The Performa 6200CD - is it really the worst Macintosh ever made?
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- Опубліковано 6 лип 2024
- Today we're taking a look at my Performa 6200CD. Although some very smart people call this the worst Mac of all time, I love it. Let's max out the RAM, and talk a little bit about why this classic desktop Macintosh is so controversial.
Low End Mac article: lowendmac.com/2014/power-mac-...
Awesome rebuttal to LEM: www.taylordesign.net/classic-...
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#vintage #macintosh #performa - Наука та технологія
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The PowerPC 603e chip is 32 bits, not 64 bits. AIM didn't manufacture a 64-bit processor until The PowerPC G5. What you're mistaken about is that the PowerPC chip was 32-bit, and the data path was 16-bit.
I'm a bit of an amateur so I might be misunderstanding, but I was going off of this LEM article which describes the 603 as intended for a 64 bit data bus but running on 32 bits with a penalty. lowendmac.com/2014/cpus-powerpc-603-and-603e/
Ah gotcha, thank you!
@@ActionRetro I'm going to have to research this a bit more. Some specs say it was a 64-bit processor, but yet the PowerPC G5 was advertised as the first 64-bit consumer processor. Not sure what market hyperbole is being used here.
@@ActionRetro Okay, I got confused a bit here. There is an address bus and a data bus. The address bus is 32-bit, the data bus is either 32-bit or 64-bit. Some of the internal functions of the 603 chip are 64-bit. However, when paired with a 32-bit data bus, the access to RAM is cut in half. That was one 'feature' that hindered the 603 and made it so terrible. www.nxp.com/docs/en/data-sheet/MPC603.pdf
32 bit instructions, 64 bit data paths. The 603 (non e) in this 6200 has indeed got a 64 bits wide data bus however it is interfaced into a custom bridge chip which gives it the ability to talk to a 68k chipset. which runs at a data path width of 32 bits and even at a different clock speed IIRC. The 68K chipset was responsible for controlling the memory, peripherals and graphics. The one saving grace is the L2 Cache and rom were hung off the bridge chip directly and was 64 bits wide at processor bus clock, but that was not enough to save it from its abysmal performance. One of the common problems with the 603 (non e) was its internal L1 cache was only 16 kb. This was a bit of an issue for the code recompiler that Apple implemented in the system software to allow seamless emulation of 68k applications on PPC computers. The recompiler was written originally for the 601 and intended to work snugly inside of its 32k unified L1. And the 603 used independent instruction and data caches of 8k each. To top it off the 603 also had 1 fewers execution units internally compared to the 601 (2xALU vs 3xALU) as it was intended to be a scaled down more power efficient cpu. My 7100/66AV with l2 cache manages to just out perform an LCIII+ in 68k application performance, however a 6200 isn't even able to obtain LCII level performance in the same applications. And that is at least a 2.5x to 3x performance difference. many applications and extensions (including about half of the system software) was still written in thin binaries for 68K only.
Yes, it really was that bad.. Once the system software and most applications became native PPC binaries the performance difference was narrower, but the cpu still had fewer resources and was still too slow. The 603E at least corrected this partly by increasing the cache sizes to 16K each. And this was able to partly handle the 68K emulation much better. And having a chipset with a proper 64 bits wide data path to memory was really the biggest reason for its increased performance in later macs. Though it really took the 604 at about 120mhz before it could out perform an 840AV in 68K.
"the dark days of Apple, where multiple product lines converged and competed with each other" - funny how history repeats...
Amazing how they managed to do that when they're selling the same five computers they've been selling since 2001.
How?
These Performas weren't just for home users, these were common in classrooms, typically teachers had 'em. Used to see them everywhere at school circa 2000.
By 2000 my school district had bought the iMac G3. My memory is fuzzy since this is all the way back in elementary school, but we either had this or the LCiiis.
@@ryanstoddard1803 We had iMacs and various LCs, but I don't remember anything else.
There was a few one-off Classics and Beige G3s, and even a few Apple IIs, but for the most part it was those.
me: "holy crap! that Mac OS Classic N64 emulator runs really well!"
me a little bit later: "oh.... capture card :("
i actually spotted that 'VIDEO' window caption first, thinking _is it playing a video in a window?_ :))
It’s even more ancient and underwhelming than a capture card. It does pass through and terrible single frame caps....
I was lucky and came to the macintosh right after this period. My first system was the All-in-One 5400 with a 180MHz 603e Power PC processor and built-in Sony 15 CRT which, uses the same motherboard as the Performa Tower 6400 and the 20th Anniversary Mac. All three of these systems also accept the Apple Video card, and Apple TV/FM card with black remote control which, I see is already installed on your 6200CD. In addition, please note that each of these systems can also accept the Crescendo/L2 G3 processor upgrade card.
It seems that, thanks to that Low End Mac Article, this is a less costly option for classic mac. Nice!
In the mid 90s I started college for 3d animation and design. The equipment guide recommended purchasing a PowerPC Mac to run Electric Image but did not specify the specs. I got a 6200CD... that did not... ummm... work out too well even after spending a fortune maxing out it's ram. Yet, I have incredible nostalgia for that machine (I miss eWorld/Hotline so much.)
Edit: Forgot to add, Electric Image back then cost $8000 and required a hardware dongle so no pirating it (and my college forced you to buy it). Imagine the ridiculousness of running an $8000 piece of software on a 75mhz 603 with 16megs of ram (eventually 64meg).
From a collector's standpoint I think this and similar machines are woefully underappreciated. The use of 72-pin SIMMs and IDE drives makes them so much cheaper and easier to upgrade and maintain than the 168-pin DIMMs and SCSI drives of "better" Power Macs.
I do believe it is worth noting that while standard 6300's share similar design flaws with the 6200, the later 160MHz variant (sometimes branded as the 6360) corrected most of these issues and could be thought of as a 6400 in the 6200/6300 style case.
I was originally toying with the idea of finding a 6360 motherboard, but I think this machine would lose its charm if I upgraded it.
I downgraded mine to a LC 580's logic board, I just wanted a 68k mac since I mainly have PPC ones, a Power Mac 6100 and a iMac G3. I wonder if a magic eraser would work for removing the PowerPC logo from the front panel of the mac.
Correct. I had the 6320, which was the last model with the compromised motherboard. If I had only waited another month or two, I would have had the 6360.
0:30 HEY THAT ISN'T AN EMULATOR, THAT'S A NINTENDO! THE COMPUTER ISN'T DOING ANY OF THAT! HE'S A PHONY! A BIG FAT PHONY!
🤣🤣🤣
I had a 5200...it's like the 6200 but with a built in display, so even worse. I loved it dearly back than playing F/A-18 Hornet and Escape Velocity. Also i made my first Photoshop steps with it... loved that slow thing. :D
I love your videos. I’m addicted to watching all of these old Mac videos!
Thanks man!
1) This was way too short :)
2) nice shoutout to 65Scribe, he's one of my favs
3) I happen to have a Mac Classic. THAT is a crippled Mac :)
Aw man! The Mac Classic is crippled but in an adorable way :)
Action Retro My brother has one but the CRT doesn’t work.
Dude at some point do the Duo and the Duo Dock. Thing was lit and before its time
My first computer was a Macintosh Performa 630CD that looked almost exactly like this machine (33mhz, 8mb RAM, 250MB hdd, 2x CDROM, 2400bps fax/modem). I won't lie I kinda wish I had it to indulge in my "retro moments" lol. Anyway, cool video I subscribed.
Wow, I had that very same NEC display. I kinda wish I hadn't thrown it out.
Great overview of the Performa! Your channel deserves way more subscribers!
No way ... I loved this machine. It got me through a few years' work as a journalist. I had an Apple monitor.
That's awesome!
2:39 very deserved shoutout to 65scribe, he deserves more views/subscribers with his well thought out and funny videos about old Mac stuff!
I had a 6360 that got me halfway through college. I loved almost every part of that computer from the 64mb of ram to the 2gb hard drive. The thing I didn't love about it, the thing that completely bamboozled me, that I didn't find out about until after recording half an album on it, was that the audio bus was only 22.05khz, not 44.1 like every other peer mac. I thought, foolishly, that the RCA jacks on the back would yield a superior signal chain and thus higher audio quality. Boy was I wrong. Programs like ReBirth sounded odd on it, missing some clarity, but I dismissed it. However all my recordings were muddy and impossible to EQ.
Dat Doom 2 performance at the end... yikes. Not even my 486 SX 25 did that bad!
The PM 5300 (same as 6200/6300 but with a 603e) was my first PowerPC. I snapped one up from Walmart for $285.00 because of the Gil Amelio inventory fiasco. I thought the performance was amazing, of course my previous Mac was a 660AV, but still I was blown away by the speed.
Wow I didn't know Walmart sold Macs back then!
Oh yeah:) This was two months after they were discontinued, there were something like ten more on the shelves, I think the week before the price was $1300.00? I sold it two weeks later on a little start up site called eBay for $1100 and my 660av for $500. I used that to buy a used (almost new) 7300 with a bad hard drive, with $300.00 left over.
I was given one of these for free and I know that it powers on and I can hear it working but I need a way to connect a display to it. I've got the factory (bnc?) display cable that came with it but I need to output to VGA somehow since I don't have the extra composite inputs your Performa was graced with. I noticed you had an adapter on the back of yours to adapt it to VGA. Do you know the name of that adapter or what I would look up to find one? Thanks ahead of time!
This was my first Mac. It lasted us a long time. I think until about 1999. Wasn’t the fastest but we had a lot of good times on it.
Hey there - what is the adapter for the NEC monitor? I have one of these Macs but would love to connect it to a better monitor (original is so blurry it’s unusable). I looked around but could not find any solid info. Thanks very much in advance!
Also, my Performa 6320 is my all time favorite Apple computer. It was the first computer I ever owned that wasnt a PC, and the first system I got to play both Sim City 2000 and Starcraft on.
NIce Video Haven't See One Of Those 6200 in A Long Time
What does the black square thingy at the right do? (next to the floppy)
Do you have a picture of the power supply out of this? I'm trying to restore one myself and when I took the power supply out to check it I may have swapped the power in connections and want to make sure I didn't before I plug it back in.
I went from SE/30 to Performa 6200 series to Beige G3 Desktop. You’ve covered all three. Did you somehow acquire my old computers or something?
I did my first video editing on a Performa 630 and then the 6200. I also did some on a PowerMac 8500AV. Fun times!
Why did you remove the logos on the multi sync 😭
seeing the old marathon folder icon gave me all the feels
even lust?
Do you have the original software disk for it? I don't have my 6200 anymore but still have the disk for it (6200CD and 6218CD) I also still have the two disks for the 6360/6400 and the imac original tray load ver disks . I also have the Macintosh 5xxx/6xxx System 7.5 v2.0 Update Service CD Disk I bought from Apple and the OS 8 retail disk.
I have one of these! Got it at a garage sale for next to nothing. I tried running Mac OS 9 on it and it ran super-slow. Mac OS 8 ran really slow, too. Mac OS 7 is what you want for this machine :-)
Hey what are some cool things you can do with it after you run Mac OS 7 on it? Im new to the vintage computer stuff and im really curious on what I can do with it.
@@HowdyMyDudes Play Myst :-P
@@HowdyMyDudes Also check out this website for downloads and stuff you can do with System 7: main.system7today.com/
You almost have 400 subscribers!! :D
So exciting!
@@ActionRetro almost 7k now only 2 months later. (;
@@DrakeDaraitis lol yeah it's unreal!
I have both a 636 with the 040 and a 6200 and honestly I love both machines.
I haven’t benchmarked the two side by side, but the 6200 doesn’t feel all that slow.
We had a bunch of those macs in our elementary school in the mid 90's. I remember kid pix and using the cd to listen to music as well as the quirky sounds when turning up and down the volume
Back in the day, I had and loved a Performa 6360 maxed out. Had an Apple TV card in there too.
I was a kid and had nothing but good memories of the performa. I remember playing Sim City 2 and Warcraft 2. Those were the days! Great games!
I had the 6360CD as my first new Mac, bought it from Sears! First one was dead out of the box. But the second unit worked, many years of good memories. Looking back I always wanted a PowerMac 8500 at the time, but being in 7th grade at the time was a major barrier! lol.
Good vid! I'm surprised the magic eraser didn't take off the top layer of plastic too and leave it a bit shiny. Grew up with a 5200, so one of these with a CRT attached. It was a slow machine even for it's day but the biggest issue was its stability. It would crash frequently. The architecture was weird too, there were all sorts of problems experienced with getting it on the net, maybe due to the lack of hardware handshaking as you highlighted, I was too young to understand at the time. Still, it ran a lot of games perfectly fine, it wasn't a useless device and i'm still quite fond of it, hence my display image. The worst Mac in my view is a toss-up between the PowerBook 5300, and Macintosh IIvi
Oh yeah, growing up we had a 486 and then a Pentium 200, but I was always super jealous of my friends who had Macs like these. Despite all the compromises there's just something about them.
My elementary school had a number of Power Macintosh 5200 and 5300s in use from the mid 90s into the early 2000s. They did the job, but they were a bit sluggish compared to the Dell PCs that most of the school had. They replaced a lab full of Apple IIgs' for typing classes with these Power Macintoshes...
One of my first experiences was also a 5200 all in one. Many days gaming on it. Doom, Simon city 2000, Dark Forces and Jazz jackrabbit 2! Very fond memories!
I had a 6320CD (603e@120MHz) in the second half of the 90s.
It wasn't bad, upgraded to 64Mb of ram, MacOS 9.1, installed network card and Apple Video System, just like the 6200 in the video.
Maybe it wasn't worth the money paid...but was my first Mac and I was so happy!
I guess I am a little confused about the Register, Data, and Address Buses. All the way up to the G5, they were 32, 64, 32, respectively. For the G5 they went to 64, 64, 64 respectively. So what was the slowing factor again? The register and Address buses?
We had a Peeforma 5200 when I was a kid and even at the time I thought it was pretty bad. A year or two later we got a surplus Quadra 800 with 66MHz PowerPC upgrade card and that thing felt much faster (I think due to 601 vs 603, 68k emulator cache size issue)
The poor serial port was also a big blocker, in the days of modems it meant you couldn’t practically go faster than 14.4k even if you got a 56k modem. We put the 56k modem on my 660AV and shared it over LocalTalk.
But I think the biggest letdown of that era was system 7.5 which was just a buggy mess. They had to release a patch just for to get the volume buttons on the 5200 to not crash when you pressed them
I personally prefer Nec to Apple but I guess it is personal taste :)
Did Macintosh have ATX type power before IBM Compatible?
I had the Power Mac 6200/75 (essentially the exact same machine), and I found the only way to 'speed it up' was to shut off virtual memory. While the system will take a larger chunk, with 64 MB installed, you still have more than enough wiggle room to run applications in the background.
One of the main reasons I bought the PM 6200 was because of the unique startup chime LOL. In high school, our computer lab was full of PM 5260/100's and a couple PM 5260/120's. They were always freezing up. When system 7.6.1 came along, that solved a lot of the problems!
Lol saw one of these unboxed in my local computer repair. Thats a rarity for an apple product, so i knew something was up. Also had the printer
I remember these machines fondly. I really want a PowerMac 8500 (the 120 MHz model but really any will do as I've decided) so I can film a retrospective video series on it and on how far I can upgrade it etc. I've been wanting to do this project, but there's one problem... I don't have the computer in question. I wanna showcase how it works with its built-in RCA/Composite In/Out capabilities, as well as other tests and experiments. Regarding the Performa in this video, I think my middle school had one or maybe it was a 5x00 series? Not sure... but I do remember my classrooms having them and it was so cool having a Mac in the classroom. When I hit high school all we had was WinNT4-equipped Dell systems, and eventually they became terminals and not even a local computer in the room you were in. ...ANYWAY, great video! I got carried away with memory lane there lol
Aw man my high school was still running Win 3.1... in 2000!
@@ActionRetro haha I graduated HS in 2002... And I do remember at least one of the old computers in the room where I had my piano class my senior year I think it was running Win 3.11 for WorkGroups lol.
I love the look of these 6200CD desktops.
Where do you manage to find these systems?
This one from someone on a blue social media network that shall not be named :)
@@ActionRetro Haha I see what you did there...
I had this machine and my friend had the 6300 with the 100 MHz 603e. I always felt inferior
Hi Vintage Mac Lovers, I do own a Macintosh Performa 630, since the CRT-Monitor died some Time past I've tried to hook it up to an LCD Panel on VGA using an Adapter with those tiny rows of Switches as you've got.
Seems I've chosen the wrong settings on it, as an result the Graphics started smelling funny ...
Guess the best Times of this Graphics Card are over.
Does anyone have a Compatible Graphis Card Available for Sale ??
And what are the Correct switch settings on those Adaptor to VGA ?
Can anyone help me out here ?
Thanks in Advance
I think I had the 6214 variant of this machine, replaced a PPC upgraded Quadra 605. Can’t remember much about it other than playing Marathon on it. Was very happy to replace it with a PowerMac 7500 when I finally started making real money after graduate school.
i just got a 6300cd as a throw back. my first computer was a 630cd which is what i wanted. however i wanted to be able to run more old programs so a PPC was required. thus i chose a 6300. not sure if i made the right choice
You could either buy one of these, or get a Performa 636 or Quadro 630 and slot in a Power Macintosh Card. The end result is very much the same. The mainboard is from a Performa 5200 and it uses the same Capella bridge chip and boot ROM as a Power Machintosh Card.
I miss my 6300CD. $3K brand new! Like a million dollars back then! I’m looking to reconnect with one...
Ours died a little over 2 years after purchasing. These were such trash they were discontinued only a few months after they first went up for sale.
Oh man... I gave support back in around 2000/2001 to a fair share of these. At that time they were very old hardware (6 years old or so?). Unbearably slow, unstable (overheating may be?), lots of network issues and problems with the printer port. For some reason they could also be dust magnets.
I really hated those... The funny thing is that now I want one...
Wow, what, 2 years make! You were a lot more subdued on your commentary back then. BUT I have a ton of 030 Level games and Hope to get an Old Mac like this that can play my games and maps too!
My first home computer in 1995 was a Performa 6300 series. Worked well the 3 or 4 years that I kept it.
I had a 6290 CD that I fully upgraded as a teen. It worked as a internet connected computer and let me play a lot of popular games at the time. I'm still fond of that model.
And I seen this Macintosh Power PC Performa 6205CD is it the same as that PC I've never used a make. someone has one for sale that lives in my town for 50$
I had one of these! It was my first Macintosh! I remember playing lot’s of famous 90’ games on it: age of empire, starcraft, warcraft, doom, duke nukem, carmageddon, lemmings, quake... I loved it!
Probably it was not the best mac of the time but it was so much better than any pc I’ve ever had that I decided to switch to macs. After that I’ve had an ibook g3, a powermac g4, a 2007 imac, a 2008 white macbook, a 2012 mac pro and macbook pro retina
Wow!!!! Toast.... I had that on my Performa, LCII and Classic!
I've got that LC630 you showed lol.
As someone who uses a 6300CD as a “bridge Mac” for old systems. These are by far the worst PPC systems ever produced. I loathe doing anything on it other than making floppies. I can only imagine how much worse the 6200CD performed. Speed Doubler 8 does really help with the bad 68k emulation and file transfer/copy speeds.
I grew up with a 6205CD as my first computer and I have plenty of fond memories of learning about computing on it.
If you've still got this machine, I've got an image of the bootable restore CD (with all the apps that came pre-installed), as well as the complete set of manuals. Let me know if you've got any interest.
Got a non working one not too long ago. Home to turn it into a sleeper pc build at some point
My first computer was a Performa 5300 with the video input card. The day i received it was one of the best days of my life. 25 years later im still using a mac for working everydays (graphic designer). So no, its not one of the worst mac ever :D Thank you for your videos, Action Retro.
I remember Druaga1 having one of these running 7.6, but his one had thr faceplate swapped for one off of a Performa 630CD.
The first Mac I bought for my own saved money as a child. Great machine, loved it! Used it for web development which it was perfectly fine for.
I remember there used to be a shitload of these computers back in elementary school in the early 90’s 😅
I cut my teeth on two types of computers in the mid 90s that taught me everything I know: a Windows 95 Pentium 166 I built with my mom, and FLEETS of Powermac 5200 and 5300 at my school that I got a summer job cleaning and reimagine at my school district. They performed fine, if there was a difference compared to other powermacs, I couldn't tell. They crashed about as much as any other computer without memory protection and true preemptive multitasking (which was often, we didn't have memory protection back then on either PC or Mac, multitasking was basically hacked on not baked in). But they were so easy to get into, especially compared to my PC at home. I wanted one so bad!
I had a similar style all in one version back in the early 2000s. i got it at a garage sale when i was about 13. it had the apple tv too. it was a great TV upgrade from a Commodore 64 monitor with a tv tuning VCR hooked up to it. I was using the Commodore 64 monitor and VCR as a TV because at the time I wasn't allowed to have a TV in my room😄
The apple TV was perfect tho! pretty much no latency from what i could tell playing N64 and PS1 with S-VIDEO 😲
That was the first mac I got for school. The floppy drive kept frying on mine so i stopped sending it in for repair. After the 3rd time it fried.
This was the first computer I grew up with, I personally liked it. The Macintosh had a lot of underrated computer games. It also lasted an extra decade because of its TV feature. I use to play the N64, Playstation 2 and Game Cube on this computer and I even recorded a few episodes of "Fear Factor" to watch later on, it was terrible quality but it was still impressive that a 90s computer could work like a DVR, it was ahead of it's time.
Hahaha Fear Factor, perfect
@@ActionRetro Who would of known Joe Rogan would get so famous lol
Yeah that LEM article was crap. The author didn't understand how the computer is architected so made up a bunch of stuff that sounded plausible to non-tech people (and those without access to Apple's Dev Notes) but was pretty much trash in truth. It suckered me in too at the time, so don't feel bad.
At heart these machines (and their larger AIO 52/53xx counterparts) are a Quadra/Performa 63/64x with a built-in PPC upgrade. It was a quick-to-market solution offering a low-cost upgrade path that was fully compatible with anything that was previously installed (or left over in inventory at a school or other org) in the old 63/64x machines: software, RAM, expansion cards, etc. Unfortunately the convenience came with some downsides: the original 75MHz 603 processor was hobbled by an insufficient L1 cache that severely hit 68k emulation performance (later improved with the 603e-based 100 or 120MHz variants), a half-width data bus (all 60x-bus PPC chips have external 64-bit data buses and the 603 can be configured instead for 32-bit operation such as used here and in the first PPC PowerBooks), and a 60x-to-'040 bridge chip (Capella) that added at least one bus clock cycle for any processor data transaction outside of ROM/L2 cache access, so they didn't exactly wow anybody with their raw performance especially considering the much faster CPU frequency compared to the previous models. Do they deserve their poor reputation? Eh, it depends: if you're running one of the early 75MHz variants on Sys 7.5.3 with 8MB of RAM and exclusively 68k programs, yeah you were really better off just keeping the old 63/64x machine because there was little or no improvement to be had here, certainly not ~$1200 (in 1995) worth. However with increased RAM (16MB minimum, more is better), OS 8.1 or 8.5, and mostly PPC programs? They weren't all that bad. If you had the later 100 or 120MHz versions they were actually pretty decent for what they were.
Quick note if you're pondering a PCI MLB upgrade here: you'll need to modify the wiring harness to get it to work, likely including installing a 3.3v VRM in place of one of the ground wires at the power connector. It's doable but it's not a straight swap and you'll have to undo the mod if you want to reinstall the old MLB. Some say you can just cut the ground wire in question at the power connector and install a 55/6500 Gazelle MLB without adding an external 3.3v VRM (because this board has one built-in), and it may work for you, but when I tried it always had stability problems without the external VRM. So YMMV.
This was my first Mac, it used to take all night to render a 640x480 Bryce image 😅
what’s bryce?
@@MaxOakland an old old 3D render program by Metatools. It used prims instead of polygons. . it’s main purpose was to create landscape scenes but making it do more complex things was all part of the fun.
My first Mac was a refurbished Quadra 800 that I picked up in late ‘93’ for a whopping $2200. Lasted up until ‘98’, though by that time I was rocking a G3 as my main workstation. Also played around with a donated Power PC 6500, not great but useable.
The Performa 5320 was our second Mac that my Dad bought back in 1996, it was a weird bundle with 8Mb (rather than 16Mb) and a Colour Stylewriter 2400 printer. We quickly upgraded it to 24Mb RAM to run Virtual PC but it was a dog of a Mac. There was interference lines visible on the display, the performance was dreadful and System 7.5 was pretty buggy at the time. The worst part of these Macs was the limited VRAM. It was stated to have 1Mb but couldn't display 16bit colour above 640x480, my cheap Cirrus Logic GD-5430 with 1Mb could display 16bit at 800x600 easily.
Hey, that’s the Mac my family had! A Performa 6220CD, technically.
did you love it?
I had one of these before I bought a G4 tower. For a PowerPC the speed was disappointing out of the box. I recall the back page ads in MacWorld being full of upgrade cards for every other desktop PowerPC Mac. But this one was a dead end. It was a rather short period between the time I purchased it to the time I gave it away. Maybe 4 or 5 years! Contrast that to my 19 year old iBook G4 now running Sorbet Panther, which is still quite useable and not ready for eWaste. And I’m more of an average user, not (yet?) a vintage computer hobbyist!
I had one o these as a kid my dad got one for me and one for my sister when were kids from his school where they were surplus. The first computer I could truly call my own. I remember trying to play neopets on 56k dialup!
Especificações?
Sometimes I think about how my family paid the equivilent of 2 grand for this computer and think I wonder what it would be like if they spent 2 grand in Apple stock instead.. lol
This was my first Mac. My first computer was an Apple IIe. The monitor died early on, but the computer lasted for over 8 years- a long time for a computer of the mid-90s.
Some years back , I found a 6300CD with its monitor, keyboard, and mouse thrown out at the curb for recycle and it still works fine today. I hadn't used it for quite some time and when I went to adjust the control buttons on the monitor, they became so brittle that the plastic buttons all pushed inside the case! Eventually when my health allows I've got to open up the monitor and do a little restoration. I am a PC enthusiast and never really bothered with Apple anything as I REALLY HATE Apple Corp, (Microsoft and Bill "Gates of Hell" isn't so "angelic" either!) but their retro machines do have a certain "charm" I must admit. I am glad that I saved the 6300 from the local landfill. 👍👍
This was my first Mac, and I never knew it was the "worst" till reading it in Low End Mac 20 years later. So no, I wouldn't say it was too bad at all.
I had this Mac. My main memory is being very excited that I got lots of CDs with it, including Daedalus Encounter with Tia Carerre, but that the CD drive couldn't actually play it. It could handle Encarta, and possibly Myst, but I just assumed I needed the higher end 6400 to be able to play the bigger, badder game. The Mac also had an awful stiff keyboard I had to pound like a typewriter.
Ooo, the old 6200! But nah the Performa 5400 was even more of a POS IMO :) Ps, LOVE the flying toasters!
Straight from the house of the Martinetti’s!
The 603 and 603e processors have a 32/64 bit data path, so the 4 cycle rumor is just that, a rumor. It is fully capable of loading from ram normally, at a slower 32 bit bus width limit.
It IS slower than contemporary macs, but its not a cpu cycle issue, but a bus bandwidth issue
I love LEM but yeah the description of this systems architecture in their article is hilariously wrong. Taylordesign did his research well from the apple technical documentation. TLDR the L2 cache and processor are connected on a 64bit bus, so cache can be read at the full processor width. Memory and other devices were on a 32 bit external bus so there was a penalty in reading to from the bus to the L2 cache. There was also a lower clock bus for IO devices that interfaced to the 32 bit bus. The bus architecure overall was pretty similar to computers today where you have multiple busses at different speeds so fast devices aren't slowed down by slow devices being on the same bus. The biggest catches were the 32 to 64 bit bus size conversion slowing down things a bit and the 603 processor not having as much L1 (on chip) cache as Mac OS really needed. The 603e fixed the cache problem
we have the LC 630 with full 68040 cpu. wished we waited a bit longer for the PowerPC version to some degree. But it would have ben a while b4 the 6360 version, meant to be one of the best of this family.
The thing that I don't like about these old Mac is the plastics over time they have become super bridle. When I got my Powermac 6100 I broke the clips on the top cover just trying to open the case.
that's one nice thing about Mac is the built-in Networking
I remember comparing my 7100/66AV to one of these my neighbor bought. The difference in performance was rather shocking. I couldn't believe how slow the 6200 was compared to mine at the time. I knew it was crippled somewhat, but figured its 75mhz clock would allow it to be somewhere similar, but no. Mine was actually faster by a good bit. 25% or more if memory serves. And when running 68k based software the difference was even worse. It could barely manage the performance of an LCII it seemed.
I have a 630CD with a TV tuner it like your 6200CD.
it's a shame that macs don't have many of those programs that were released for dos and windows95