Forums | MacLife

Big John · 2002-12-17 2:20 pm

I currently go the machine for free at a white elephant gift exchange for a organization i'm involved in at college. The entire thing had been spray painted gold with the words "vader was here" marked in the side panel where masking tape had been placed before it was painted. blush

I'm definitely repainting the thing eventually provided I get it working. The guy who had it last got it free, and he said it boots up to a blinking ? mark, which means there is no system folder installed. There is one ram chip in there which I'm not sure how big it is, i'm guessing 16 megs. i just bought a 64 meg chip on ebay for it, hopefully it'll be compatible.

I need to get my hands on a 8 or 8.5 system cd to see if I can get it running.

A guy down the hall from me is a mac user and he wants to get his parents a mac but they have a tight budget. He asked if he could have it if i get it running. A keyboard and mouse I could probably buy really cheap from university salvage (around $5 each I'm guessing) and if their monitor is compatible they could have a mac for pretty cheap. I've since found out that their old pc now is connected to a cable modem. How hard would it be to get this machine on cable internet, or would it cost more than its worth to install a pci ethernet card, more ram, faster processer, etc.

The specs again, are Performa 6400, 200mhz, 2gig hd, 16?megs of ram (at least). What do you guys think?

dv · 2002-12-17 5:17 pm

Almost certainly a 16 MB DIMM.

Youneed a Comm Slot II or PCI Ethernet card. You have one Comm slot which is useful only for Ethernet or Modems (you may have a modem already) and you have 2 PCI slots.

I hope your memory works as well. Good luck on that score.

If you really want to be nice to whoever gets this computer (I have one too, so just trust me on some of this stuff) you need the following

At least 64 MBs of RAM

PCI Ethernet Card - This must be a mac compatible part, and is required for use with a broadband internet connection.

Video card - the base 6400 config uses integrated video with a maximum of 1 MB of VRAM. Suffice it to say, this sucks. Get a mac compatible PCI video card with at least 4 MBs of VRAM. Avoid ATI Rage 128s and Radeons because they do not work with the 6400 very well. (They probably work just fine in 2D, but 3D things lie games will refuse to run and crash the computer.

That stuff is, like, mandatory for any serious use. Slap MacOS 8.6 on that puppy and you're good to go.

A G3 upgrade, imo, is overkill in general.

Net Nutz · 2002-12-17 5:54 pm

I have a 6400 with a 400 Mhz Sonnet upgrade card i put in an Asante Ethernet card, just had to install one driver/extension from cd, insert pci card, reboot. I also have a MacSense Router so I can share my cable with my 867 Quicksilver (primary mac) & with the 6400 (backup mac). Works great if a friend needs to check email etc.

I agree with dvpierce on the video card, my 6400(180Mhz) has a max resolution of 800x600 at thousands of colors which really sucks, but as it is my backup, it isn't worth investing $$$ into a card for.

I would however recommend that they do get a processor upgrade eventually. At bootup, you can physically see the speedup in the boot process once the Sonnet extension loads and the upgrade card takes over, it metaphorically acts like someone just turned the nitrous valve full tilt. Given the amount of web stuff Explorer/Netscape will need to process, at cable speeds vs. 56k speeds, I definitely recommend the processor upgrade, at least in the long term.

Hope my experience helps. -mike

-edit to add upgrade card paragraph

Big John · 2003-01-01 7:12 pm

Thanks for the reply's. Whew, right now I've been working close to 40hrs a week over break and I with church committments and other things I haven't gotten to play around with the 6400 and try and get it running. My problem has been so far
1) a lack of time
2) Inability to get a hold of an OS 8, 8.5, or 8.6 cd (and I'm not willing to shell out $40+ dollars on ebay to get one for an old computer that I will not use much or will be given away.

I did get a random pci ethernet card from a dead pc that my friend at college has. If I get an OS on the machine, I'll pop it in there and see if it works. Anyway, I'll try and update with progress as it happens

dv · 2003-01-02 2:41 am

The 'random PCI Ethernet Card' will have to have a chipset that has a macos driver. If it has the same chipset as a mac compatible card, it should work, but only if. Fortunately, you won't have to flash a ROM or anything like you would with a Video card.

Realtek or TI is a good bet. If it's National Semiconductor, I think you're out of luck.

Go to Asante, Farallon, Dayna, and any other mac-networking company you can think of and download every driver you can find. Try them all, one might work.

Forums | MacLife

#1 2002-12-17 2:20 pm

What'll it take to get a Performa 6400 on a cable modem?

#2 2002-12-17 5:17 pm

Re: What'll it take to get a Performa 6400 on a cable modem?

#3 2002-12-17 5:54 pm

Re: What'll it take to get a Performa 6400 on a cable modem?

#4 2003-01-01 7:12 pm

Re: What'll it take to get a Performa 6400 on a cable modem?

#5 2003-01-02 2:41 am

Re: What'll it take to get a Performa 6400 on a cable modem?

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