8200/120 or 7300/166??

[20rogersc]

Hi I'm looking for an older mac, and stumbled across these two in a local advertiser.

8200/120
4.2gb HD
80mb RAM

OS 8.6


7300/166
1.2gb HD
80mb RAM

OS 8.6

They are being offered at £25 ($45) each, and wondered whether they are worth it. Can anyone tell me anymore about these machines, or any advice about older macs??

Lastly, will I benefit from owning one??

Thanks

::20ROGERSC::

 

[combatcolin]

Get the 7300, the CPU on these machines can be upgraded and you can pick up a cheap G3 or G4 card for them.

They come with 10 base T connecters so network ahoy.

Slap in loads of RAM and a USB card, they have 3PCI slots if in remember and your away.

PCI graphics cards tend to be a bit pricey, but OS 9.2 is fairly cheap phone Apple to see if they have any discs, i got mine for just over £20 about 18 months ago.

 

[20rogersc]

Thanks combatcolin for the quick reply.

Would I be able to install OS 9 from my iBook G4's install disc??

::20ROGERSC::

 

[combatcolin]

To give you my best guess i would say no.

Do phone Apple, they are quite helpful and having the proper install disc will make life much easier.

And you can have all the fun of ejecting floppy discs from your new old mac, see how far they fly!

Trawl around eBay for cheap bits and bobs, you can get Firewire for classic macs, a faster network card, USB cardseven wireless networking nice and cheap.

The 7300 has a normal desktop case so you can plonk the monitor on the top and save space.

Word of warning, the built in video out uses the old BIG connecter, so you can't just connect it up to any old monitor, although adaptors are fairly cheap.

The monitors that Apple built to work with these old Macs last forever, look cool are have a good screen, but as they are CRT's you could end up paying more in postage than the actual cost of them from eBay.

If you can collect from the buyer you'll save £££'s and pick up a bargain.

 

[20rogersc]

Well I can pick it up from him, including monitor/keyboard/mouse, for £25.

How much do you think it will cost me to upgrade to alright specs to run OS 9 well??

::20ROGERSC::

 

[combatcolin]

The official Apple spec sheet.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=112392

The unoffical spec sheet.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac/stats/powermac_7300_166.html

The 7300 has 8, yes 8 Ram slots so you can stuff the bugger with a GB of RAM , takes a max of 128MB per slot.

eBay for them.

It takes good old SCSI - a different type of HD to IDE which is used in todays Mac, there faster than IDE and you can chain 7 of them together but there a bit more expensive.

Again, eBay is your best bet.

I mentioned before that PCI graphic cards are a bit expensive, but the motherboard has space on it for up to 4MB of video RAM, which has to be bought 2 * 1MB modules.
Your really better off with a PCI card.

eBay again.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Well, the 7300 over the 8200 but both of them will be unusable even for web surfing. You'll spend a lot of money on upgrades to little result. The only way it'll be halfways acceptable is with a G3 processor card upgrade.

Why bother with either of these when you can get a beige G3 233 or 266 for $50? With an IDE hard drive interface that gives you a much cheaper drive upgrade path?

 

[kalisphoenix]

I have a "Powerbook G4" install disk for OS 9, and that has worked with every machine I've tried. It actually works better than the "vanilla" OS9 disk I have, oddly enough.

As for the machines themselves, though, the 7300 is definitely the better choice. But after the money you'd spend on getting IDE, getting a display convertor, getting a CPU upgrade, getting RAM, and so on, you might find it a better deal just to drop $100 on a Rev. 2 B&W G3. But then, I'm biased ;-)

 

[20rogersc]

Thanks.

I think I will leave it due the costs needed to get up to a decent standard, but keep my eyes open for anything else!

Thanks everyone!

::20ROGERSC::

 

[macEfan]

Apple never made a 8200. Did U mean 8500?

 

[Lord Blackadder]

A beige Power Mac G3 is a far better buy - OS 9 runs very well and it can be made to run OSX without too much fuss.

Look for a beige G3 desktop or tower in the $100 range, maybe less from a private seller. You might even get lucky and get a Blue & White G3 tower in the low hundreds.

 

[RacerX]

Apple never made a 8200. Did U mean 8500?

Both the 8200/100 and 8200/120 were sold in Europe but not in North America as I recall.

 

[macEfan]

oh, i didn't know

 

[840quadra]

I like many older Macintosh computers, but I would say, if you want something that you can use some modern programs with, get something with a G3 or better.

If you are a collector, get one of the comptuers listed on this post, having some older macintosh computers around is nice, and will allow you to use some older programs on their native platforms.

I have been an Apple collector for years, and only this year have started to move into the G# computers that all run OS X. I have since been hooked on OS X and own 4 G3 + Apple computers, with the fastest being a Dual 2.0 G5.