G3 upgrade) everyday for more than a year and loved every minute of it. That machine is now the primary server on my nascent home network. It's replacement is a brand-new G4. I have to admit, the first week was pretty rocky, it crashed at least once a day, but since then, I maybe crash once a week. I have been able to attribute most of those crashes particular programs, as well, so I can't really blame the machine for them. I can think of few negative aspects of this graphite beauty. Really, the only thing I can think of is the lack of a sound input jack. Other than that, it is evident that a great deal of thought went into making it easy for the end-user to upgrade and maintain this computer.

[finboy]

I agree. I've had pretty good service out of my ibook and imac (rev. D) but I think it's because I was fortunate enough to get OS 8.6 on both of them.

I started out with a Powerbook 100 and worked my way forward over about 4 years now. I still keep those older systems (SEs, 68020s, 68030s and Quadras, with and without PPC upgrade cards) because they allow me to get work done when a newer machine goes down. Of course, hard drives are a problem, because narrow SCSI drives are hard to find sometimes.

But in general, I find the older macs easier to maintain, easier to back up, easier to restore and easier to configure.

Today, because Retrospect Express won't restore to my ibook hard drive, I'm using my primary spare work machine, a Powerbook 5300c. A friend gave it to me after 3 years of hard use, and I have used it hard too. It's been back to Apple 4 times so far. Despite this, it has 64M RAM and a network card and does what I need it to.

I refuse to upgrade hardware for the sake of upgrading. In general, I prefer to use the oldest system possible to get work done.

Once again, after the ibook backup fiasco, I've been proven correct. If I didn't have this 5300 up and running and ready to go, I'd be screwed right now, today.

By the way, after using Retrospect for a number of years now, I can say without hesitation that Retrospect Express is practically useless and bites the big one.

------------------
Shop smart, shop S-Mart! You got that!!?!!

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by sine -''-..-:
i just want to express my affinity for old macs. old as in the good ol beiges. i have a network of 601 powermacs that i run 24/7 and sofar have given me 0 problems...
ive owned a rev D imac, have a imac dvse400 and an ibook (on the new mac side of the matter) and the only that has been working as/better than i hope has been the ibook. the rest were disappointing. ive had little contact with g4s and the like, but from what i hear, they have similar and or other problems.

anyhow, i just think apple has gone downhill in terms of quality and overall apple-ness. i love my ibook to death but mind you she is the rev a. jobs screwed me with the death of newton, and is now giving a bad name to apple with the poor imac line.

<rant engine disengaged>

what do you all think?

s i n e
-''-..-

I think you're right. Old World ROM... ahh, those were the days. Dude, you HAVE to get a 5500/250 DE...


------------------

[Walter J. Ferstl]

Well,

in 1986 I started with the 512KE (dual floppy), then had the Plus (later even with a 20 MB hard drive, whow!), then a IIcx, IIci, Quadra 650, LCIII, Performa 6200/75.

The IIci is the only one among my own Macs (I am also supporting some other 20 Macs with customers, mostly Performas and early PPC Macs in the 6100 to 7300 range) that is definitely broken, all the others are still in working condition.

Today I have a PPC 7300/166 (had two of them), my main machine is a first generation desktop G3 (originally a 233 MHz, I upgraded it later with an IBM copper G3 466 chip). Probably I will go further up with this nice grey ("beige"?) box when faster G3 ZIF modules will become available like a 733 - maybe IBM will make some for me and my friends here?.

I especially like the looks and the build of the desktop cases of the 7300 and G3 - top quality enclosure, perfect accessibility, all the good old interfaces such as SCSI, serial, ADB, expandability galore, excellent mice and keyboards...

USB? No. FireWire? Yes, but maybe a little later.

A soft spot in my heart is devoted to the pizza box 68k Macs. Over the years, I have accumulated three or four of them, some Performa 450's and the mentioned LC III. These days, you get the 450's for free here, "just come and pick it up" style. People know that I am sort of a daddy for old Macs...

Best regards,

Walter.

[Walter J. Ferstl]

I forgot to mention two othe Macs I had:

8100/80 - trusty, reliable, but not easy to configure (I wanted to take out some RAM before selling it, but I gave up when I saw that I would have to remove all the drives before to access the motherboard). So it went out of the door with 56 MB of RAM...

4400/160 - forget about hardware quality - just like any mediocre PC...

Regards again,

Walter.

[Walter J. Ferstl]

finboy,

you wrote:
-----
I refuse to upgrade hardware for the sake of upgrading. In general, I prefer to use the oldest system possible to get work done.
-----

That is exactly what I do, but in terms of system, i do not look back beyond 7.6.1, on any Mac (I do not use any 68000-Mac, anyway, just 68030 and up).

On newer PPCs and G3 (Old World ROM, of course), I prefer OS 8.1, sometimes using extensions etc. from a later OS.

Regards,

Walter.