Performa 450 help...

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Performa 450 help...

Hello there, I fairly recently got my grandfathers old Performa 450, though its not the workhorse of my high powered gaming PC it has a sentimental value as well as having a few games which don't work on todays Pentium based machines.

What i discovered was that its a complete stock factory build, no upgrades so i am looking at upgrading it from 4mb to 36mb RAM and upping the VRAM as well as seeing if i can get my hands on an old FPU.

However there are a few things that are a bit confusing.
The HDD installed on this old Mac is a 120mb SCSI drive, but according to the OS its only 74mb???

Also when it comes to an external CD-ROM drive, does it have to be an old one from the 1990's or will pretty much any SCSI external CD-ROM drive work with it?

Performa 450, Mac OS 8.6 or Earlier, System 7.1P2

Posted on Dec 17, 2008 5:26 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 18, 2008 11:53 AM in response to Alexraptor

Hmm I wonder if you are seeing the free space left on the drive and not the full capacity? If you highlight the hard drive icon and do a 'get info' cmd + i it will tell you.

If I recall the 450 is identical to the LC 475/Quadra 605 so look at my page here from some things you can do. http://www.kevinomura.com/macs/quadra605/index.html

You can actually upgrade to a 128 mb simm to get you up to 132 mb of ram. The biggest vram simms you can install are 512k which if I recall will drive a 16" monitor at thousands of colours but I could be wrong. Snag a copy of GURU and it can help you with this question. http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macos/1923

There was a PPC upgrade CPU swap out there but honestly it will not make a difference in terms of speed on this Mac. Some folks have swapped in full 68040 CPU's which have the built in FPU and that helped since the CPU is socketed.

I've also run dual SCSI hard drives in an LC 475 box as a FirstClass™ server with the right SCSI cables. Granted working SCSI HD's seem to be a bit on the rare side these days from what I see.

As for SCSI CD roms, my personal feeling is to get Apple rom'd drives if you are thinking of installing software onto your Performa. Also make sure the CD rom has built in termination or comes with the SCSI terminator.... the Apple drives from that era were the CD300 CD600 and I think there was an 8X speed drive as well but I can't remember what it was called in an external case.

You only have the one PDS slot so my first choice would be an ethernet card of some form.

Kevin

Message was edited by: Host

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Answer 2

Alexraptor Author

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Dec 17, 2008 4:59 PM in response to Niteshooter

Right now i cant get back on my Mac as my PRAM battery from 1996 just went dead.
But it is not the same as an LC475/Quadra 605, the 450 has a MC68030 CPU while the other has a 68LC040.

According the the specs though it can take the 512kb VRAM modules but im not sure if it will detect more than 256kb or not.

I am also curious has to how i would best go about upgrading the OS? As i right now have 7.1P2 but want to go up to 7.5.x

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Answer 3

Dec 17, 2008 6:58 PM in response to Alexraptor

The AppleSpec agrees that only 256 of each 512 VRAM will be seen, and 68030 processor:

SP228- Macintosh Performa 450:Technical Specifications

If you have a more modern Mac with a floppy, there is a downloadable set of 7.5.3 diskette images (about 19 of them) available in many languages.

To be supported, a CD drive would have to be one used in a Mac. Matsushita (Panasonic) and Sony were common and probably would work. There is a catch-22 because they may not be bootable without the driver, which is probably not in that Mac's ROM.

Message was edited by: Grant Bennet-Alder

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Answer 4

Alexraptor Author

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Dec 17, 2008 7:04 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I don't have another Mac but i do have a trial version of TransMac which i have been using to download a few apps on my PC with and transfer to the Mac.
But how does it work when updating the OS? Will old settings and programs such as At Ease be overwritten?

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Answer 5

Dec 18, 2008 11:52 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks Grant, I couldn't remember up here we didn't get the Performas for a while.

Pretty much everything I said does not apply to his Mac.

Kevin

Message was edited by: Host

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Answer 6

Dec 18, 2008 7:15 AM in response to Alexraptor

You must not unpack Mac files on your PC, but instead move the .bin or .hqx or other encoded files to your Mac to be unpacked.

Below are the instructions from the USEnglish version of 7.5.3 available for download from the Older Software Downloads page. Do you want that one, or Swedish, or some other version?

Instructions:
This software is available as 19 parts of a self-mounting Disk Copy
image. Download all 19 parts to your hard drive and then double-click
on the first part to mount the compressed disk image on your desktop.

Note that self-mounting Disk Images require Mac OS version 7.0.1 or
later. If you are using a version of Mac OS prior to this, you can
download the System 7.5 Network Access floppy disk and boot your
Macintosh from that to use this software.

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Answer 7

Alexraptor Author

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Dec 18, 2008 8:23 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Will it only upgrade the OS itself or will other programs like "At Ease" need to be reinstalled?

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Answer 8

Dec 18, 2008 9:08 AM in response to Alexraptor

The way most installs of Mac OS have always worked is that they upgrade the OS "in-place" and require no forced changes. Preferences are maintained or converted. Any "required" upgrades are generally part of the package.

There are a few exceptions, such as the abandonment of "Superdog" web browser, but they are few and far between.

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