Macintosh Performa 637 CD

[Doug20910]

Hi everyone
Help !
I own a old used Macintosh Performa 637 CD that i'm not currently using.
It was my first computer.
I'm currently using a Macintosh clone running on OS 8.6 that my father gave me.
Under the apple symbol there this index titled. Apple System Profiler.
It gives this information about my Mac computer.
Processor info. Power PC 604e.
Machine speed 200 MHZ.
FPU built- in.
Model name. Power Macintosh.
Modem Global Village x2
The browser i'm currently using is Netscape Communicator 4.7.
Back to my question about the Macintosh Performa 637.
When my dad gave me this current computer he transferred most,
of the old files i had on my old Macintosh Performa to my new,
Macintosh computer.
My question concerns this.
I've been thinking of giving my old Macintosh Performa 637 to a,
friend of mine.
Sense my dad uninstalled everything off from the Performa 637,
is the real problem or issue.
He uninstalled what ever OS operating system that was running on it.
Unfortunately i or my dad don't have the start-up disc or,
CD rom disc that came with it .
My father my have it, but I'm not really sure of that .
My father has been very reluctant in helping me when,
i've discussed it with him.
He does not think it's worth the effort.
What version of OS will run on the Performa 637 CD ?
I understand it's the OS 7.5 What about OS 8 ?
Question, would we need to buy the operating software,
or is free from the Apple corp. ?
A another question i had was what version of the,
netscape browser will work best on a Macintosh Performa 637 CD ?
Are there any other browser you can recommend ?
I recently i found a perfectly good discarded macintosh monitor,
that someone was throwing away as trash on a sidewalk street curb.
On this particularly day i'd gone out to visiting my,
daughter were she works to stop by to say hi.
After i had left her were she works i was walking along this street, through through a community neighborhood on my way,
home i had noticed that someone had tossed out this computer monitor.
When i realized that it was a Apple Macintosh monitor the,
thought went through my mind why not take it home and test,
it on my Macintosh computer.
There was nothing wrong with it!
It's the same size as the one i own.
So now my friend will have a monitor for the Performa 637.
I'm a newbee or what you would call a beginner novice about computers.
Can any of you recommend any
newgroups or messageboards that i
can post this question to ?
I've all ready posted it at the
newsgroup comp.sys.mac.apps
Any help on this subject i'll appreciate.

Thank You.
Sincerely,
Doug Climenson

 

[Mercutio]

You'll have to get a licensed copy of Mac OS for your Performa. I imagine they probably go pretty cheaply on Ebay. Probably OS 8.6 is a good choce. Seems to me that's about the right vintage for that hardware and I know 8.6 is considered the best of its version number. OS9 is probably too new to be acquired inexpensively.

Browsers: iCab should work OK. Or IE. Mozilla might stretch things a bit on that machine and Netscape 4.x just isn't good enough any more.

That machine will work very well for web browsing and word processing.

 

[Barry K. Nathan]

You'll have to get a licensed copy of Mac OS for your Performa. I imagine they probably go pretty cheaply on Ebay. Probably OS 8.6 is a good choce. Seems to me that's about the right vintage for that hardware and I know 8.6 is considered the best of its version number. OS9 is probably too new to be acquired inexpensively.

Browsers: iCab should work OK. Or IE. Mozilla might stretch things a bit on that machine and Netscape 4.x just isn't good enough any more.

That machine will work very well for web browsing and word processing.

Doug20910: next time you should put the effort into describing the machine you're asking the question about, rather than the machine that you're currently using, so that people like Mercutio don't get confused.

Doug's Performa is not the Mac clone that he describes in his e-mail. The Performa in question is an '040-based machine, so the highest MacOS it can run is 8.1 (and that's only if it has lots of RAM). Apple has MacOS 7.5.3 available for download off their web site for free. I don't know if it's possible to boot off of that however; if not, then you might be able to hook it up to your newer Mac using LocalTalk (or, if the machine has a network card or external bridge, Ethernet) and use a 7.5(.0) network startup floppy (also available for download from Apple's web site) to connect to your Mac clone via File Sharing and run the 7.5.3 installer that way.

How much RAM does the machine have? (If you get that 7.5 net startup disk, you can boot that and go to "About this Macintosh" to see.) That's probably the most critical piece of information that we're missing.

There's some more info on this model here (as well as an outdated price -- the copyright on the page is 1996): http://www.macintoshos.com/macintosh.museum/performas/637.cd.html

In any case, it should be a decent machine for word processing, as long as you have or can find a printer for it. It can print to anything PostScript-based using LocalTalk or Ethernet, and it can print to Mac printers over a DIN-8 serial connection (older Epson Styluses and HP DeskWriters/DeskJets supported this, as did Apple's long-gone series of relabeled Canon and HP inkjets).

If it has 4MB, forget it (in terms of web browsing) -- it's unquestionably too slow. (I'm speaking from recent experience, having tried a few weeks back to set up a PowerBook 520c with 4MB of RAM to do web browsing with my cable modem -- this was even with the use of a 10KRPM SCSI drive for boot and swap instead of the PowerBook's internal drive.)

Even if you have more RAM, the 68K Mac platform has been abandoned by the rest of the modern world in a way that the PowerMacs (even relatively old ones like your Mac clone) haven't been. AFAIK, the only web browser that will run on that Performa that is still being maintained is iCab http://www.icab.de. On 68K Macs it has performance problems with SSL however: http://www.icab-soft.de/faq.html#q15

If you really want to run Netscape, the most recent Netscape release that will run on such a machine is 4.08, and IIRC 4.08 is incapable of using current SSL root certificates so it's not usable for online shopping, secure logins or the like. The same caveats apply to MSIE 4.0 (assuming that it runs on 68K Macs -- I think it does but I'm not sure). I think there are also exploitable security bugs in these old Netscape and MSIE releases, but I'm not sure. Also, Netscape 4 doesn't support Java on 68K Macs; you'll need Netscape 3 for Java support. JavaScript pop-up menus and the like will also be ridiculously slow. Back when I used to know many 68K Mac users (who have now moved on to PowerMacs and Pentiums), some preferred Netscape 2 over Netscape 3 or 4, although browsing today's Web pages with Netscape 2 doesn't sound fun to me. Aside from the browser itself, insecure (exploitable) obsolete versions of Macromedia Shockwave and similar plugins will be able to run on the Performa slowly, but no current plugins will run.

Also, would your friend be using dialup Internet access with this machine? Its serial port only has a one-bit buffer, if you can even call it a buffer, so it's virtually certain to drop many bits (and therefore have to drop many packets) with a 56K modem. Even with a 28.8 it'll have trouble keeping up (if I remember correctly). There's also a weird interrupt routing glitch with the '040 Macs that causes heavy serial port traffic to drop the machine to a debugger prompt. If your friend is experienced with computers, he'll have to sit there during downloads and make sure to type in "G" when the debugger kicks in. If your friend isn't experienced with computers, then giving him a machine that kicks into a debugger during modem traffic occasionally (due to misdetecting a serial port interrupt as a "programmer's button" interrupt) doesn't sound like a good idea to me unless it's going to be using a network card instead of a modem.

It should be reasonably usable for SSH though (on Ethernet, cable modem, etc. -- I haven't tried SSH over a modem on a 68K Mac). (SSH 2 key generation takes many minutes, at least, but once the keys are generated, the connection shouldn't be too slow.)

Seeing your post makes me feel like setting up my Quadra 610 again for entertainment value (albeit with a Seagate X15 and a cable modem connection), but I think your dad may be right in stating that it's not worth it to set the machine up for Internet access. (If your friend only needs word processing, and no 'Net access, then it's still a good machine though.)

 

[Tea]

As I recall, there is a small download from Netscape that updates the certification thing. "cert.db" or some such. But, lthough that particular issue is solvable, it's one of quite a list, so I'm not sure if it's worth mentioning.

 

[Barry K. Nathan]

As I recall, there is a small download from Netscape that updates the certification thing. "cert.db" or some such. But, lthough that particular issue is solvable, it's one of quite a list, so I'm not sure if it's worth mentioning.

I'm typing this from my Quadra 610, 12MB RAM, Seagate X15 hard drive (with a hard drive cooler, "installed" [not really, it's just been stuffed in there and it isn't being held in by screws or other mounting stuff, and the drive cooler is sticking two or three inches out the front of the computer] in the CD-ROM bay). Yes, an X15 on a machine with a 5MB/sec SCSI bus and a 25MHz CPU. A neat aspect of this setup is that you can see the access LED that's built into the X15.

I'm running iCab 2.8 (the latest version) right now. I downloaded it using MSIE 3.01 (which Mac OS 8 installed, along with Netscape 3.01). Netscape 3 and MSIE 3 seem to exhibit nearly identical glitches on web pages (i.e., the various boxes surrounding things on the StorageForum and StorageReview discussion pages are invisible). MSIE 3 crashed the first time I tried to load the StorageReview front page with it, though.

As I type this, the computer is spending so much CPU time animating the smileys on the left side of the web browser window that it can't keep up with my keystrokes in this text field. At this point I'm using 14MB of virtual memory (on a machine with 12MB of physical RAM). Chances are that everything would be able to fit into RAM if I were running MacOS 7.5.x or 7.6.x instead of 8.1. I'd say page load times are best measured in minutes, not seconds. I'm quite sure that in the past Netscape 4 was not very much faster than NS 3 or iCab on here.

This has certainly been a stark reminder of how slow modern web browsers are on not-so-modern computers. (BTW, I'm just going to submit this without previewing -- this computer's just too slow.)