The Power Mac 8600/250 and the slightly faster versions - 8600/300 and 8600/350 - were very capable computers when they were released in the late summer of 1997, over 15 years ago. The specific processor card installed (either the 250, 300, or 350 MHz card) and the corresponding snap-in nameplate on the front of the case are what distinguished one model from the other. In all other respects, the three models were identical. Their improved motherboards (the "Kansas" architecture) featured a processor card slot designed for the "Mach V" 604ev processor cards, which were an improvement over earlier Power Macs having the 604e processor cards - such as the 8600/200 models. The Mach V processor cards had 1 MB of inline L2 Cache, which ran at ½ of the processor's speed (i.e. the 250 MHz processor had 1 MB of L2 Cache running at 125 MHz). The three 8600 models with the inline L2 Cache were noticeably faster than their predecessors. The older Power Macs had a slot on the motherboard for an L2 Cache card, but that L2 Cache ran at the system bus speed, which was 50 MHz for most of those models. I have (3) Power Mac 8600/300s and their mini-tower case was well-designed, in terms of expansion options. A slightly shortened version of the same chassis/case was used for the beige Power Mac G3 mini-towers. The 8600's A/V module was better suited for importing audio than video, because you didn't get full-screen video with Apple's Video Player program anyway. The program was more for personal enjoyment than serious video work. The extra 5.25" expansion bay, the mounting plate on the chassis floor for additional hard drives, the large cooling fan in the side panel, and (3) PCI slots for upgrade options made these 8600s the best of the pre-G3 Power Mac computers. I ran a pair of 4 GB hard drives in all of mine, and each had the Iomega Zip drive. Prior to CD burners and USB flash drives, a Zip drive provided the means for backing up 100 MBs of data to a single disk, which was more portable than using an external hard drive. In the (3) PCI slots, I installed a better graphics card, a USB card, and a FireWire card. This enabled me to use newer hardware peripherals, such as USB printers and flash drives, as well as external FireWire hard drives and CD burners. I did replace the 604ev/300 MHz processor card in one of mine with a G3/266 MHz processor card, and there was a definite speed increase over the Mach V processor with its inline L2 Cache. Those 8600s were great computers for general use, which (in my case) included the internet, word processing, spreadsheets, label printing, photo editing, music (iTunes), etc. I ran OS 8.6 or 9.1 in them, but when supported web browsers for pre-OS X Macs became scarce, many of us retired our older Power Macs from daily use. The introduction of the PowerPC G3 processor and subsequent release of the beige Power Mac G3 computers in late 1997 were the primary reason the 8600-(250/300/350)s were phased out, after such a short production time. I continued to use mine, in addition to the faster G3s that I owned.
The specs for the 8600/250 can be found here, and you can download the Apple "User Manual" for the 8600 series.
