System information

an established value of 1 for the sake
of these comparisons. It should be
noted as well that a few of the pro-
grams that I tried to install on the
580CD, like Bryce 2, ran fine on my
old Quadra 950 with its full 68040
processor but would not run on the
Performa 580CD at all because of the
68LC040's missing Floating Point
Unit (FPU). After the 5200CD moth-
erboard is installed the change is dra-
matic. The overall score for this same
computer with the Performa 5200CD
motherboard in it is 2,646. This repre-
sents an improvement factor of about
eighty-five times the original
Performa 580CD score of 31 !!!
This upgrade was so easy to do and
logical that there is a company adver-
tising on the internet that they have
PowerPC logic boards from 5200 and 6200 mod-
els on hand that they will mail out as a “Logic
Board Trade-up” kit for the entire line of LC and
Performa 58x and 63x or 64x series Macintosh
models. To read the details and see the perform-
ance statistics visit www.micromac.com and look
under Products. I warn you. though, that the cost
is outrageous. Micromac offers two different 603
PowerPC 5200/6200 logic boards running at 75
and 90 Mhz for $449.00 and $499.00 U.S. (plus a
paltry 200.00 U.S. deposit which will be refunded
when they receive your old 68040 logic board). I
like the price I got on the Low End Mac SWAP
List much better. Micromac also has 16 and 32
Meg 72-pin SIMMs for $59.00 and $99.00 U.S.
Even though at 75 Mhz it is one
of the slowest PowerPC chips
ever installed in a Macintosh
computer the PowerPC 603
processor with built-in FPU rep-
resents a quantum leap above
the 68LC040 processor in all of
the categories that matter.
Programs that require a FPU can
be successfully installed and
programs that are "Accelerated
for Power Macintosh" can take
advantage of the new chip to run faster.
The emphasis on upgrades is value. The cost of
low-end Mac components has dropped to the
point where some perfectly good and usable
colour Macintosh systems can be had for practi-
cally nothing and upgraded to full usefulness for
a pittance. The unit that this computer will
replace is a 16 Mhz SE/30.
Coincidentally, the first Mac I ever used was a
magical Box of Delights 75 Mhz Performa
6200CD with 8 Megs of RAM. Irma and I bought
it brand new for about $2,800.00 back in 1995. We
spent hundreds of dollars in 1996 for another 8-
Meg chip to bring it up to a
total of 16 Megs. Heady stuff.
Since I installed the upgrade
motherboard in the Performa
580CD I have run the
Performa 6200 Restore All
Software CD on this upgrad-
ed PowerPC Performa 580CD
and am amused and delight-
ed all over again by the sights
and sounds that amazed me
back then.