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PowerMac 7100 + Goodies
Posted by: Bolle on 2016-09-05 09:51:00
I came across this listing for a 7100/80AV on eBay and noticed that suspicious Sonnet sticker on its front in one of the pictures.

Decided to give it a try and ended up winning the auction for the initial starting price of 29€.
The Mac arrived today and - surprise surprise - has a Sonnet 300MHz G3 card in it.
 
The case is looking good. I already took out the CD ROM drive as I want to run this one with a two HDD setup.
IMG_0462.JPG
 
 
I took it apart to take a look at the purple heatsink goddess inside:
IMG_0458.JPG
 
 
A closer look reveals that it is a 300MHz/1MB card:
IMG_0459.JPG
 
 
After taking the metal cage off to take a look at the RAM configuration I noticed that some bomb defusing skills are needed on this one - luckily did not go off yet 😛
IMG_0457.JPG
 
 
The machine came with 4*132MB of RAM added. Also being an AV model it contained the AV card plus all the crazy cabling to attach it to the PDS Slot on the G3 upgrade card.
I installed a fresh copy of 8.1 as well as 9.1 and threw the Sonnet drivers on there. The performance increase even with the 300MHz upgrade is insane compared to the 601.
I am going to use this 7100 as a new machine for my Digidesign setup with 2*9GB internal HDD and Audiomedia 2 and Session 8/882IO. One of the HDDs is will be internally connected to the Session 8 card.
 
All in all a pretty nice score for a reasonable amount of money  🙂
 
The AV card does feel ok when scrolling and navigating the Finder. I did not yet try the Thunder IV but I guess for mainly ProTools that one will not be needed.
Anyone has any numbers on how the AV or HPV compares to the faster Nubus cards?
 
 
Posted by: CC_333 on 2016-09-05 11:51:42
I'm in the US, but I have an extra blank bezel if you'd prefer that over an empty CD-ROM slot. Maybe trade, as I have a 7100 with no CD-ROM slot (I think-- I'll have to double check).

It's small and light, so it shouldn't cost exorbitant amounts of currency to ship.

Let me know!

EDIT: Nice find, by the way!

c
Posted by: just.in.time on 2016-09-05 16:04:31
That is an amazing find 🙂

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