Paower mac 6100 and newertech driver concerns HELP prevent disaster and annoyance...please

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Paower mac 6100 and newertech driver concerns HELP prevent disaster and annoyance...please

ok. not disaster...

hey all, have a 6100 i am fixing for a freind. he is dumping that totally stupid and usless "pretend i am a pc" card in the pds slot and installing a Low Profile Newertech MAXpowr MXP6100 G3 upgrade. Only issue is that it's off ebay and came with no drivers.

Luckily OWC has them at BUT there are no docs or instrux that i can find relevent to what to install. the obvious choice is the one that says PDS next to it (MAXpowr G3 PDS v1.0.3 Installer), but does anyone know if any of the others are compatable and newer/better/more stable driver versions. I will likely get the machine up to 8.5 or 8.6 but it is currently running os 8.1.

Thanks. Any info would help.

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I know you don't want to hear

I know you don't want to hear this, but if you or your friend expect that machine to be productive, you are in for a long long battle. Unless it is just for a hobby or to kill time, the excercise will be very unsatisfying.

My suggestion? Chuck it and consider this as a low cost alternative.

http://search.ebay.com/beige-G3-desktop_Apple-Macintosh-Computers_W0QQsofocusZbsQQsbrftogZ1QQfromZR10QQsacategoryZ4599Q26catrefQ3DC6QQgcsZ1506QQpfidZ1812QQreqtypeZ1QQalistZa26444Q2Ca13Q2Ca12Q2Ca3801QQpf_queryZG3Q20desktopQQsotrZ2QQcoactionZcompareQQcopagenumZ1QQcoentrypageZsearch

With XPostFacto, this will run Jaguar. Yeah, it takes much desire to perservere, but once it runs, its so worth it 10 fold.

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yup, i know...

that's what i tried to tell him, but he was scammed into buying it by a college mac store at the end of the machine's production life. after many conflicts aarising from the fact that they sold him a monitor that is incompatible with the pc-pretender card he just stuck it in a closet for a few years.

when he met me and heard that i fixed up older macs he got all excited and went to ebay. this is what he bought<> basically he is a graphic design student with a high end pc, but his school uses older imacs and he just wants a machine at home that can run the same quark/photoshop/illustrator versions as the 300 mhz imacs at school. he is a bit, ehem, "thrifty" and rebuffed my offers to help him get a newer machine for cheap money as Catmistake suggested...

argh.

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Thrifty

Odd. A new Mac looks really quite cheap compared to the price of Quark, Photoshop and Illustrator.

As someone who's worked with all three on

a) Farily old Macs (8100 AV is the oldest for all three)
b) Underpowered Macs (iMac with 64 Megs of RAM for Photoshop 7 doesn't cut it)
c) Shiny new Macs with plenty of RAM and disk space (Well, 900 MHz G4's with 256 RAM and 10 Gig HDD, not too bad so long as you empty it regularily)

I just have to ask you to tell him the next statement:

You are in a trade, and as such get paid pretty good money for what you do. A slower Mac is not what you need. The best thing you can afford is probably something closer to what you can use. No matter how great you are with it, when it takes five minutes to load Photoshop, and you can't run them all at once, then you are wasting time and money uselessly. A new Mac is worth the price, just in the time that you'll save, especially if you do this for cash.

Why does a graphic design student need Quark? It's a layout program. Right tool and the right job and all that. But that's another rant.

Sorry, I get irritated when people waste money because they were being cheap to begin with.

-Bob

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then why...?

totally, I totally agree...
What I don't understand, however, and sorry to be an eBay fly, is why people pay so much for certain older Apple hardware, I mean, I understand the hardware is holding its value, but why don't they just save a little more and get something new (so maybe prices will come down and I can do some cool hacks on a student budget)!

$660 for a Pismo
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=51042&item=5109648898&rd=1

$670 for a P92
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4602&item=5110649410&rd=1

$430 more for the new thing, that is better than twice as good.
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/71908/wo/eBfjSLvDaf4Z3GbSEQi19K0ouE8/0.0.7.1.0.6.25.1.0.21.3.1.1.0?19,8

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i agree Bob...

but he had these older programs on his computer from the last go-round in GD school. he never finished, shelved the computer, and is now back. due to bad finanaces, our community college teaches us 1st years on older cr@pped out machines which run the older similarly bad software. hence, he had the brainy idea to ressurect this older mac and use the SW on it (since he has trouble back-grading his saved files from his new PC to the older macs at school). Big runaround, i know, but this is how he wants it and i am just trying to help him out.

and yeah, we use quark tons. it bites. indesign is way better, but believe it or not about 1/3 of a GD degree is layout aesthetics, and quark is the printer/service bureau favorite. so quark/indesign are essential knowlege these days. too bad. i like photography and screen printing myself. i think quark is on its way out and is a WASTE of time.

anyway, anyone know what driver this dern processor feeds on? i might just guess and hope it breaks!

thanks guys... :coolmac:

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