3 ms·
Sounds like this web developer's computer may have been one of the infamous Performa/Power Macintosh x200 series[1]. These are ridiculously designed machines.
by einr 10y ago
Sounds like this web developer's computer may have been one of the infamous Performa/Power Macintosh x200 series[1]. These are ridiculously designed machines.
Choice quote from http://lowendmac.com/1997/performa-and-power-mac-x200-issues/ http://lowendmac.com/1997/performa-and-power-mac-x200-issues...:
One of the biggest complaints about the x200 series is slow Internet handling. For one thing, looking at the chart above, all data from either the ports or the ethernet controller must pass through the processor to get to memory, then be processed, sent to the IDE controller for cache saving, and then interpreted for graphics display.
There are symptoms to notice because of this. While a web page is loading, typed characters will be lost. When dealing with high IDE access, the graphics controller will seem to freeze. When copying to a network or downloading a file, the monitor will rarely update and will have redraw problems. Spooled print jobs will take forever if lots of processor resizing is necessary.
[1] http://lowendmac.com/2014/power-mac-and-performa-x200-road-apples/ http://lowendmac.com/2014/power-mac-and-performa-x200-road-a...
- kalleboo 10y agoWhen I was a kid we had a Performa 5200, and I suffered from this. We also got a surplus Quadra 800 with a 66 MHz PowerPC upgrade from my dad's work - which outperformed the 75 MHz Performa in everything aside from MP3 decoding. We also ran into the serial port issues the article describes, we got better performance hooking our 56k modem up to the Quadra and sharing that connection to the 5200 over LocalTalk via IPNetRouter than actually using the modem directly.
- Angostura 10y agoDidn't the Performa use the PPC 603? ISTR it did. The 603 was the 'cheap-n-cheerful' chip in the family, I suspect the Quadra upgrade would have had a 601 or 604, both of which had more oomph.
- kalleboo 10y agoYeah doing the research now - the 5200 had a 603 @ 75 MHz, and the PowerMac PDS Card had a 601 @ 66 MHz. I was also reminded the 603 had too small of a L1 cache to hold the the 68K emulator, reducing performance even further... Now I'm curious what made the 5200 better at MP3 playback. My recollection is that the only way to get the upgraded Quadra to play MP3s in realtime was with SoundApp monopolizing the CPU so you couldn't even click anything else. On the Performa, you could run MacAmp in the background while browsing the web, with stuttering "only" during whole page repaints. This was 20 years ago, my recollection could be poor... I soon got my own Quadra 660AV (video digitizing!) and eventually a PowerMac 7500 (that I upgraded to G3 and could even run early versions of OS X with Xpostfacto)
- bluedino 9y agoI had a 5200, and I had AOL Instant Messenger installed. I'd be working away in some other program, and then the whole thing would freeze for a second, and repaint, every time I got a new IM and was using another program. After a few days of that crap I just installed YellowDog Linux.