System information

Performa
580CD
PowerPC
Upgrade
Here’s a very worthwhile
Mac upgrade that anyone
can do. The trick here is one
of taking a 33 Mhz 68LC040
Performa 580CD and boost-
ing it to a 75 Mhz PowerPC
Performa. The entire opera-
tion takes less than an hour if
you gather up the bits and
pieces beforehand.
The pieces you will need to
acquire are readily available.
Firstly, if you don’t already
have one, you will need a
Performa 580CD. These old
all-in-one Performas were a
box of delights in their time
but they came equipped
with a motherboard which
seriously limited their performance. The 33 Mhz
68LC040 chip was the low-performance 68040
chip with no PFU built in and the RAM upgrade
limit was one 16-Meg and one 32-Meg SIMM.
Later on, to save money, Apple used the same
logic board design for its early entry level
PowerPC Performas as well. The Performa 6200,
5200 and 5300 series Macs shared many of the
physical characteristics of the Performa 580CD
and their motherboards look very similar. Unless
you check the actual processor chip you can easi-
ly mistake one for the other, and its entirely pos-
sible to simply pull the motherboard out of one
type and slide it into the other. The electrical
interface connector that all of these Performa sys-
tems share is identical. The ROM SIMM and
processor chips are the only obvious differences.
I checked on the Low End Mac SWAP list with a
query and was offered several suitable PowerPC
Performa motherboards that will physically fit
into the Performa 580CD chassis. The prices for
boards offered were from $10.00 to $20.00 U.S. I
paid $10.00 U.S. for a board out of a defunct 75
Mhz Performa 5200CD.
On all of these different but similar models the
motherboard can be accessed by simply opening
up a drawer on the back of the computer.
Removing a couple of screws makes it possible to
drop the plastic door and remove it.