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solipsistnationSo today I packed up and shipped off my old PowerMac 8600/300.
When I acquired it, it was the shit-hot-fastest system out there (barring the 9600/350, which was unbelievably expensive). It had ridiculously fast cache and a lot of video RAM and 3 PCI slots and lots of drive bays. The first thing I did was play Quake. Then I realized that 3dfx voodoo graphics cards would work in the Mac. So I got one, and played Quake really well. In fact, I used to get asked what I was using by people across the internet, since even on a relatively slow modem (28.8k), I was still dominating games. When the fastest PC out there was 200MHz, having half again the CPU and a good 3D card meant I could rule the world.
Then, audio. The 8600 came with stereo RCA audio inputs and outputs, so I could use it for high-quality audio stuff with a minimum of effort. I picked up a cheap copy of Deck II at MacWorld Boston sometime in 1997 or so, and used that for multitracking up until the point where I got my laptop and Reason.
Most of the music in here was recorded on this system. By the time I outgrew it, it had been expanded with a good FWSCSI card and a stack of smallish but very fast disks, a 4X CD-R (SCSI, for which I paid FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS a very very long time ago, and lo I was the envy of many), a wireless card, and a 16MB Voodoo3 PCI card. A 450MHz G3 card and two 21" monitors rounded it out into a ridiculous, if slow, audio workstation. Here it is at its height. The speakers there are a pair of Tannoy studio monitors driven by a very nice 100W power amp.
When I ordered this machine, it was the fastest system I had ever owned. It was, arguably, as fast as the servers at UltraNet, where I was working at the time.
I'm getting away from hardware, though. Software and my laptop is SO much easier to deal with. There are things I miss, but they are overwhelmingly overridden by the delight I feel in not having to deal with strange MIDI issues and cabling issues and weird mixer level issues, and why is the DP/4 overloading THIS time? There are problems with software, of course, not the least of which is that most softsynths aren't as impressive as hardware synths, but still-- it's well worth the effort.
Anyway, farewell, trusty machine. Perhaps the person who bought you will actually use you more than once every couple of months, and for more than the occasional bout of file transfers.
When I acquired it, it was the shit-hot-fastest system out there (barring the 9600/350, which was unbelievably expensive). It had ridiculously fast cache and a lot of video RAM and 3 PCI slots and lots of drive bays. The first thing I did was play Quake. Then I realized that 3dfx voodoo graphics cards would work in the Mac. So I got one, and played Quake really well. In fact, I used to get asked what I was using by people across the internet, since even on a relatively slow modem (28.8k), I was still dominating games. When the fastest PC out there was 200MHz, having half again the CPU and a good 3D card meant I could rule the world.
Then, audio. The 8600 came with stereo RCA audio inputs and outputs, so I could use it for high-quality audio stuff with a minimum of effort. I picked up a cheap copy of Deck II at MacWorld Boston sometime in 1997 or so, and used that for multitracking up until the point where I got my laptop and Reason.
Most of the music in here was recorded on this system. By the time I outgrew it, it had been expanded with a good FWSCSI card and a stack of smallish but very fast disks, a 4X CD-R (SCSI, for which I paid FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS a very very long time ago, and lo I was the envy of many), a wireless card, and a 16MB Voodoo3 PCI card. A 450MHz G3 card and two 21" monitors rounded it out into a ridiculous, if slow, audio workstation. Here it is at its height. The speakers there are a pair of Tannoy studio monitors driven by a very nice 100W power amp.
When I ordered this machine, it was the fastest system I had ever owned. It was, arguably, as fast as the servers at UltraNet, where I was working at the time.
I'm getting away from hardware, though. Software and my laptop is SO much easier to deal with. There are things I miss, but they are overwhelmingly overridden by the delight I feel in not having to deal with strange MIDI issues and cabling issues and weird mixer level issues, and why is the DP/4 overloading THIS time? There are problems with software, of course, not the least of which is that most softsynths aren't as impressive as hardware synths, but still-- it's well worth the effort.
Anyway, farewell, trusty machine. Perhaps the person who bought you will actually use you more than once every couple of months, and for more than the occasional bout of file transfers.