Mac Daniel's Advice

How should I Upgrade My 6100?

Dan Knight

BDB sent this letter on 30 Oct.: I've read through your answers on the Web site about 6100 upgrading chances (Mac Daniel #6). I own a 6100/60 which served me for years in DTP and multimedia. The only upgrades I've made are a 2 GB external HD (the internal one was an 80 megs and was instantly upgraded to a 512 megs!) and RAM (it was 16 megs when I bought it, and I upgraded it straight to 24 megs) which now is 40 megabytes. Not to mention the CD-ROM (it was a CD-drive-less 6100), an external 2x by Apple.

I was thinking about upgrading the machine, or buying the iMac. The latter appeared as a wise move, as I could just buy a transceiver, and connect the two to go on using all the 6100's modest but still useful strength and the iMac horsepower, sharing the peripherals. As you can imagine, I decided to buy the iMac. And I'm really satisfied with the choice. One day G3 expansion cards for the 6100 will be really cheap, and maybe I can decide to revitalize it, who knows?

But the main goal of this letter was to outline one of your answers about 6100's Windows compatibility: I own the PC Compatibility card (also an AV one, but I can use just one of them, as you know), but it's limited to 256 colours!!! It's a real shame, as it could have been a good Win95 clone (it's a 486DX66), adding just a huge RAM SIMM on the slot it offers onboard . . . shame . . . is there a way to go for a better video mode?

Mac Daniel responds: Remember, I'm a Macintosh geek - not a Windows one. I don't know of any way to upgrade the video on the Apple DOS card. Your options would be to see if you can find an old Orange Micro, Radius, or Reply card for the 6100 PDS that supports 16-bit video, or to get Virtual PC or SoftWindows for your iMac.

I strongly suspect that software emulation on your iMac would provide similar power to the old 486DX66 - but with additional video modes.

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Not sure if you should upgrade your old Mac or replace it? Check the Mac Daniel index to see if we've already addressed your problem.

Recent Mac Daniel columns

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