Mac Daniel's Advice

What about Upgrading My IIsi?

Dan Knight - 1998.11.09

GHQ sent this letter:

What do you think of the IIsi? Is it worth upgrading? At the MacWorks site they were giving away older Macs as-is, untested, for shipping. So I sent off $50, got a IIsi. Works great. Now . . . I've seen Sonnet upgrades for under $200. Is it really worth it, or should I just move up to say a Quadra 630 or something?

The computer was sent off to some nontechnical relatives, and I don't want them to get scared off of Macs if it turns out to be difficult to work with.

Mac Daniel writes:

I have a soft spot for the IIsi. It's compact, offers reasonable performance, and doesn't use a lot of electricity (important when running from a UPS - the IIsi has a 160W power supply, compared with 230W for the IIci). Upgrading depends on what you want to do, but I recently ordered a Quadra 650 8/230 for $150, so I would never consider spending $200 to upgrade a IIsi. Also, I'd pick a Q650 over a Q630 any day - I'm very partial to SCSI hard drives.

What you do want to do with the IIsi?

Give it enough memory to run a version 4 browser, so 17 MB minimum, but better yet would be 33 MB (four 8 MB SIMMs). MacSeek shows 4 MB SIMMs at under $10 each, 8 MB under $25, and 16 MB under $30.

If the hard drive's too small, look around for a $99 deal on a 1 GB or so SCSI mechanism. For under $200, you should be able to turn the IIsi into a decent Internet performer.

You'll still be limited to 256 colors - and the IIsi won't support popular resolutions like 800 x 600 or 832 x 624, which are common today on 15" and larger multisync monitors.

Frankly, your best bet is probably to use the IIsi as a starter system, explaining that much more capable Macs are available on the used market for only a few hundred dollars. (And remind them that the IIsi came out 8 years ago. They couldn't even think about doing what it can do on an eight-year-old PC.)

Join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, use our Google+ page, or read our RSS news feed

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

How to Recover from a Beige G3 Startup Error, Dan Knight, 2012.07.19. If you're not careful, installing OS X 10.2 Jaguar can create an unbootable Beige Power Mac G3. How to fix it - and how to avoid the problem.
Port Wars: Thunderbolt vs. USB 3, PCIe Cable, and FireWire, Dan Knight, 2012.06.14. Thunderbolt is very fast, USB 3 half as fast, FireWire is on the ropes, and PCIe Cable could blow away Thunderbolt.
OWC Legacy SSD Tested in Mystic Power Mac G4, Dan Knight, 2011.07.15. G4 Power Macs don't have built-in SATA support, and most SSDs are SATA devices. OWC's legacy SSDs work on the older Mac's IDE bus.
More in the Mac Daniel index.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: PowerBook Duo 230, introduced 1992.10.19. Just over 4 pounds, the 33 MHz 230 helped launch the Duo line.
May 21 in LEM history: 99: Not censorship - 01: USB and FireWire drives - 02: Hooked by a PowerBook - Printer sharing for Mac OS X - 04: Less frequent OS X uprades: Good or bad? - 07: I won't get an iPhone this year - Can 262,144 colors be considered 'millions'? - Most durable 'Book - 3 GB in a Mac mini? - 08: Quadra a great server for vintage Mac network
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM Support Usage Privacy Contact

Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Opinions expressed are those of their authors and may not reflect the opinion of Cobweb Publishing. Advice is presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all.
Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2013 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Low End Mac, LowEndMac, and lowendmac.com are trademarks of Cobweb Publishing Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iPad, iPhone, iMac, iPod, MacBook, Mac Pro, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.
Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Email may be published at our discretion unless marked "not for publication"; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it, and we don't share the information we have with others. For more details, see our Terms of Use.