Power Mac 6100/7100/8100/8200 NuBus HPV (High Performance Video Card)

Craig,

Why not buy the 7100 and keep the system intact?

Jim

I thought you might be trying to update the IIci. Then the 7100 would be a speed boost.

As an aside, do not spend any money on a ten to fifteen year-old avid card. They had some real problems for a while.

Craig,

I was called to service a Mac 8100 with $15,000 worth of Avid video equipment and RAIDed 9 gig hard drives. Turned out that the client needed a lawyer more than a computer technician. The version, cirrca 1998, was still very buggy and hardly ready for consumer use, let alone professional use. The Avid software you speak of was of limited use and readily available.

My warning is to make sure the version of Avid video editing software and hardware you pay more than $10 for is in satisfactory working condition and that the prior owner was happy with it. The same could be said for some zip drives. I loved my first three zip drives and then cursed the fourth. google 'click of death' if you want a good horror story.

Jim

Craig,

We are still working on that one. Remember, even Apple gave up on finishing the code for the SCSI bus on the wicked fast Mac IIfx because the Quadra chip was in the wings and would blow the IIfx out of the water. So, specialized code has to be found or a work around.

Jim

Hi Craig, I think the answer to your question is no. I don't have experience with that particular card but my following comment is based on this information. http://www.sonnettech.com/product/crescendo_nubus.html which indicates it is a PDS slot card.

The 7100 used the PDS slot for optional video cards and not a nubus slot so unless the IIci has a PDS slot compatible with the 7100's I would say no. Apple did ship higher performance nubus video cards for nubus Macs and the aftermarket also supplied them.

The Apple card I was thinking of was this one, the 8•24. http://lowendmac.com/video/apple8-24.shtml and there is also a page of links here for other nubus video cards, http://lowendmac.com/video/index.html

I seem to recall we used the Thunder 24 cards in the Quadras at work which means I still have a couple stuck in the machines we EOF'd back then....

Kevin

Niteshooter,

You are correct in saying that the 7100/8100 AV models did have a PDS slot populated by a second video port. However, they still had NUBUS slots for specialty cards. The 7200 models introduced PCI cards and the end of the NUBUS era.

Jim

Hi Jim, yes I know there were nubus video cards available in my post I mentioned them and posted links. I have in my collection many from the 8•24 to the Thunder 24's many old Mac cards from Mac II's on up and a dozen or so still brand new boxed Radius cards so I also still have drivers for most which are probably more hard to come by than the cards themselves.

There were so many flavours of video cards at one time it would be difficult to figure out what the card was without seeing it.

The OP seemed to be talking about the PDS card which at first glance might be mistaken for a nubus card since the slot is directly beside all the nubus slots.

Re PCI cards, I'm kicking myself because at work we recycled a skidload of G3 and G4 macs and I only thought to pull out a couple of the ATI 7000 mac cards that we had installed in the G3's for running multiple monitors. I forgot that they work great in the Beige G3's....

Kevin

Craigwd_2000 wrote:
Yes: the HPV I saw at Good Point Electronics Recycling was indeed a Power Mac 7100/90 NuBus HPV. I know that certain 7100's shipped from Apple with PDS HPVs installed in them but what I saw inside the Power Mac 7100/90 looked like a NuBus video card that lacked the Mac specific video out connnector. Nothing was present in its PDS slot either if it even had one.

Apparently the Power Mac 7100/90 had already been stripped of the PDS card by the employees of Good Point Electronics Recycling. What I saw inside the Mac looked like a NuBus video card that outputted to the Power Mac 7100/90's HDI-30 connector. I assume if it were installed in a Macintosh IIci with the proper drivers it would output via the Macintosh IIci's onboard video port too.

Keep in mind the HPV card was designed for the PDS slot which was located just to the left of the bank of nubus slots when looking at the 7100 from the rear. Therefore the card you saw in the nubus slot was most likely not the HPV card.

All 7100's have a PDS slot, and it's where I mentioned and they also had on board video through the funky connector on the motherboard so not all 7100's shipped with a video card in the PDS slot. That connector hooked up to the Apple 14" monitor which had the built in speakers on front. I have one downstairs and just too lazy to check what model it was....

Kevin

Craigwd_2000 wrote:
How do I identify the NuBus card? I don't think it's a SCSI card or a NIC. It might be a video card that outputs through the HDI-30 connector like I said earlier. I don't want to go to the trouble of removing it if it's just some worthless IO NuBus card too.

Apple never made a video card that output through an HDI-30 connector. That is a square SCSI connector from a PowerBook. Or are you talking about the video connector on the motherboard? If so then the answer is no.

All the nubus video cards I recall used DB-25 connectors not even the Thunder 24's though I would have to check mine to be 100%.

The easiest way to solve this is to post up a photo or write down some of the part numbers or other information on the card.