Strawberryland Forum

cpd2009 Wrote:$25 USD goes a long way sometimes.

Congrats on getting your new, er, good ol' Performa!

The Performa now has a name.... her name is Connie.


Here is a PDF file being displayed using Adobe Acrobat Reader 3.0. The pages load up slowly, but it works good for such a vintage Mac.

Meh.

Is that an old computer? How old is it? And it seems to still run well despite the age. Quite a good deal you had there with only $25. Wonder how much that machine costed in its prime age.

I know nothing. :lol:

Blackberry Bun Wrote:Is that an old computer? How old is it? And it seems to still run well despite the age. Quite a good deal you had there with only $25. Wonder how much that machine costed in its prime age.

It is indeed quite a deal, considering it hasn't yellowed much or looked beat up.

Blackberry Bun Wrote:Is that an old computer? How old is it? And it seems to still run well despite the age. Quite a good deal you had there with only $25. Wonder how much that machine costed in its prime age.

I know nothing. :lol:

Connie is a Macintosh Peforma 6214CD from early 1996, found at a friends rummage sale. It only had one previous owner, and that owner took really great care of it. From what I understand, it was mainly a home office computer that was used up until about four or five years ago. It also came with an Apple Color StyleWriter 2500, an Apple Color OneScanner, and nearly all of the original documentation and software discs. It even had the original shipping sheet, and from that, I learned the system originally cost $1,599 USD, not including shipping and handling. The StyleWriter 2500 and monitor apparently came as a bundle and is included in that price. It also had a ZIP Drive too, and turns out, I may in fact use it if I can source another USB Zip drive for Audrey. The ZIP drive that came with Connie is SCSI only.

I can't use the StyleWriter 2500 yet since I have to locate new ink cartridges for it. I could use the Apple Color OneScanner if I had room to set the massive thing up and a way to get the scans transferred to a more modern system. Floppies come to mind, but I don't know of Mac OS System 7 can save documents to DOS formatted floppies. I would also need to acquire a USB floppy drive as well, and some blank disks.

The main reason I got the Performa? Vintage games and educational CD-ROMs. I have two Madeline CD-ROMs from the 90s that have issues running on Windows XP, but run great on Connie. I also have a "Super Solvers" CD-ROM that won't work with any of my PCs, but it will run on Connie.

As for her desktop picture... I had to download a free third-party program called "Decor" from a neat site called System 7 Today. This allows you to use a GIF, JPEG, or PICT file as a desktop background. Without "Decor", you are limited to patterns. As for getting the original JPEG from Audrey to Connie? I had to transfer it to Greta, use Nero to burn a CD-R, and copy it from there.

Makes me wish I had a USB floppy drive, or a high capacity USB ZIP drive.

It also helps the system came with the original Performa Software CD.

I don't intend on reinstalling the OS now, since it runs just fine, but it came in handy when a failed install of Oregon Trail 4th Edition messed up the Quicktime components and left behind a whole bunch of OpenGL extensions that I didn't need. All I had to do was delete the QT4 components and prefs, and copy over the original QT2 extensions from the CD. QuickTime was later updated to version 2.5 after installing Madeline Thinking Games.

I'm still trying to find a way to install Acrobat Reader 4.0, but then again, Reader 3.0 works well enough.

You plan on trying out OS8 or something?

huckleberrypie Wrote:You plan on trying out OS8 or something?

No, not really. I don't have a need for OS8 at this time. System 7 will do just fine. Connie only has a 75mhz PPC Processor and 16mb RAM. She also only has a 1GB Hard Disk, so in order to get the most out of OS8, I would have to acquire a slightly more powerful Mac, such as the multicolored iMac.

I might upgrade the RAM in the future since viewing PDF files takes up nearly all the RAM. I may also come across a vintage game that may require more RAM too.