Hi listers,
I've gotten a Performa 5400/160 and I thought of upgrading it and giving it to my kids. I've put additional RAM in it, an ethernet card in comm socket, put in a new pram battery, put an USB card in a PCI slot (to have possibility of an USB printer), a 2 Gb IDE drive and installed Mac OS 8.6 on it. It works nicely but I'd still like to have more. Screen resolution and refresh is a little low and the L2 cache module I have is unfortrunately defective. I was wondering if there is a way to do a "mobo swap" to something better? I don't think I need the G3.
Logic board swap! I've a 5500/225 in my 5400/180 chassis. I bought the board from Michael Day, via the swaplist for the titanic sum of US$30.00. It can go as high as 1024 X 786 screen resolution at 16 bit color.
Coupled with a Sonnet G3 card and 9.2.2, this machine really flies.
So I would urge you to get a "new" logic board, preferably a 5500 series to start with. Then, if you find one cheap enough (and there was one offered a few days ago on the swaplist for US$75.00) a Sonnet card for the L2 cache slot. Really, that makes ALL the difference.
As an example. I run the SETI at home application. on the previously installed 5400/200 logic board, it took 4 days to process one SETI work unit. With the G3 card, it takes about 24 hours.
Applications open almost instantly, Heck, once the Sonnet extension loads and the G3 takes over, the computer boots much faster. Graphics manipulation is much faster, QuickTime and other video files play much faster and smoother.
The G3 card, in my opinion, would be an excellent investment in the 5400/160 right now. A 5500/XXX logic board and G3 card combo would be very hard to beat.
Oh, and right now, go to <http://www.usboverdrive.com> download USB Overdrive, install it on that 5400/160 and go get a multibutton/scrollwheel USB optical mouse.
After a few days of using a proper mouse on the Mac, you'll never willingly use the single button mouse again!
--
Chris Tucker
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.gis.net/~cht
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