• apple,  power mac,  repair,  retro computing,  vintage

    How-To: Open a Sony MPF52A Floppy Drive

    I have been working on restoring an Apple Power Macintosh 7100/80, first released in 1994. While tearing it down to remove the original PRAM battery from 1994, I decided to also pull out the 3.5-inch floppy drive to service it before attempting to power on the Mac.

    What I discovered was that I couldn’t find any documentation (service manual, blog post, YouTube video) about how to open the drive without breaking the plastic faceplate. So, I made a video of me fumbling around trying to open the drive so you don’t have to wonder how to open it or break any plastic clips.

  • apple,  power mac,  restoration,  vintage

    Power Macintosh 7200 Retrospective

    Back in July, I started a project to repair my aging PowerBook G3 Wallstreet for a third time. I was not the original owner of this PowerBook and I had successfully completed two other repair attempts. Alas, the third time was not to be a charm and I decided to end the project.

    Apple Power Macintosh 7200/120 (1996)

    Still wanting to have a vintage Power Macintosh with an Apple Super Drive 1.44MB floppy disk drive, I turned once again to eBay to find something to replace my Wallstreet. Enter the Power Macintosh 7200.

    Introduction of the Power Macintosh 7200

    The Power Macintosh 7200 was the low-end of a trio of new Macs that were introduced at Macworld Expo Boston in August 1995. The 7200’s siblings are the Power Mac 7500 and 8500. These machines had been released at a time when Apple needed to release speedier machines to compete with Windows NT machines running Intel Pentium processors. According to Anita Epler, writing for InfoWorld at the time, these machines offered three advantages over the previous year’s Macintosh models: fast PowerPC 601 (7200/7500) and 604 (8500) CPUs, including PCI expansion card slots over the proprietary NuBus slot, and competitive price cuts. Epler spills the codename info by stating that internally, Apple referred to this wave of Macs was “Power Surge” and included the monikers “Nitro” (8500), “TNT” (7500), and “Catalyst” (7200).

    Even as the low-cost model of the bunch, the Power Macintosh 7200 included the same design language – and parts – as the 7500, which should have made it cheaper for Apple to produce. Available in two CPU speeds, 75 and 90 MHz, the 7200 started at $1,699. The CPU was later spec bumped to 120 MHz in April 1996. In addition to the 1.44MB Super Drive floppy drive that could read/write Macintosh and MS-DOS/Windows floppy disks, customers had an option for a 4x or 8x CD-ROM optical drive and a 3.5-inch 500MB to 1.2GB SCSI hard disk. On the motherboard, which was easily accessible by way of a novel swing-out chassis, there are four 168-pin DIMM slots accepting up to 512MB of RAM. There are also four graphics memory VRAM slots, which came populated with a 1MB chip. Finally, these Macs featured a 10Base-T RJ-45 Ethernet port for a direct network connection. If you needed a different network media type, customers could either add a PCI network card or use an AAUI network adapter, such as the Farallon Etherwave transceiver. I was happy to ditch the Etherwave that I had to support on the Power Macintosh 7100. Unlike its siblings, the Power Mac 7200 lacked a processor upgrade slot.

    Looking the Power Macintosh 7200 up in Ian Page’s excellent Mactracker app (macOS and iOS/iPadOS), we see that the 7200 can run Classic Mac OS System 7.5.2, with a machine specific enabler, all the way up to Mac OS 9.1. Support for three versions of Classic Mac OS is a pretty good run, however, I wish that Apple had provided an upgrade patch to reach the last version of Classic Mac OS, v9.2 released in June 2001.

    The full Power Macintosh 7200/120 specifications are still listed on the Apple Support website.

    A Success Despite Serious Leadership Dysfunction

    In 1995, Apple was heading into serious financial trouble, and it would still be a few years before the NeXT acquisition that would bring Steve Jobs back to Apple.

    The Power Surge line of Macs were developed and released near during then Apple CEO Michael Spindler’s tenure (1993 – 1996). Tom Hormby, writing for LowendMac.com, remarks that Spindler was regarded inside Apple as “brilliant strategist” and had a great deal of success running the Apple Europe division. However, once promoted to the executive ranks, Spindler suffered from “debilitating levels of stress”. Despite the many technical and management problems Spindler faced at Apple, the PowerPC collaborative project with Motorola and IBM had come together. The Power Macintosh 7200 benefitted from the PowerPC 601 CPU that came out of that collaboration. After a disastrous performance at the annual shareholder meeting on January 23, 1996, Spindler was replaced by Gil Amelio, who would go on to start serious discussions about the NeXT ‘acquisition’ in late 1996.

    Throughout all the turmoil inside Apple in the 1990s, engineers were able to release a well performing machine. A beige box Mac that, in my opinion, includes design queues from the Macintosh SE with its grill vents alone the sides and the Mac Classic with its rounded face plate. The Power Macintosh 7200 and 7500 also featured an easy to remove case that slide off, just like the older compact Macs. Apple would continue to release beige box desktop and tower computers for a few more years until Steve Jobs and Jonny Ive would release the colorful Bondi Blue iMac with a 233 MHz PowerPC 750 G3 processor.

    Other Configurations of the 7200

    The Power Macintosh 7500 and 8500 featured a slot on the motherboard for a CPU daughter card. The purpose of this card, in part, made it possible to upgrade the Mac later on with a fast CPU. The 7200, however, lacked the modularity of the other two Power Surge machines.

    Sonnet Crescent 7200 500 Upgrade Card, source: eBay.com

    After the PowerMac 7200 was discontinued by Apple, Sonnet Technologies developed a PCI processor upgrade board called the Crescendo/7200 G3. The Crescendo PCI board is compatible with the Power Macintosh 7200 and the Power Macintosh 8200; a tower version of the 7200 that was released in April 1996. The upgrade board includes a 500 MHz PowerPC 750 G3 CPU with 1MB of backside cache. Crescendo also came with three 168-pin DIMM slots allowing customers to upgrade to a total of 768MB when three 256MB DIMMs are installed; a significant upgrade over the 256MB RAM maximum over a stock 7200. At somepoint in my Power Macs past, one of these Sonnet cards was installed, because a Powered by Sonnet sticker was affixed to the case. The card was removed before I purchased it, so I scraped off the label with a plastic spudger.

    According to EveryMac.com, Apple also released a “PC Compatible” version of the 7200/120 that included an Intel Pentium PCI card that enabled the machine to run MS-DOS and Windows operating systems. There was also an enterprise server version of the machine, known as the Power Macintosh Workgroup Server (WGS) 7250/120. Both variants shared the same case as the Power Macintosh 7200-series desktop PCs.

    Using My Power Macintosh 7200

    The Power Macintosh that I purchased, a 7200/120 model, came with the previous owner’s applications and documents still on the hard drive.

    The Power Macintosh 7200 could run engineering applications like LemkeSoft’s CADintosh, source: LemkeSoft

    Interestingly, it appeared that this Mac was used at a business that did engineering work based on the registered install of LemkeSoft CADintosh and the documents that I reviewed before wiping the disk drive clean and reinstalling Classic Mac OS 9.1. I had never heard of CADintosh before. Interestingly, LemkeSoft is still releasing versions of CADintosh for Intel and Apple Silicon Macs. If so inclined, you can purchase a copy of CADintosh for $32USD or $30 Euros.

    Top down view of the 7200 with the cover removed and the maintenance flaps open.

    In my experience restoring the 7200, I can atest to the speed boost of this old machine. Mac OS 9.1 feels zippy on this computer and Quantum Fireball SCSI 1.2GB hard drive doesn’t feel like the performance bottleneck that the Maxtor IDE hard drive was in my restored Power Macintosh G4 Quicksilver. I had originally planned on installing a Rabbit Hole Computing SCSI2SD v5.2 bridgeboard, but I decided to hold off for now and use the board for a Macintosh SE restoration project.

    Top down view of the 7200 with the power supply and drive bay assembly swung open, revealing the motherboard

    The swing-out chassis makes the PowerMac 7200 very easy to work on. After lifting off the case over, the drive assembly swings up on the right side of the case. A narrow plastic shield over the three PCI slots swings up on the left side of the case. When both pieces are in their open postions, the motherboard DIMM and VRAM slots are directly accessible without the need for tools. This idea of swing-out chassis design would be a tentpole feature of the Power Macintosh G3, G4, G5, and original “cheese greater” Mac Pro tower cases.

    Overall, my Power Macintosh 7200/120 is in fantastic cosmetic condition for its age and runs very well. The previous owner had installed a third-party USB 1.0 PCI card, which makes moving disk images and ISO files over to the machine from my iMac very easy. The Apple Super Drive OEM floppy drive is working remarkably well, and I haven’t had any problems coverting 800kb or 1.44MB floppy disks to image files using Disk Copy 4.2 and 6.3.3. Unlike my attempts to fix the PowerBook G3 Wallstreet, this restoration project was fairly straight forward since there were no electrical problems to troubleshoot.

    But, the Power Macintosh 7200, in hindsight, was a solid performer in a sea of beige box machines for die hard Macintosh fans that refused to use MS-DOS, Windows 95, or Windows NT Workstation.

  • apple //e,  apple //gs,  apple tv,  apple watch,  imac,  iphone,  ipod,  ipod touch,  mac,  mac pro,  power mac,  powerbook

    Happy 40th Birthday, Apple! Stay Foolish!

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtY0K2fiFOA]
    Apple – 40 Years in 40 Seconds video originally show during Apple’s Spring 2016 event

    In honor of Apple’s 40th birthday today, I decided to help celebrate by listing out all of the Apple gear that I have either owned (my own personal hardware) or I have used at work (which was a big Mac shop until the mid-2000’s).

    Items that I owned have a picture and the approximate year in which I started using it. All of the hardware listed below has been listed in chronological order by the year Apple released it.

    Apple //e, Apple

    ImageWriter II (1986)

    Apple IIgs (1988)

    Macintosh SE/30 (1995)

    Macintosh Classic (1990)
    Macintosh IIci (1996)

    Macintosh LC (1992)

    Macintosh IIsi (1995)

    Macintosh PowerBook 100 (1992)

    Macintosh PowerBook Duo 230 and DuoDock (1993)
    Apple QuickTake 100 camera (1995)

    Power Macintosh 7100/66av (1995)

    Macintosh PowerBook Duo 2300c/100 and DuoDock (1996)
    Macintosh PowerBook 5300ce (1996)
    Apple StyleWriter 1200 (1996)

    Apple Newton MessagePad 2000 (1998)
    Power Macintosh 7600 (1997)

    Macintosh PowerBook G3 “Wall Street” (1998)
    Power Macintosh G3 Blue and White (1999)
    Power Mac G4 Cube with Apple 17-inch Cinema Display and Apple Pro Speakers (2001)

    iMac 17-inch Flat Panel (2002)
    PowerBook G4 DVI (2002)
    Power Mac G4 Mirrored Drive Doors (2002)
    Power Mac G4 QuickSilver with Apple 20-inch Cinema Display (2003)
    Apple iPod with Dock Connector (2003)
    Power Mac G5 (2004)

    PowerBook G4 (2004)

    Xserve and Xserve RAID (2004)
    Apple iPod 5th Generation (2005)
    MacBook 13-inch (2006)
    Mac Pro with 23-inch Cinema Display (2006)

    iPhone 2G (2010)

    iPod Touch (2008)
    Apple TV 1st Generation (2009)
    MacBook Pro 17-inch (2010)
    iPad with Wi-Fi (2010)

    iPhone 4s Sprint (2011)
    iPad 3rd Generation with Wi-Fi (2012)
    iPad mini 1st Generation with Wi-Fi (2013)
    Apple TV 3rd Generation (2013)
    iPad Air (2013)
    iPhone 5s Sprint (2013)
    iPhone 6 Sprint (2014)

    Apple Watch Sport (2015)

    iPhone 6s Plus Sprint (2015)
    iPad Pro 12.9-inch with Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard (2015)

    iMac Retina 5k, 27-inch (2016)