Re: Absolute Newbie Question - Monitor for Apple Mac 9600 - 966/350
- From: J.J. O'Shea <try.not.to@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 10:23:58 -0400
On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 07:58:55 -0400, Palindrâ?»me wrote
(in article <12e6240n11o80c8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):
J.J. O'Shea wrote:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 03:31:28 -0400, PalindrâË?»me wrote
(in article <12e5iejqk4fmp8c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):
Hi,
We, a small charity, are being given a computer by a kind soul - said
computer being described by the current owner as both an Apple Mac 9600
and as a 966/350, but without a monitor. Hope that means something to you.
It means you just got a 9 year old computer. It's a 9600/350. That means
that
it has:
CPU: 350MHz PowerPC 604e. Think Pentium II or III, 300-600MHz depending on
task.It was, for its day, the top of the line Mac.
Hard drive: 4GB, if it still has the original hard drive after this time.
Somewhere along the line someone my have replaced the drive. I'm pretty
sure
that this was the last generation of SCSI hard drive Macs, so finding a
replacement drive if you need one may be interesting. It does have PCI
slots
(more on that below) so you can put in a ATA controller card if necessary
so
you can use a ATA drive.
Optical drive: 24x CD-ROM. No burners came with Macs in 1997. The optical
drive is also on the SCSI bus, which means that finding a replacement at
this
late date will be next to impossible. The far better, easier, and cheaper,
solution would be to install the ATA card noted above and attach an optical
device to that. Note that some ATA cards don't like optical drives, so be
careful in your choice or live with the CD-ROM.
The system shipped with a floppy drive, and some shipped with a Zip drive
as
well. Warning: the Zip drives died with sickening speed. Apple stopped
shipping Zip drives with their systems because of the problems they caused.
The bare system weighs about 16 kg and has max dimensions of 44x25x44 cm.
(That's 35 pounds, 17.5x10x17.5 inches.)
The innards are easily and quickly available via a well-designed door. I
actually prefer the design of the 9600 to that of many more recent Macs.
The 9600 shipped with either System 7.5.5 (which was truly awful) or OS
7.6,
and can use versions of the Mac OS all the way up to 9.1. It's possible to
go
beyond 9.1 if you really want to, but that requires hardware or software
hacks done by someone who knows their way around Macs. I'd stick with OS
8.6
or 9.1 and have done unless I had a really good reason why not.
Max RAM: 768MB (official) 1.5GB (unofficial, but works without problems so
long as you have the _correct_ RAM sticks.) RAM is 168-pin DIMM sticks.
Video card: IX Micro. 8MB RAM on board. If you need a different card,
you'll
need to install it in a PCI slot. The video output is the old Apple DB15
port, which is _not_ a VGA port. You'll need an adaptor to connect that
card
to a VGA monitor from a Windows computer.
Expansion: As noted above, the system is built on SCSI. That means that up
to
seven hard drives or optical drives or combinations of the above can be
connected, internally and externally. There's space for three additional
hard
drives in the case, and external SCSI drives still exist, though they're
expensive and hard to find. (Note that while there's _space_ for three
drives
inside, emplacement is up to you. I don't know if the drive brackets are
still on that 9600.)
The system was the last Mac to have six slots. It has six PCI slots,
suitable
for use for SCSI cards, ATA cards, video cards, network cards, USB cards,
FireWire cards, and a variety of other uses. I once had a 9600 which had
two
video cards, an USB/FireWire combination card, a UltraSCSI card, and an ATA
card.
The system did not ship with USB or FireWire, it's much too old for that.
The system did ship with two serial ports and an ADB port. The serial ports
were typically used for printers and modems, and the ADB port is where the
keyboard and mouse were attached.
It is going to be used for various office type jobs and, hopefully,
helping us make posters.
I hope he gave you the keyboard and mouse. It's hard to find ADB devices
nowadays, so if he didn't you're going to have to get a USB card so you can
attach a USB keyboard and mouse before you can even start using it.
Now the very trivial questions so please don't laugh too much...
We have a spare PC monitor, with a normal type D sub plug on the
end...Will that connect to the machine above? Will we need an adapter?
Or do they use a different monitor entirely to PCs?
You're going to need a VGA-to-Apple DB15 adaptor.
We do have PC PCI graphics cards - but, presumably we cant just shove
one of those in and connect a PC monitor, if we can't get hold of the
adapter or monitor otherwise needed?
You can't use most PC PCI video cards. The firmware on them is
Intel-specific, and won't work with Macs. Some can be flashed to work with
Macs. I used to have a list somewhere, but that was three moves ago. You'd
do
better going to ATI's site.
As I said, totally new to Macs, we all are - none of us has actually
touched one, or seen one, other than in magazines...
Eerrmmmm... what software came with the machine? Finding OS 9 versions of
Photoshop, etc, might be... difficult at this late date.
Very many thanks to all of you who replied and especially to you, J.J.
for all the time you must have spent casting these invaluable pearls.
You answered questions that I didn't even know to ask. This is the full
description that was given:
"Apple Mac 9600/350 running OS9.1
That's good. 9.1 is as far as you really want to go with a 9600 unless you
want to hack it with a G3 upgrade and XPostFacto.
with CD Rom
drive, 256mb RAM
That's good. I think it shipped with 16 or 32 or some such anemic amount of
RAM. OS 9.1 will work well in 256.
and 12gb hard drive.
Someone upgraded the drive. Excellent
It comes loaded with Adobe
Photoshop 5.5, Adobe Premiere 6.0, Quark Express 4.1, Microsoft Office
2001
I used Photoshop 5.5 for years, until I moved to 7, and even then the major
reason was because 5.5 was Classic only while 7 was OS X-native and I'd got
really sick of Classic slowing things down. I didn't do much with Premiere,
but I _lived_ in Quark. You might want to look at Quark's site and see if the
free updates to 4.11 or 4.12 are still available. Office 2001 is the last of
the Classic versions of Office. It's not the greatest (that would be Word
5.1a and Excel 4...) but it's not bad.
and Claris Works.
Depending on which version of ClarisWorks, it should be... adequate. You'll
probably do more work in Office, though.
We're offering the computer tower, keyboard and
mouse; you'll need to have a monitor.
Well, you have the keyboard and mouse. The last generation Apple ADB
keyboards and mice were pretty good. Better than the first generation USB
keyboards and especially better than the never-to-be-forgotten-or-forgiven
circular 'hockey puck' mouse.
The computer runs the old Classic operating system but is loaded with
all the software you'd need for photo-imaging, DTP etc. There's USB
and firewire sockets so you can connect digital and video cameras to
it."
They installed USB and Firewire cards. That's good. It's really hard to find
non-USB printers or scanners or modems anymore. Just be sure that the
software for the devices runs in OS 9.
I do have some SCSI drives, including a CD writer and even a SCSI 8 disk
CD autochanger. So, some of those may find a new home.
Just plug 'em into the back, power up the system, and try 'em out.
Many thanks again to you all,
No prob. We're here to help.
Sue
--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.
.
- References:
- Absolute Newbie Question - Monitor for Apple Mac 9600 - 966/350
- From: Palindr☻me
- Re: Absolute Newbie Question - Monitor for Apple Mac 9600 - 966/350
- From: J . J . O'Shea
- Re: Absolute Newbie Question - Monitor for Apple Mac 9600 - 966/350
- From: Palindr☻me
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