I was recently digging trhough the basement and came across an old Macintosh Performa 630CD that I bought a few years ago from a moving sale for $50. I thought at the time that I would play around with it for tinkering perposes. (I've always been PC oriented, but used Macintosh computers at work for Graphics layout and design duties.)

Anyway.... I stuck it in the basement planning on dusting it off sometime in the next week or so and see what it had on it (if anything) and see where I could go from there...

And of course, it got buried under things and I had forgotten all about it until I just recently got a really good deal on an iBook G3 900MHz. (I traded a desktop PC, plus $100 for it... a really good deal IMHO...)

Dinking around with the iBook made me remember about the Performa hidden in the basement... I just dug it out and dusted it off... Fired it up, and it seems to be in full working condition. The stats are: Performa 630CD, 20MB built-in memory, 50MB virtual memory, 250MB hard drive, 2X CD Rom drive. It has a Performa Plus Display (model# M9102U/D), AppleDesign Keyboard (Model #M2980), and your typical single-button Bus Mouse II. It is running OS 8.1, and has a few odds and ends installed on it such as Illustrator 7.0. (I am quite surprised that the old owner never wiped the hard drive...)

Just wondering if the machine is pretty much a piece of junk since it is so old, or if there might be someone out there with any use for it. Not being as familiar with Macs as with PCs, I'm not sure if I should just donate it to my local Good Will or Salvation Army, or see if anyone might be interested in purchasing it... I am assuming it is probably on par with an old i386 (or i486 since I believe the Performa uses the Motarola 68040 CPU). Which means it probably won't be worth much for gaming, but might be decent for office type programs...

If anyone has any ideas on what this old machine might be useful for, or even if it is upgradable, please let me know...

If all else fails, I could always give it to my brother for my nephews to use, or give it to my in-laws... Of course, they already have PCs, and probably wouldn't have any use for an old Mac either...

(I don't even know if it is possible to upgrade the OS on it... I have OS 9.2 which came with my iBook to run in a classic environment... I wonder if the OS would install on the Performa...)

Thanks for any input you can give...

I know the thread is old but:

No, I wouldn't install 9.2.2, since 9.1 requires 40MB OF RAM minium, and plus the HDD is too small, unless you upgrade, of course. Although, I could be useful for a Second computer for Backup and/or Word processing. Maybe even you could put it on a network for extra storage?

could you perhaps make it a router... i dont know if smoothwalll works on powerpc systems or not but its worth looking into.

You can upgrade the memory with a 32mg simm (to replace the 16mg installed) but the vram is on the board and is only 1mg; the 630 will not go higher than 8.1. In reality you have an interesting conversation piece. I was given an LC 630CD about a year ago. After trying to find some way to use it I kept the usable parts - CD, HD, RAM and monitor - and scrapped the rest.
Badger

How fast is the CPU on it? You could install PCBSD or something on it. Another UNIX OS that might be a little less resource intensive.