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Apple Performa 6300 User's Log

This page last updated on or about 7-5-04

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EDITOR'S NOTE: The articles in this compilation often first appeared in my Newz&Viewz online newsletter on or about the dates noted for each item. For this reason certain items like embedded web links and documented costs/prices for certain wares discussed may be out-of-date. This is Real World usage rather than a syrupy evangelistic exercise, so you'll find both good and bad things about Macs here.


Apple Macintosh Performa 6300 User's Log Table of Contents


7-5-04: The 6300 returns as a possible upgrade of my Q650 Mac OS 7.5 machine

The 6300 has returned! Unfortunately, it's dead as a doornail. I helped my sister move into a new house the other day, and she said I could have the 6300 if I wanted it. It was collecting dust in the floor of a closet for I have no idea how long. My sister said there was something wrong with it, besides the long-standing defective monitor from Apple. Well, LOTS of things can go wrong with a computer over time. Many of them can be fixed. I made sure to ask sis to also provide me with any of the associated CDs she might run across for the machine while unpacking. But realistically I expect it to be at minimum weeks before she could honor such a request. No matter though.

I immediately disposed of the old monitor, figuring I'd just use my ancient Mac IIcx monitor with the 6300. The old Sony-based display still worked last time I tried it, with the only problem being a consistent squiggle would appear in the display image after a few minutes. But heck, that'd be plenty good enough to check out the system and maybe transfer some files. And after that the 6300 could have the Q650's monitor.

You see, the 6300 is a PowerPC machine capable of running Mac OS 7.5-- maybe the best of the ancient Mac OS versions, capable of some things the present day OS X and Windows XP can't do. Such as run Pathfinder and More II.

I hoped to replace my still more aged Quadra with the 6300 as my 7.5 Mac. The 6300's PowerPC chip and internal CD and hard drives would in theory be considerably better than my Q650's internals.

But alas, all that happened when I cranked up the 6300 was a tiny whimper from its speaker. Its hard drive couldn't spin up or anything. Prior to trying it I'd pulled the motherboard drawer out and carefully blown away a ton of dust bunnies there, as well as from the external I/O ports. Such debris can cause heating problems as well as short circuits. I'd also noted the specs of the PRAM battery inside, which almost certainly must be dead now. The PRAM batter looks similar to that of the 6400 I replaced years back.

Could a dead PRAM battery alone prevent even the disks spinning up? Maybe. But I've never personally seen that happen. If my recollection is correct, the closest I've seen to this situation before stemmed from either the infamous Apple set up bug of years past-- or plain dead drives.

It's too bad my external SCSI drive on the Q650 died not long ago. Because with that I could possibly have booted the 6300 a different way which wasn't dependent on its own internal drive.

It might be I can try something with a CD-- but I'm not sure. The 6300 seems one of the most dead of dead Macs I've witnessed over the years. I'll keep you posted.

Apple Mac Performa 6300 Log Contents


12-4-02: Long overdue 6300 update

To make a short story short, my sister moved back to Tennessee quite a while back. She still owns the 6300, and the monitor has not been repaired or replaced so far as I know. However, I believe she's using a roomate's PC for surfing the web at home and a PC at work, with the 6300 mostly gathering dust. But she's still fiercely loyal to the Mac regardless.

Apple Mac Performa 6300 Log Contents


6-2-2000 UPDATE: My sister continues to use her crippled 6300 in Florida...

...as, believe it or not she won't allow any of us to have her monitor repaired. How she stands the weird way things look with her colors screwed up is beyond me.

She also had a momentary problem apparently related to the need to clear her browser cache on occasion-- but this seemed to be corrected with a phone call to me when the 6300 was running very badly on the web. She and others had at first thought her PRAM battery needed replacing.

My sister has a friend who would likely supply her with a new PC for free if she'd let them, but she won't hear of it. She prefers Macs to PCs, and especially likes the 6300 because it came from family (us). But the demands of the web will force her to change something eventually.

I believe she has a PC at work, and suspect she sometimes is using a friend's PC close to home as well, to supplement the 6300--especially where the net is concerned.

Apple Mac Performa 6300 Log Contents


6-5-98: My cousin may have been bitten by the notorious Mac OS 7.6/8.0 Drive Set Up Bug...

...first mentioned here around early October 1997...

Really Bad Mac Stuff has happened to my cousin Edwin in past weeks. I probably can't tell it as well as he can, but here's the gist as I understand it:

Some weeks back Edwin decided his 6300 was seeming a little slow and cramped, so he ordered a refurbished Mac 8600 (with video I/O) from Small Dog. Before the 8600 could arrive, suddenly the hard drive went out on the 6300. Edwin's no dummy though; he was thoroughly backed up. And with the 8600 due to arrive any day, and a transfer of files a foregone conclusion anyway due to the box switch, the 6300 loss was no big deal.

Unfortunately, all this happened just maybe a week or two before the expose of Apple's refurbished...NOT! Mac program by the Macintouch web site. You see, it turns out that either Apple has recently changed its refurbishing arrangements, or they were lousy to start with, with end users getting wildly varying results from the program. Quite a few people got Macs with problems ranging from mild to severe, as essentially these things are used Macs on which often little or no testing or repair work has been done at all before a customer receives it. Of course, there were other users who got more pleasant surprises-- like the guy who ordered a 62xx model but got the superior 6300 instead...along with a hard disk full of top-of-the-line Mac software (the stuff that goes for $hundreds per program).

Unfortunately, Edwin got one of the nightmare machines rather than dream boxes. It ran just long enough for him to waste several days transferring his files to it, and then died. Edwin called Small Dog, and they told him the Apple 90 day warranty on it required he take it to an Apple repair center, so he did. They've had it for maybe a couple weeks now, replacing virtually every component in the case, and at last word still couldn't get it to work (maybe one reason is that for replacement parts Apple sends out still more used but untested parts to put in the machine, according to what an Apple employee told Edwin when he asked).

With the ongoing 8600 problems, Edwin had ordered a new drive for his 6300 in the interim. A ClubMac drive. The 6300 wouldn't take it. Edwin returned it, and got another. He couldn't get that one to work either.

Now folks, Edwin's a professional electrical/electronics technician-- a supervisor of a team, actually; if he had to, he could probably build a Mac or PC from scratch out of a pile of random parts (of course, that's not practical or cost-effective given the much easier routes to a functional box today-- but you get the point). Edwin's also a pretty experienced Mac and PC user atop that. But the 6300 drive problem was a stumper. When he told me about it, I'd forgotten about my own old newz post about the set up problems with Apple software last year, and was puzzled too-- it seemed unnatural to me that you couldn't replace a drive to fix the problem.

After both the 8600 and 6300 had remained out of commission for weeks with no end in sight (despite Edwin doing everything prudent and proper that should have resolved the matter), I told Edwin I'd see if I could find something on the net about it.

I checked places like the Conflict Compendium and MacFixit and Apple, looking for problems with IDE hard drives...and ran smack into the Apple Drive Set Up bug of OS 7.6/8.0 which I'd reported on a year earlier. There's a huge mass of troubles in this area, including problems stemming from certain versions of FWB's hard disk tool kit too (I suspect because they based their software on the same bad set up info Apple used), bad firmware in some 1.2 GB IDE drives, and other matters. To make matters worse, OS 8 would try pretty hard to 'update' a user's hard drive to software presenting high risks of decimating IDE drives sooner or later (although 7.6 was also a culprit). The disk problems from all this were so bad that some folks had actually had to do things like take their IDE drives out of their Macs to format them with a PC, before they could return them to a Mac and get them to work again. Others reported disconnecting the IDE ribbon cable from an internal hard drive, booting off a CD, then reconnecting the IDE ribbon cable, to get their IDE drive to respond to initialization commands (or even show up on the desktop at all).

There's TONS of details in all this-- I'm only providing highlights here. But the bottomline for most seemed to be NOT allowing any Apple Drive Set Up program later than v1.1 and earlier than 1.3.1 to do anything to your IDE hard drive. Avoiding this was difficult for many though, as the 7.6 and 8.0 installation procedures urged users to do exactly the wrong thing in this area over months.

At last word, Edwin was ordering another drive for the 6300 to make another stab at it, armed with this new info. His 8600 remains in critical condition at the Apple dealer, however.

UPDATE 6-10-98: Edwin now has both his 6300 and 8600 working again. YAY! His 8600 turned out to have a bad power supply ruining every component that was put in it-- YIKES! After the 6300 was resuscitated, its Apple 15 inch Multi-scan monitor lost one of its colors too (these model monitors are notorious for this), but being an electrical technician and getting a clue from an Apple tech about what the problem was, Edwin appears to have fixed it himself with some judicious soldering inside the monitor.

Following are some web links I found useful in regard to Edwin's drive problem:

March 1997-a Archive

June 1997-b Archive

October 1997-b Archive

October 1997-a Archive

Blinking/Flashing Question Mark Startup Problems

Apple Drive Setup Compatibility

Apple Mac Performa 6300 Log Contents


10-8-97: WebFLUX Alert: It turns out HUGE numbers of PowerPC Mac users who upgraded to Mac OS 7.6/8.0 have been (and continue to be) in danger of complete data loss on their hard drives

It seems every Mac owner with a PowerPC chip and an ATA/IDE hard drive may be at risk, if they've moved to OS 7.6 or 8 (this group would seem to include nearly every Mac Performa ever shipped with a PowerPC chip, which has since been upgraded to OS 7.6 or later).

Almost the ONLY exception to this might be owners of Performa 6300s(?) (The 6300 was conspicuously absent from Apple's list of machines which seem to be endangered (the first list I saw anyway); however, this omission may have been an accident, since I know of no significant differences between the 6300 and other Macs which ARE on the list, to account for the 6300's seeming immunity).

Apple says one possible fix for this threat involves downloading and using Drive Setup 1.3.1. Though the PowerPC/ATA/IDE Macs seem most at risk, Apple recommends 68040/68LC040 Macs with ATA/IDE hard drives also be updated. PowerBooks also seem at risk as well, if they have ATA/IDE hard drives.

Apple's Disk Copy 6.1 also seems to be necessary for doing this-- but from my own experience Disk Copy 6.x seems extremely buggy, creating corrupted disk images itself, so I don't know how Mac users are supposed to get around that obstacle.

Folks, even performing the update itself as recommended by Apple can be dangerous too-- try to make sure you've backed up everything you can't live without BEFORE turning Drive Setup loose on your disk. Too, be sure to print out all Read Me instructions BEFORE updating, for reference during the procedure. You can't afford mistakes during this operation. One HUGE error many folks might accidentally do in Drive Setup is choosing the "Inititialization" option-- that one ERASES YOUR DISK folks-- leaving you with a Mac that can't even boot up on its own. SO BE CAREFUL!

If you've already upgraded to 7.6 or 8.0, APPLE RECOMMENDS YOU PERFORM THIS DRIVE SETUP UPDATE IMMEDIATELY.

If you have NOT yet upgraded to 7.6/8.0 and would prefer to wait until Apple corrects this huge mess in a single CD ROM, apparently that single and more convenient CD solution should be available as Mac OS 8.1 around Christmas 1997 or after-- and also include a more efficient file system for big hard drives too (i.e., no longer will a 2K file have to be a minimum size of 30K or whatever on a Gigabyte hard drive). Other fixes in 8.1 will hopefully include a far better memory management scheme than the present 8.0, which currently forces you to restart to free up RAM if you're moving from one large memory use application to another (according to reports I've seen).

How about us here at WebFLUX Central? How did we make it through the whole 7.6/8.0 upgrade cycle unscathed when perhaps as many as 20-30% of Mac users worldwide were losing whole disk fulls of data as one consequence? (Pacific Rim Mac users seemed especially hard hit for some reason-- according to a 10-8-97 News.com article though Apple claims only 3% of USA 8.0 users are suffering from this (Apple gave no numbers for 7.6 sufferers))

I'm an bonafide Old Computer Geezer, with a total of maybe 17 years of general computer usage, and 9 years of experience specializing in Apple and the Mac. I DON'T TRUST upgrades from ANYBODY-- and even before Steve Jobs turned the entire Apple Corporation and installed Mac user base into his personal harem recently, several years of appalling quality problems in OS software from Apple had made me NOT TRUSTING APPLE in particular, too.

So here at WebFLUX we routinely wait six months to a year (or longer) before upgrading-- to find out how the process goes for everyone else first. Yeah, I admit it. I cheerfully let everyone else act as guinea pigs for us before we take the plunge ourselves.

One result is that all core WebFLUX Macs are still running nothing later than OS 7.5.3. And one is even running 7.1! Yeah, sure, we pay the price with our 7.5.3 Macs crashing with appalling frequency-- but we're very familiar with their maintenance problems, and at least know how to keep them running in general, and have NOT lost any significant data along the way either.

My cousin Edwin isn't exactly part of the WebFLUX team, so I have no control over the OS he uses. Ergo, Edwin has upgraded to 7.6 and then 8.0 too in past months, with only a few problems (and crashes) so far. Of course, he also seems to have been especially lucky, since according to one Apple info sheet I saw, Edwin's 6300 is one of precious few PPC/ATA/IDE Macs that are relatively safe from the disk loss problem described in this report (again, I wonder if the 6300's absence from the list is merely a typo?).

Mac OS Late-Breaking News was one site offering some info on all this last time I checked.

Sources: (There were conflicting date stamps of BOTH 10-3-97 and 10-6-97 on the very first Apple info sheet I read), Apple, and practically every Mac news site you can think of.

Apple Mac Performa 6300 Log Contents


7-27-97: My cousin Edwin's taking the Mac OS 8 plunge...

...as he told me he ordered it over the weekend. Edwin has a Performa 6300 with 64 MB RAM and many other nice extras, which he reports has been solid as a rock since he installed System 7.6. But he likes the reports of 8 he's seen and so 'gotta have it'.

I cautioned him about upgrading when his Mac was already doing so well, but Edwin probably considers me TOO cautious about such things.

I've seen mostly positive things about OS 8 on the web-- it seems to do pretty well if you successfully get through the initial installation without problems. But the install is pretty lengthy I believe, and perhaps complex on some points, and can also require quite a lot of disk space for a full install.

Of the post-install problems I've seen, they're mostly small ones, including a few nagging interface bugs, and a bit more serious problem of an inability for some Macs to boot off of the OS 8 CD in case of problems where you need to do a re-install or whatever.

I strongly recommend that anyone upgrading to OS 8 do their best to create a full backup of their hard disk first, and be as prepared as they can in other ways too to put things back the way they were before 8-- should something go amiss.

One last item about 8 may prove more significant over the long run; reports are beginning to come in that 8 might achieve its extra stability largely by allowing RAM only to be used once in an operating session; that is, quitting a program doesn't free up its memory again, thereby eventually requiring a restart to get it back. If this turns out to be the case, Mac users may still be stuck with the necessity for regular restarts in lengthy or complex usage sessions, even if their Mac no longer crashes on them nearly as often as before.

Apple Mac Performa 6300 Log Contents


6-19-97: Remember the Performa 6300 we gave to my sister in Florida for Christmas?

Well, the 15 inch Apple Multiscan monitor that came with it has started to go on the blink now, forcing her to soon go through some sort of repair or replace agony. What's it doing? Apparently dropping out or changing around one or more of the three RGB colors on screen, according to phone conversations.

But my sister's not the only one with this problem; it's like lots of the same model monitor all over the world suddenly decided to go out of whack all at the same time. MacInTouch has been posting letters received about it. So once again, Apple's got a pretty bad quality and confidence problem brewing.

The way they handle this and the others (both problems present and ghosts of problems past), may well determine if the company survives another five years.

Are you listening Apple? Many of us don't think you are, anymore.

Apple Mac Performa 6300 Log Contents


6-10-97: ATTENTION MAC USERS: Here's your generic ink tank info on Apple's newest printers

The Apple Color StyleWriter 4100 = HP DeskWriter 660C

The Apple Color StyleWriter 4500 = HP DeskJet 690C

The Apple Color StyleWriter 6500 = HP DeskJet 870Cxi

Apple Mac Performa 6300 Log Contents


4-28-97: My cousin Edwin reports upgrading his Performa 6300 to system 7.6 seems to have sped up his computer a lot-- especially in regards to running Adobe Photoshop.

Keep in mind that Edwin dutifully followed all Apple's upgrade instructions AND was fully backed up via ZIP drive before upgrading. I can also report that here at FLUX HQ when we upgraded from 7.5.1 to 7.5.3, although we didn't speed up that I can recall, we DID get greater reliability-- I.E., much fewer crashes. I was reminded of this recently when I was helping someone who still has a 7.5.1 Mac.

Apple Mac Performa 6300 Log Contents


11-21-96: Apple's Color StyleWriter 2500

We installed a new 2500 onto our Performa 6300CD today. The previous printer was a Color StyleWriter Pro, and no, there's not a thing wrong with the Pro-- it's just older and bigger than the 2500, slower, and has lower resolution, among other things. In some ways the Pro is actually better than the 2500, with separate ink tanks for each color for example, and so possibly cheaper in the long run to use.

Newer Apple printers seem to take more steps to install than they used to (this may be true for PC printers too-- but it's been many, many years since I installed a PC printer to anything, for comparison). And apparently the complexities of newer Apple hardware/software has made for significant problems for some users-- because Apple's 2500 manual offers a surprising amount of information about installation, to try to prevent and cover as many potential problems as possible. Being an Old Computer Geezer, all this extraneous info made me more conscious of the possible glitches I might encounter-- but everything seemed to work as it should. One thing I especially didn't like was a statement in the manual that said if we ever upgraded the 6300's OS we'd have to re-install the 2500 software-- shades of Windows! I can't recall ever having to re-install any Mac printer (or other peripheral) software before, when I upgraded the OS, and I don't like the notion of starting now. We'll see though-- because I'm figuring on upgrading the 6300 from 7.5.1 to 7.5.3 and then to 7.5.5 or later, in the next few months (according to Apple this is how it must be done-- you can't use the free downloadable upgrades to go directly from 7.5.1 to 7.5.5. Isn't that special?).

Another thing I don't like? Apple recommends you keep virtual RAM switched on to use the 2500. We've had some problems with virtual memory switched on in the past on the 6300-- like the sound from CD ROMs sounding choppy, and certain somewhat buggy software like ColorIt that we use with our scanner, and which has its own virtual scheme that seems to conflict with Apple's. I figured though we'd try it with virtual on for a while, and set to 64 MB (twice our physical memory), and see what happens.

Newer Apple printers are getting ever more aware of their environment, it seems. The 2500 seems to know when its door is open, and adjusts itself more often and conspicuously than the old Pro did. In one case it seemed to want to crank up even before I'd installed the 2500's software on the Mac, to automatically print a related Read Me file I opened off the 2500 install disk, before actually running the installer. This caused SimpleText to hestitate an unusually long time to open the document, and made me wonder if something had went wrong. But I got no error message, and almost immediately after I became concerned everything was working as expected again. Come to find out doing a print of the 2500 Read Me is part of the process recommended in the manual as a test, and possibly scripted into the whole installer shebang too, as I did end up ordering a Read Me printed later, per instructions.

One way Apple made the 2500 smaller than the Pro was to take the power supply out and turn it into a brick to sit on your desk or the floor nearby (the cords were all conveniently long enough for either placement).

The actual 2500 install took around 30 minutes. The 2500 had more packing tape wrapped around it than anything else I've opened in years.

Being an Old Computer Geezer I probably am more cautious and more certain to read the manual and examine the Read Me files than many folks. Still, I noticed once beyond the point of no return in the install that I'm getting a bit too complacent about installs; I'd completely neglected to back up the install disks before I started. I've been on the Mac for so many years now, spoiled by so many easy and successful software and hardware installs, that despite my normally paranoid attitude I'm actually starting to take things for granted here, without realizing it. Way back in another life many zillions of computer years ago, I lost about six months(?) work on a Commodore 128, which left me, I thought, permanently traumatized. Another few zillion computer years after that, being in charge of a network of Macs and PCs at a robotics workstation firm, I did my best to be fanatical about keeping everything running smoothly-- which meant in large part staying backed up to the hilt on important company data.

I guess then that you might say one of the most dangerous aspects of the Mac is that it usually treats you so well that you might begin to think yourself immune to most of the troubles that have historically been a part of computing. But even the Mac can't keep you safe forever. So be sure to back up your more important files, and keep the original installation materials for software organized well enough so that you can use them again two years later if necessary!

OK-- I'm off my soapbox. The 2500 includes a handy little sticker decal you can attach to the inside of its access door, listing the ink cartridge model numbers, as a reminder of what to buy for refills. The 2500 software installs an icon of the 2500 printer on your desktop, similar to what QuickDraw GX did years ago, that I believe you can drag and drop files onto to print them (I haven't read the whole manual yet). The 2500 gives you lots of options for watermarks in your printing too, as well as a few other perks. The speed increase over the Pro was easily noticeable in the few test files we printed already, as was the higher resolution (actually I was surprised that we could see the resolution improvement so plainly without resorting to a specialized image and print setting, for best results).

What will the fate of the old Pro be now? No pasture for him! Instead, he'll likely be called upon to travel to Florida and work for my sister-- after we round her up a Mac, that is....

Apple Mac Performa 6300 Log Contents


11-14-96: CorelDraw Suite 6 for the Mac.

I recently installed this on the 6300CD here at FLUX Central. There's three CDs worth of stuff here-- it's huge, possibly taking up as much as 250 MB on disk if you let it. Fortunately we got by with about half that much, electing to leave much of the extra clip art/etc. on the original CDs.

Be sure you have your Netscape Bookmarks saved or backed up before doing the install-- it's easy to let Corel replace them since it also sticks Netscape Navigator 2.0 on your disk as well. For some reason Corel provided a ColorSync profile for virtually every Apple color printer ever made BUT the Apple Color StyleWriter Pro we have hooked to the 6300CD. This hasn't caused us any problem yet, but it's annoying anyway. Corel also throws a bunch of extra fonts on your disk too apparently (like so many Mac programs these days).

There's almost everything here but the kitchen sink. Many users could probably do pretty much everything they wanted on their Mac with just the applications provided here.

Perhaps the worst news about the package is that its 3D graphics application is simply Ray Dream Designer 4 with a different name. I can't tell you how disappointed I was by that, since Ray Dream Designer 4 really stinks in terms of its user interface (we bought it for the 6300 back in Feb '96); it's pretty much useless so far as I can tell. This baby requires you to go to Ray Dream college (through the tutorial) and learn a few hundred different IBM-style keyboard commands to do anything more than create a 3D box with the program. Honestly, I tried very hard to use the program, dutifully following the included tutorial, until I did exactly what it said and I crashed. The crash was the last straw, since I'd already spent hours learning how to play "Twister" on the keyboard with my fingers to utilize all the weird keyboard commands needed to move the program along. Since that first bad experience I've tried a couple more times to make peace with Ray Dream, to no avail. It's my opinion that all those 3D models you see in Ray Dream ads were actually created in some other 3D program, and maybe imported into Ray Dream just so they could claim that at some point a complex model existed in the program. Now Fractal Design has bought the rights to Designer I believe. Though programs like Fractal Painter are obviously more high quality than Designer 4 was, still Fractal software itself has pretty steep learning curves on their programs. I pretty much can't accomplish anything with Fractal Painter myself, for example. Every time I try I give up in disgust and return to ClarisWorks.

Anyway, getting back to CorelDraw Suite 6-- I personally mainly use the 6300 primarily for Web surfing-- others use apps like the CorelDraw suite so far. So I have only second-hand info from its performance. The users seem to like it OK-- though the Windows heritage of some of Corel's offerings still raise their heads with a bit of unMac-like clunkiness here and there-- such as extra steps required to do certain graphics and font operations, compared to more typical Mac software. Overall though, the CorelDraw suite seems to be satisfying the users here pretty well so far. Especially at the amazing price of only around $90 (after $10 rebate) for the competitive upgrade. Who qualified for the competitive upgrade? Virtually any Mac user who wanted it, so long as they ordered it before early November (sorry folks). I've seen this package advertised for as much as $400 in some catalogs-- but also seen the competitive upgrade angle available for around $150 too I think, in various major Mac mail order catalogs lately.

Apple Mac Performa 6300 Log Contents


11-12-96: Keep getting a busy signal at your Internet Service provider?

Have you checked with your ISP about alternative phone numbers? Even small rural ISPs like my own often have two or three or even more local phone numbers to choose from-- but for a variety of reasons many folks might be always trying to dial the same number, and therefore get a busy signal when they really don't have to. Ask your ISP about this, and then enter any alternative number you might get into your PPP software. And maybe you'll be frustrated less often.

Apple Mac Performa 6300 Log Contents


11-2-96: The lower-middle-class Mac user's dilemma.

Macs are still too expensive, by a good thousand dollars or more in many instances. Apple's long reluctance to license its OS in past years has led to this and many other circumstances where a Windows PC purchase is almost inescapeable for many of us at some point. My family is presently contemplating the purchase of a computer for my sister in Florida, whose only onsite support will be a U.S. Marine who swears by PCs (he knows absolutely nothing about Macs but still insists PCs MUST be better; ergo, we fear his unfounded prejudice might greatly exaggerate any problem my sister did happen to have with a Mac under his care). Too, my sister has gotten the impression that the local job market requires that she be proficient in WordPerfect on a Windows PC. Lastly, she wants on the Web as well. None of us here being wealthy, costs heavily pressure us into a Windows purchase. So that's probably what we'll do-- though all of us-- including my sister-- hopes she'll get to have a Mac "someday". Our local Wal Mart has a $1000 AST Adventure 466-- a 66 MHz 486 with 8/500 MB RAM/HD, CD,14.4 modem, 14 inch monitor configuration and Windows 95-- including Internet Explorer. Add a printer and WordPerfect, and you have pretty much everything my sister should need for her first year or so, for under $1500. The Washington Post recommends avoiding AST because of an ongoing shakeup at the top-- says go with HP, Acer, or IBM instead (The Post recommended Apple too-- but Macs and Mac clones are simply out of our price range for what's required here). The Post goes on to say you can get a 100 MHz Pentium (or Cyrix/AMD 586 equivalent), 16/850 MB RAM/HD, 28.8 modem, 4x CD, 14 inch monitor, and 16 bit sound card/cheap speakers and Windows 95 for $1100.Why am I telling you all this? Because you too might could use some pointers for buying PCs you're unfamiliar with-- since Apple has forced those of us on a budget to do this. There IS one bright spot here though-- since my sister hasn't really had any significant experience on a Mac yet, she won't know what she's missing. Someone like me though, spoiled the last seven years or so by Macs, would suffer mightily if my Mac was replaced by a Windows PC.

Apple Mac Performa 6300 Log Contents


10-31-96: Halleluha! Free at last, free at last!

Now that we have Open Transport successfully installed, I can dial up America Online via our internet service provider rather than by long distance phone line as I've had to do for maybe three years now. It works great! I have to open the connection with my Config PPP Control Panel before using AOL to log on-- and also use the control panel for logging off afterwards-- but other than that AOL works just as before. The only change necessary inside the AOL program was to choose TCP/IP in the settings popup menu on the program's sign on window (my PPP software handles everything else). Another bonus is that AOL appears to be changing their pricing structure so that users with Open Transport like me will also lose the extra $3.00 an hour charge for more than 5 hours a month-- all I can eat for $9.95 a month (of course, this doesn't include the typical $20 a month ISP charge required). I love it!

Apple Mac Performa 6300 Log Contents


Copyright © 1993-2003 by J.R. Mooneyham. All rights reserved.