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Magnus · 22nd June 2007, 21:44

How I Upgraded an old Mac
by Magnus

This is actually a story from some years ago. I was living in the US at the time, and I had decided to see if I could get a workable Mac that ran Mac OS X but for very little money. In the end I purchased an old PowerMac 8600, upgraded it with a PowerPC G3 processor, added some hard drives, and it all ended up costing less than $500. So even if the story isn’t brand new, I think you may find it interesting.

Background
At the time my main Mac was a Powerbook G4 12-inch which I was very happy with but I wanted a desktop at home to play around with, try different things on, etc. Early on I had decided that I wanted a tower desktop so that I could put different stuff in it. Buying a new PowerMac G4 was out of the question because it would have been too expensive so I set out to find the cheapest way to get a decent performance desktop Mac. So my inspiration was a limited budget but I also got the idea from an article in the August 2003 edition of MacWorld where they put together a G4 computer out of old parts. Their total came to $734, and I didn’t have that much money so I decided to make it cheaper. As it turned out I didn’t make it that much cheaper but more on that later.

The situation
As I said I had a G4 PowerBook but that was my main production machine. I did all my work on it and I could not afford it being down at all really. Basically it needed to always be available to me. So I didn’t really want to set it up a server, play around with UNIX on it and such things. The solution then was to get a desktop at home, on which I could install and set up Apache, FTP, MySQL and other goodies. The machine did not have to have any stellar performance but it should be acceptable to use for these things.

The system
Before we go through my system I should say that I used eBay for pretty much all of the things and the prices I give below are all including shipping and handling. I do that to be up front about the total cost involved. The basis for my new system was a PowerMac 8600 that I got for $97.99. I was basically choosing between a 9600 and a 8600 and was just taking the first one that came along at a good price. I figured the three PCI slots in the 8600 would be enough for me. Some would say that upgrading a 8600 is a total waste of time and money, but I found this to be a viable option for those who have little money to spend or those who just plain don’t want to pay too much, or if you just want to go through the joys of upgrading an old machine. And although this was some years ago it would still today be a viable option.

Upgrades and additions
First thing was naturally to get a CPU upgrade and I really wanted a G4 but I also wanted to keep things tight financially so when a Sonnet G3 400MHz PCI upgrade card came along I snatched it for $84.50. I figured this would give the machine a pretty good boost and should run Mac OS X at ok speed at least. It should perhaps be said that if all you want to do is run OS 9, then the 8600 without a CPU upgrade is actually a viable option. Then came the matter of getting memory for the machine. Since I knew Mac OS X loves RAM I decided to put in four 128Mb RAM chips. I got those chips for $21 each making a total of 512MB RAM in the 8600. That was enough to get started on, and it would be easy enough to add more later. Since I didn’t really need FireWire on the computer I settled for a 5-port USB PCI card that I found for $21.99. As it turned out I didn’t really need this for the first version of my new Mac, but I figured I would need it sooner or later. I was going to get a PCI IDE/ATA card and an IDE harddrive, but after deciding to stay cheap I got a Seagate SCSI 18.2GB drive for $23.50. And while I was at it I got another one for $17. Since I already had a decent 17-inch CRT monitor not being used for anything I decided to use that for the PowerMac. I am not sure why but I still had an old PowerComputing (remember them?) ADB mouse laying around but I still needed an ADB keyboard and got an Apple Extended II for $13.96. I decided to max out the VRAM in the 8600 to the very impressive 4MB (it already had 2Mb installed). I got the two additional megs for $14.99. Finally, I bought a disk set of original Mac OS X Jaguar 10.2 for $51.24 and to install XPostFacto I had to run Mac OS 9 and I got Mac OS 9.1 for $35. Grand total: $444.17. If you have Mac OS X and Mac OS 9 already, and take off the VRAM and USB card which were not really crucial, then your looking at about $150 less.

Putting it all together
I was excited when the 8600 arrived and couldn’t wait to get it out of the box, even though I couldn’t do much with it because the only other thing I had at that time was the USB card. However I opened the 8600 up and it was pretty dusty inside, so carefully I cleaned it out. One thing that I had totally overlooked in my joy over getting almost 40Gb SCSI harddrive for what I thought was a really good price, was that both drives had 80-pin SCSI connectors which obviously don’t plug into the 50-pin connectors in the 8600. Also, the 80-pin connector includes the power, so you need a converter that breaks out the power to the standard power connectors you find in most computer cases today. So I had to get two converters for $13.50. Another little thing I had totally overlooked was that the 8600 had a Mac-standard DB-15 video port, which doesn’t just attach to the VGA-standard HD-15 port. So I had to get an adapter for $8.71. A nice surprise about the 8600 was that it came with a keyboard and mouse. Another nice surprise was that the Mac actually had an IXMicro TwinTurbo 128 video card. It was certainly not a match for present day video cards, but it was better than the built-in one. New Grand total: $472.38.

So did it work?
Oh yes! During the time I had it running, I didn’t find anything that didn’t work. I had some problems getting the 8600 to boot with the G3 card in it at first, but once I followed the installation instructions very closely it worked just fine. Most likely the problem was actually a dead PRAM battery. I got a new TL-5151 battery for $10.35. Mac OS 9.1 installed without any problems on the 2Gb disk. With XPostFacto, Jaguar also installed without any problems on one of the 18Gb disks and I managed to get everything going. I had to fiddle around with the SCSI ids but finally I got it right. The 8600 was connected to our broadband router and it worked like a charm both in versions of the OS. Over time I set the 8600 up as a web server, FTP server, and MySQL server, and it all just worked. As expected the performance was not exactly something to brag about, but most of the time it was perfectly acceptable. The main use was as a testing server at home and that role it fulfilled without any problems.

Conclusion
Well I probably didn’t save any money over buying a G3 PowerMac in the first place, but the journey is what is fun and rewarding, isn’t it? I learned a lot about old PowerMacs, adapters, Mac OS X, and a bunch of other stuff. And although I’ve not done anything similar since then it’s certainly not the end. I’m sure I’ll do similar things in the future. This particular PowerMac is now gone. I dismantled it into pieces and before moving to the UAE I sold off parts of it, and just scrapped others that were worth nothing. Sometimes I wish I still had it around, but now I have other Macs that fill the same function, so I wouldn’t need it other than for sentimental reasons. But there are still times when I think of that 8600 and how fun it was to upgrade.

PowerMac 8600 $97.99
Sonnet G3 400MHz PCI upgrade card $84.50
Four 128MB RAM chips 4x$21
5-port USB PCI card $21.99
Seagate SCSI 18.2GB drives $23.50 and $17
2 SCSI Connectors $13.50
Monitor $0
DB-15 converter $8.71
Mouse $0
Apple Extended Keyboard $13.96
2MB VRAM $14.99
Mac OS X Jaguar 10.2 $51.24
Mac OS 9.1 $35
Battery $10.35
Grand total: $476.73

22nd June 2007, 21:44	#2 (permalink)
Magnus Administrator Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Dubai Posts: 8,328	How I Upgraded an old Mac How I Upgraded an old Mac by Magnus This is actually a story from some years ago. I was living in the US at the time, and I had decided to see if I could get a workable Mac that ran Mac OS X but for very little money. In the end I purchased an old PowerMac 8600, upgraded it with a PowerPC G3 processor, added some hard drives, and it all ended up costing less than $500. So even if the story isn’t brand new, I think you may find it interesting. Background At the time my main Mac was a Powerbook G4 12-inch which I was very happy with but I wanted a desktop at home to play around with, try different things on, etc. Early on I had decided that I wanted a tower desktop so that I could put different stuff in it. Buying a new PowerMac G4 was out of the question because it would have been too expensive so I set out to find the cheapest way to get a decent performance desktop Mac. So my inspiration was a limited budget but I also got the idea from an article in the August 2003 edition of MacWorld where they put together a G4 computer out of old parts. Their total came to $734, and I didn’t have that much money so I decided to make it cheaper. As it turned out I didn’t make it that much cheaper but more on that later. The situation As I said I had a G4 PowerBook but that was my main production machine. I did all my work on it and I could not afford it being down at all really. Basically it needed to always be available to me. So I didn’t really want to set it up a server, play around with UNIX on it and such things. The solution then was to get a desktop at home, on which I could install and set up Apache, FTP, MySQL and other goodies. The machine did not have to have any stellar performance but it should be acceptable to use for these things. The system Before we go through my system I should say that I used eBay for pretty much all of the things and the prices I give below are all including shipping and handling. I do that to be up front about the total cost involved. The basis for my new system was a PowerMac 8600 that I got for $97.99. I was basically choosing between a 9600 and a 8600 and was just taking the first one that came along at a good price. I figured the three PCI slots in the 8600 would be enough for me. Some would say that upgrading a 8600 is a total waste of time and money, but I found this to be a viable option for those who have little money to spend or those who just plain don’t want to pay too much, or if you just want to go through the joys of upgrading an old machine. And although this was some years ago it would still today be a viable option. Upgrades and additions First thing was naturally to get a CPU upgrade and I really wanted a G4 but I also wanted to keep things tight financially so when a Sonnet G3 400MHz PCI upgrade card came along I snatched it for $84.50. I figured this would give the machine a pretty good boost and should run Mac OS X at ok speed at least. It should perhaps be said that if all you want to do is run OS 9, then the 8600 without a CPU upgrade is actually a viable option. Then came the matter of getting memory for the machine. Since I knew Mac OS X loves RAM I decided to put in four 128Mb RAM chips. I got those chips for $21 each making a total of 512MB RAM in the 8600. That was enough to get started on, and it would be easy enough to add more later. Since I didn’t really need FireWire on the computer I settled for a 5-port USB PCI card that I found for $21.99. As it turned out I didn’t really need this for the first version of my new Mac, but I figured I would need it sooner or later. I was going to get a PCI IDE/ATA card and an IDE harddrive, but after deciding to stay cheap I got a Seagate SCSI 18.2GB drive for $23.50. And while I was at it I got another one for $17. Since I already had a decent 17-inch CRT monitor not being used for anything I decided to use that for the PowerMac. I am not sure why but I still had an old PowerComputing (remember them?) ADB mouse laying around but I still needed an ADB keyboard and got an Apple Extended II for $13.96. I decided to max out the VRAM in the 8600 to the very impressive 4MB (it already had 2Mb installed). I got the two additional megs for $14.99. Finally, I bought a disk set of original Mac OS X Jaguar 10.2 for $51.24 and to install XPostFacto I had to run Mac OS 9 and I got Mac OS 9.1 for $35. Grand total: $444.17. If you have Mac OS X and Mac OS 9 already, and take off the VRAM and USB card which were not really crucial, then your looking at about $150 less. Putting it all together I was excited when the 8600 arrived and couldn’t wait to get it out of the box, even though I couldn’t do much with it because the only other thing I had at that time was the USB card. However I opened the 8600 up and it was pretty dusty inside, so carefully I cleaned it out. One thing that I had totally overlooked in my joy over getting almost 40Gb SCSI harddrive for what I thought was a really good price, was that both drives had 80-pin SCSI connectors which obviously don’t plug into the 50-pin connectors in the 8600. Also, the 80-pin connector includes the power, so you need a converter that breaks out the power to the standard power connectors you find in most computer cases today. So I had to get two converters for $13.50. Another little thing I had totally overlooked was that the 8600 had a Mac-standard DB-15 video port, which doesn’t just attach to the VGA-standard HD-15 port. So I had to get an adapter for $8.71. A nice surprise about the 8600 was that it came with a keyboard and mouse. Another nice surprise was that the Mac actually had an IXMicro TwinTurbo 128 video card. It was certainly not a match for present day video cards, but it was better than the built-in one. New Grand total: $472.38. So did it work? Oh yes! During the time I had it running, I didn’t find anything that didn’t work. I had some problems getting the 8600 to boot with the G3 card in it at first, but once I followed the installation instructions very closely it worked just fine. Most likely the problem was actually a dead PRAM battery. I got a new TL-5151 battery for $10.35. Mac OS 9.1 installed without any problems on the 2Gb disk. With XPostFacto, Jaguar also installed without any problems on one of the 18Gb disks and I managed to get everything going. I had to fiddle around with the SCSI ids but finally I got it right. The 8600 was connected to our broadband router and it worked like a charm both in versions of the OS. Over time I set the 8600 up as a web server, FTP server, and MySQL server, and it all just worked. As expected the performance was not exactly something to brag about, but most of the time it was perfectly acceptable. The main use was as a testing server at home and that role it fulfilled without any problems. Conclusion Well I probably didn’t save any money over buying a G3 PowerMac in the first place, but the journey is what is fun and rewarding, isn’t it? I learned a lot about old PowerMacs, adapters, Mac OS X, and a bunch of other stuff. And although I’ve not done anything similar since then it’s certainly not the end. I’m sure I’ll do similar things in the future. This particular PowerMac is now gone. I dismantled it into pieces and before moving to the UAE I sold off parts of it, and just scrapped others that were worth nothing. Sometimes I wish I still had it around, but now I have other Macs that fill the same function, so I wouldn’t need it other than for sentimental reasons. But there are still times when I think of that 8600 and how fun it was to upgrade. PowerMac 8600 $97.99 Sonnet G3 400MHz PCI upgrade card $84.50 Four 128MB RAM chips 4x$21 5-port USB PCI card $21.99 Seagate SCSI 18.2GB drives $23.50 and $17 2 SCSI Connectors $13.50 Monitor $0 DB-15 converter $8.71 Mouse $0 Apple Extended Keyboard $13.96 2MB VRAM $14.99 Mac OS X Jaguar 10.2 $51.24 Mac OS 9.1 $35 Battery $10.35 Grand total: $476.73