The [H] Retrocomputing Thread!

[70 Polara]

I have updated my Post#160 as my retro box has changed yet again, and I think I'm finally happy! Always wanted to mess with Socket 423 P4s and RAMBUS memory because as I recall it was pretty much hated in it's day for high cost and less then impressive performance compared to the Tualatin P3 or AMD Athlon XP, so I got around to using the other set of parts I bought awhile back. I'm thinking that as a unique retro gaming system the Willamette P4 works pretty well, and performance seems great!

 

[70 Polara]

Here are a couple of pictures of my Socket 423 retro PC I detailed in Post#160, taken with my 1998 Olympus D490 digital camera that refuses to die. I bought it new for $400 and it has taken thousands of pictures in the last 21 years! It's so old it uses a serial cable to upload pictures to my PC, but it's still easier then using my phone.

The ATX case I'm using cleaned up pretty good for being 'saved' from the trash. I'm on a budget these days so the trash can case beats buying a new one!

 

[Red Falcon]

Man, I am really impressed with that system, excellent work getting everything up and running.
Oh, we used to have one of those Olympus digital cameras (believe ours was from the early 2000s with SmartMedia storage - 8MB to 32MB) - you're right, those things are tanks and, apparently, NBC-hardened!

So not only is the system itself retro, the images we are viewing them on are also retro.
Heck yeah, that's very resourceful!

You're making me feel so old, I remember when those cases were a luxury and much nicer to work on than most the older 90s beige desktops.
All around, great job, and thank you for sharing!


This might be something you may appreciate:




Somehow, I think if we all had our way, this would pretty much be all of us.

...and this...

...and this...

 

[70 Polara]

Wow, that warehouse is incredible!!!!!!!!!!!!! I really enjoy LGR's videos, but haven't seen that one. Another guy I really like who doesn't get enough views is HighTreason610. He really focuses on oddball 90s hardware. https://www.youtube.com/user/HighTreason610/videos

Thanks for the compliments on the P4 system and my retro camera too. I did end up making a change to it, got rid of the ESS card and switched to a good old SoundBlaster Live PCI. The ESS is an awesome PCI card for DOS emulation, but I think it's more suited to earlier and slower hardware, it doesn't really seem to like the P4 much. The SoundBlaster Live has fairly good DOS emulation and has been solid for the games I like to play. The hardware acceleration is nice too, made Unreal 2 go from slightly choppy to smooth.........

The other crazy thing I did was switched to Windows ME from 98SE. I never messed with ME at all when it was new, and ran 98SE up until about 2004 (switched to XP because of Half Life 2 as I recall). I saw an article on Vogons calling ME the 'Misunderstood Edition' and really it's correct. On the relatively fast P4 I have found ME to work better then Win 98SE. I did remove system restore and made a few other tweaks, but overall the built in USB flash drive support, better file manager, and the feel of Windows 2000 has made me really enjoy using ME. I have had no problems (yet) running all my DOS games in a window as ME doesn't boot to, or have MS-DOS mode. I also think it's more period correct for the mostly 2000-2002 hardware in this system.

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=47562

 

[pendragon1]

 

[SamirD]

Talk about bloat. I experienced a tipping point with that on an old rig recently with XP SP3. Only slightly an antique at this point but I fired up my last Pentium 4 build a few weeks back just for the heck of it. It was my last pre I7 series build and I don't remember the finer details of it's specs but here's some. Thing took better part of 90+ seconds to get to desktop and all services loaded. This was my rig for all those 98/XP era games and was just able to do some of those at 720p/1080p. Still a lot of good memories with this thing.

Pentium 4 @ 3.4 Ghz w/ HT
2GB Ram(don't remember clock/timings)
2x80GB WD platters in Raid0 via Sata I
Vision Tek ATI HD2600Pro 512MB AGPx4
Silicon Integrated Systems MB(don't remember model)

What has always impressed me about the higher clocked P4s is their single thread performance. This may not be your exact cpu as it's a 478 p4, but just look how it compares in single thread performance with a modern Atom processor: (And don't look at the power numbers or cores. )
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-Pentium-4-3.40GHz-vs-Intel-Atom-C3958/1077vs3526

 

[SamirD]

Wow, just wow--I had no idea about that warehouse and then found the 180+ post thread on the vintage computer forum. Don't know what the status of the place is now though as they were trying to liquidate everything.

Interesting that you talk about ME like that. I've always thought 98se was the best for the old setups, but maybe I need to give ME a look.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

The Pentium 4 is an antique - well, damn, they did stop manufacturing them in 2004

Nope, Netburst survived all the way up until early 2008, but the last new parts were made in 2006.

The Cedar Mill core (Pentium 4 6x1) was the final revision of the Pentium 4. Basically a die shrink of Prescott to 65nm, all models had EM64T support and 2M of cache. The D0 steppings (sSpec SL9K_) had a 65W TDP and were great for poorly designed SFF hot boxes Dell made to stop them grossly overheating. They were poor performers in 64 bit mode though due to the organization of the L2 cache, which was optimized for 32 bit use.

There were also some Pentium D 9xx parts released in 2006, but they were worthless unless you had a motherboard which didn't support C2D parts.

 

[Red Falcon]

Nope, Netburst survived all the way up until early 2008, but the last new parts were made in 2006.

The Cedar Mill core (Pentium 4 6x1) was the final revision of the Pentium 4. Basically a die shrink of Prescott to 65nm, all models had EM64T support and 2M of cache. The D0 steppings (sSpec SL9K_) had a 65W TDP and were great for poorly designed SFF hot boxes Dell made to stop them grossly overheating. They were poor performers in 64 bit mode though due to the organization of the L2 cache, which was optimized for 32 bit use.

There were also some Pentium D 9xx parts released in 2006, but they were worthless unless you had a motherboard which didn't support C2D parts.

Oh wow, you are right, they did manufacture Netburst up to 2008.
Argh, I remember the Pentium D CPUs, basically two Pentium 4 CPUs glued to the same die and communicated across the FSB - horrible latency and ungodly TDP and heat production...

Haha, I remember using the later generation Pentium 4 CPUs in shuttle computers up until 2009 - those will not be missed!

 

[70 Polara]

Oh wow, you are right, they did manufacture Netburst up to 2008.
Argh, I remember the Pentium D CPUs, basically two Pentium 4 CPUs glued to the same die and communicated across the FSB - horrible latency and ungodly TDP and heat production...

Haha, I remember using the later generation Pentium 4 CPUs in shuttle computers up until 2009 - those will not be missed!

The 90nm Smithfields were terrible CPUs no doubt, slow and insanely hot (in my day I've seen many a dead Dell from these garbage CPUs, and lots of dead ECS boards as well, as ECS put cheap caps right under the CPU cooler that got nicely melted by the furnace like heat).....but the 65nm Preslers were tolerable for their time.

Still have a friend with low expectations using a Pentium D 935, 4GB DDR2 on an Intel D946GZIS motherboard, Geforce GT640 video card, running 32-bit Windows 10 and he says it works just fine for what he does!!! He said until it dies it's not being replaced, and since I built the system an eternity ago, I get more impressed as time goes by that it's like the Energizer bunny.

 

[Red Falcon]

The 90nm Smithfields were terrible CPUs no doubt, slow and insanely hot (in my day I've seen many a dead Dell from these garbage CPUs, and lots of dead ECS boards as well, as ECS put cheap caps right under the CPU cooler that got nicely melted by the furnace like heat).....but the 65nm Preslers were tolerable for their time.

Still have a friend with low expectations using a Pentium D 935, 4GB DDR2 on an Intel D946GZIS motherboard, Geforce GT640 video card, running 32-bit Windows 10 and he says it works just fine for what he does!!! He said until it dies it's not being replaced, and since I built the system an eternity ago, I get more impressed as time goes by that it's like the Energizer bunny.

Damn, that brought back some memories.
Setup sooo many of those Pentium D Dell OptiPlex's back in the mid to late 2000s.

haha, I can't believe that system is still running with mainstream usage, and props to him for keeping it going.
That was a damn fine build you made for him.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

The 90nm Smithfields were terrible CPUs no doubt, slow and insanely hot (in my day I've seen many a dead Dell from these garbage CPUs, and lots of dead ECS boards as well, as ECS put cheap caps right under the CPU cooler that got nicely melted by the furnace like heat).....but the 65nm Preslers were tolerable for their time.

I briefly had a Pentium D 820 and got rid of it within a week because nothing I had would keep it from reaching 100C at idle...

The "nominal" TDP was 130W, but at peak loads it could pull up to 152W. This monster https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16835101011 couldn't even keep it cool.

 

[SamirD]

The 90nm Smithfields were terrible CPUs no doubt, slow and insanely hot (in my day I've seen many a dead Dell from these garbage CPUs, and lots of dead ECS boards as well, as ECS put cheap caps right under the CPU cooler that got nicely melted by the furnace like heat).....but the 65nm Preslers were tolerable for their time.

Still have a friend with low expectations using a Pentium D 935, 4GB DDR2 on an Intel D946GZIS motherboard, Geforce GT640 video card, running 32-bit Windows 10 and he says it works just fine for what he does!!! He said until it dies it's not being replaced, and since I built the system an eternity ago, I get more impressed as time goes by that it's like the Energizer bunny.

I actually have several of these BTX systems still working (210L, gx520, and I think one more). The key I found was to remove the pwm pin from the power connector and let the fan run floored (sound isn't a concern since I rdp into them). This cools so well that I've been able to run 95w processors on the 65w aluminum heatsink without an issue.

 

[70 Polara]

I actually have several of these BTX systems still working (210L, gx520, and I think one more). The key I found was to remove the pwm pin from the power connector and let the fan run floored (sound isn't a concern since I rdp into them). This cools so well that I've been able to run 95w processors on the 65w aluminum heatsink without an issue.

Nice! That's one way to do it! Those fans can move some serious air when cranked up! I'd say Dell had the BIOS fan controls set for 'too quiet' and not 'max performance/system life' lol.

In the past on some of the BTX P4/PD Dells I dealt with (cant remember specific model numbers anymore) if the caps weren't already failing I'd move the system to a Presler Pentium D as they were cheap used even back in 2008-2010 and that really cut the heat output. I remember some would give a post-error about unsupported CPU but worked fine after skipping the error message. But I recall dealing with many that simply died from bad caps as even with BTX the quiet operation/slow fan speeds killed them and they weren't worth fixing. Especially as most had 915 chipsets as I recall that were too limiting anyways as 2GB was the max memory on some even though supposedly 2x2GB was supported.

I just recycled an XPS 400 PD 820 that was recently given to me in a pile of old hardware, it had bad caps everywhere and wouldn't power up. All I salvaged from it was a lowly X600 video card and a couple of PC-4200 1GB sticks.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

But I recall dealing with many that simply died from bad caps as even with BTX the quiet operation/slow fan speeds killed them and they weren't worth fixing.

The GX260, 270 and 280 were notorious for capacitor failure and were subject to a lawsuit that forced Dell to replace hundreds of thousands of motherboards on their dime. Think it cost them over a billion dollars at the time. I had a lot of work in the 2007-2008 timeframe replacing motherboards in these machines, Dell would just ship crates full of motherboards and you'd swap them deskside. One job had me and three other guys replacing around 4000 boards at a state agency. Other machines like the 210L, GX620 and 7xx series were equally problematic. All of their power supplies made by Delta, Liteon and especially Bestec used in other models are equally trash. I've seen them catch on fire or explode.

The thing is, the replacement boards used the exact same counterfeit Nichicon capacitors and they failed again less than a year later. But by that time they were due for a refresh so all of those old shitty machines went off to recycling. But it wasn't only the motherboards with bad caps, the power supplies had equally trash caps from different vendors like G.Luxon, Teapo, CapXon and other trash. The motherboards are easy to recap, but the power supplies are a nightmare on the DT, SDT and SFF models because they were put together like a jigsaw puzzle and had at least one daughterboard soldered in with more capacitors on it that needed to be replaced. The small capacitors, like the 5x10 or 8x10mm were the worst about failing, but they almost never showed physical signs of failure.

To recap one of the SFF power supplies, the "long brick" types usually take a couple of hours, and even more if other faults are present.

 

[Red Falcon]

The GX260, 270 and 280 were notorious for capacitor failure and were subject to a lawsuit that forced Dell to replace hundreds of thousands of motherboards on their dime. Think it cost them over a billion dollars at the time. I had a lot of work in the 2007-2008 timeframe replacing motherboards in these machines, Dell would just ship crates full of motherboards and you'd swap them deskside.

I completely forgot about all of that, and yes, I also had to replace soooo many of those damn motherboards with the faulty capacitors, which ironically enough were starting to fail around the same time.
Man, you are bring back all of the work memories for me - not sure if that is good or bad.

At least the clam shell design was fairly easy to open, though for what was in those units they sure were heavy.
Also, I will sooo not miss the WD400 and WD800, 40GB and 80GB PATA HDDs respectively, commonly found in those systems; while fairly reliable, they were the worst-performing HDDs I've ever had the displeasure of working with, even for that era.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

At least the clam shell design was fairly easy to open, though for what was in those units they sure were heavy.
Also, I will sooo not miss the WD400 and WD800, 40GB and 80GB PATA HDDs respectively, commonly found in those systems; while fairly reliable, they were the worst-performing HDDs I've ever had the displeasure of working with, even for that era.

I hated the clamshell cases, especially on the towers because the halves never lined up and you had to fudge them around to get them to close and latch. The cases out on the floor also were generally heavily abused, knocked over, kicked, dropped off desks, etc so broken or bent plastic bits made it even worse.

But the thing I hated the most about doing that work is removing the RAM modules. Dell had them like epoxied in there so you had to slam down on both latches with your thumbs to eject the modules. After about 10 of those your thumbs were so sore that you had to start alternating fingers and it didn't work so well.

I still have a couple of those 40/80 GB drives to send you to remember the terror lol.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

So I bought one of my childhood computers, a Macintosh SE FDHD. It was in mostly ok shape, but needed some TLC to address some issues like a rotated screen (the yoke on the CRT moved), and a non-working floppy drive. Those issues have been mostly fixed now. The machine I had 20+ years ago was destroyed in transit back from Colorado in the late 90s, the CRT neck was broken and the motherboard damaged. Fortunately the very expensive upgrade board it had was intact and I kept it in a drawer for 20 years, which now lives inside this new to me SE FDHD.

It came with an 80 MB hard drive (an upgrade from the stock 20 MB) and was owned by some college student in the mid 90s. There are lots of term papers on it and a few applications like MS Excel and Word.

The upgrade board upgrades the machine from a stock 68000 @ 8 MHz to a 68030 @ 25MHz and optionally a 68882 FPU which I don't have yet and need to source. It also provides four more RAM slots for up to 16 MB of additional memory that I need to work on. It requires a special driver to enable and I have not been able to find it yet. It's called Gemstart 3.0.

Here's a pic of the logic board with the 68030 upgrade board installed:

I'll get some of the whole unit once I finish ironing out some other problems.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

It's a long shot, but if anyone has any spare 4 MB 30 pin SIMMs and a 68882 FPU in a PGA package that isn't stupid expensive, I'd love to have them.

 

[longblock454]

Gemstart 3.0.

You might ask these guys:

https://68kmla.org

 

[GiGaBiTe]

I found it after digging through archives of old mac software and unfortunately it caused the machine to hard lock on the boot screen.

The machine shortly after developed a fault with the PSU which causes checkerboard patterns on the screen on bootup so now I'm chasing other faults that need to be fixed.

The hard lock may have something to do with the power issues because the machine was acting funny when it was working. Crackly sound, reset button didn't work all the time and the debug button would cause a bomb screen with garbage, even though macsbug was installed.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

The power supply is bad, I opened it last night to find leaking caps. I modified the harness to work with an ATX power supply and it behaves better, but still shows garbage on the screen for about 10 seconds when its powered up before I get a bong and it boots. The analog board needs to be recapped as well.

I need to find a Micro ATX or Flex ATX power supply to steal the guts out of and transplant them into the SE PSU. I would recap it, but I don't trust it because the power rails were dangerously out of spec, even when loaded.

 

[SamirD]

The power supply is bad, I opened it last night to find leaking caps. I modified the harness to work with an ATX power supply and it behaves better, but still shows garbage on the screen for about 10 seconds when its powered up before I get a bong and it boots. The analog board needs to be recapped as well.

View attachment 191599
View attachment 191600

I need to find a Micro ATX or Flex ATX power supply to steal the guts out of and transplant them into the SE PSU. I would recap it, but I don't trust it because the power rails were dangerously out of spec, even when loaded.

I have that Flex that I removed from the sx2803 that you said probably had bad caps and you could recap. It was only used about a week and then put in storage and then wouldn't boot when I turned it back on. I'm sure you could fix it and I think would be ideal for your project. Just let me know.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

I have that Flex that I removed from the sx2803 that you said probably had bad caps and you could recap. It was only used about a week and then put in storage and then wouldn't boot when I turned it back on. I'm sure you could fix it and I think would be ideal for your project. Just let me know.

I'll take it, hopefully the PCB inside the PSU isn't too big to be transplanted into the SE PSU case.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

One of the two power supplies arrived a few days ago (the TFX) and I went ahead with attempting to transplant it first.

Seems to work and the voltages check out OK.

The LEDs are for diagnostic, green is PWR_GOOD, yellow is 5vsb and red is 3.3vsb. the cooling situation is a bit concerning, there's no really good way to mount a fan and I don't have any that fit other than the tiny blower stuck to the lid.

 

[SamirD]

Hopefully my old unit I sent you should help you out as it has a tiny fan in it.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

I was able to transplant the fan from SamirD's power supply into the FrankenPSU, it looks like it will help keep it cool enough. I also had a chance to recap most of the analog board and the machine still has the garbage screen on startup. This leads me to believe the 47uF capacitors I used on the motherboard are probably too much, so I'm debating on whether to order the proper 33uF (which are really hard to find in axial format) or just leave it alone. It was pretty hairy getting those capacitors out so I'm more inclined to leave it alone and just button the machine back up to enjoy using.

I really don't like leaving the machine open with the CRT neck exposed, it's just inviting disaster.

 

[SamirD]

Glad that psu lives on in one form or another!

 

[GiGaBiTe]

I got the SE put back together with the case installed and unfortunately it started acting up again. I think it's heat related, gotta do more testing.

Here's it before I put the rear shell on:

I opted to paint the metal frame because it had rust on the right side and looked like it was starting to rust in other spots. I used some rust reformer and then used an epoxy enamel paint, which leaves a super tough finish.

Short video of it powering up and running.


It starts getting unstable when running Gold Digger (a mining game) and eventually locks up.

 

[Red Falcon]

Man, that is awesome, great work!
I hope you can get it figured out, and it might be worth considering putting some cooling on the 68030 as well as the daughterboard it is on just in case that might be what is impacting performance at those random intervals.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

There's literally only fractions of an inch between the 68030 and the frame, no room for a heatsink. The CPU doesn't get terribly hot, but that's with the rear case removed. I can't even put a thermal pad on it and use the frame as a heatsink because the motherboard is at like a 5 degree angle to the flat part of the frame and there's half a hole above the CPU. The only thing I could do is figure out a way to get a fan blowing on it.

I'm ordering more capacitors so I can put the correct value on the motherboard to see if that helps with the instability. I'll be getting a whole lot of caps because I got out the rest of my 68k and PPC macs and they have failing caps as well.

I'd like to get a 68882 FPU for the Mac SE, but holy hell are they expensive. I need the PGA version rated at least 25 MHz and they're $50+ on ebay.

 

[Red Falcon]

Dang, well, a fan would be a good idea if possible, and i hope it is, especially if heat is an issue.
That is a beast of a system, and I hope you can get it to 100%!

Especially for something like this:

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Dang, well, a fan would be a good idea if possible, and i hope it is, especially if heat is an issue.

The problem with internal heat removal is it has nowhere to go. There is a single 60mm fan on the middle back of the case and it is very low volume, there are no vents anywhere above it so heat gets trapped. There is an addon port on the back of the unit and I may be able to print an adapter to use with a PC slot blower, but then I wouldn't be able to use the second video adapter present on the upgrade board.

That is a beast of a system, and I hope you can get it to 100%!

Yeah it is a whole lot faster than a stock Mac SE, and even beats an SE/30 by a small margin. I checked the original MSRP of this upgrade board and it retailed for over $1600 back when it was released.

 

[Red Falcon]

I'd like to get a 68882 FPU for the Mac SE, but holy hell are they expensive. I need the PGA version rated at least 25 MHz and they're $50+ on ebay.

Wow, those have come up in price - dang, when I got the 68882 FPU for the X68000, it was around $30 shipped.
Everything "retro" seems to be going up in price from the last half-decade.

Back in 2013, the broadband 10Base-T NIC for the Nintendo GameCube was around $15.
Today, I've seen them go for upwards of $180.

If only we had known...


EDIT: Fixed typo - thanks for pointing that out GiGaBiTe

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Wow, those have come up in price - dang, when I got the 68883 FPU for the X68000, it was around $30 shipped.

What's a 68883? I'm only aware of the 68881 and its successor the 68882 which is more efficient. Google doesn't turn up any sane results on a 68883.

The reason that PGA 6888x FPUs are so expensive is because Amiga computers use them. The PQFP variants are less than $15. To A lesser extent, all of the shitty gold scrappers are also driving costs up by melting old gold top

Back in 2013, the broadband 10Base-T NIC for the Nintendo GameCube was around $15.
Today, I've seen them go for upwards of $180.

With how expensive some of these items are becoming, it's almost worth opening a small engineering firm to make replica boards for old systems.

In other news, it seems like all of my Macs are dead or dying. I pulled out my Performa 6360/200 to help with debugging my Mac SE and it doesn't boot, great.

I opened it up and motherboard looked OK. Power supply on the other hand..

Goddamnit Nippon/United Chemi-Con. If you can't see the problem, most of the caps have blown out the bottom and bukakke'd the PCB with corrosive electrolyte.

Not sure if want to recap or do another PSU mod, those fat line capacitors can get expensive quick.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Progress on my Perofrma 6360/180:

I used through-hole capacitors to replace the garbage SMD caps. it takes a bit of extra time to bend the legs, but it works fine.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Good news, its fixed:

Bad news, hard drive is dead. Now I have the chicken and egg problem of I need a special hacked version of Drive Setup that doesn't exist to format a non-Apple branded IDE drive to work in it. That special version of Drive Setup doesn't exist, there are only instructions on how to make it with Res Edit, which requires writable storage greater than what's available on a 1.44 MB floppy.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Got a 120 GB drive working in it, got lucky with an old 700 MB external SCSI drive I had from 1988 that had a hacked version of Drive Setup 1.5 on it.

Video of it booting and running Duke3D before putting it back together:


It has 32 MB of RAM, which is a bit limiting when running some games or VirtualPC. Unfortunately it uses weird 168 pin EDO 5v DIMMs, unlike normal standard 168 pin 3.3v DIMMs using SDRAM in PC land. The only difference between the two memory sticks visually is the EDO DIMM has the middle notch orientated to the left side (vs center on SDRAM) and the side notch orientated to the middle (vs to the right on SDRAM.)

I remember reading posts of frustrated Mac owners in the mid to late 90s where they bought normal PC SDRAM and were flummoxed when it wouldn't seat in the slot. There were a few of the "danger to themselves and everything else" types which weren't having any of it and opted to use a dremel or file to make the notches on the memory module larger to fit. Hilarity ensued with either the memory modules blowing up from the over voltage, logic board smoke or both.

 

[Red Falcon]

Ah, I know exactly what you mean about those proprietary DIMMs.
The SPARCstation 5 workstation featured on post 5 in this thread was the exact same way.

It had 256MB of ECC FPM DRAM in 168-pin DSIMM modules, which is almost unheard of.
Surprisingly, I have seen a few mid-1990s Intel workstations equipped with the 168-pin EDO DIMMs you are using as well.

^ Those are the 32MB ECC FPM DSIMMs with 8 of them in total for 256MB.
Running NetBSD, I was able to compile smaller programs with 64MB, but anything too big would dig into SWAP, and having the additional RAM made a huge difference.

32MB on your Performa 6360 does look like it is getting the job done well, though!
You are right, those voltage differences do make a massive differences, and it is probably a good thing that those DIMMs were keyed differently to help prevent magic smoke from appearing.

You did a damned good job getting things going on the Performa 6360 (nice find on the SCSI HDD from '88, too), it looks and runs great, and the performance of Duke Nukem 3D was surprisingly good; colour me impressed!
That brings back a lot of great memories from the 1990s, and playing Duke Nukem 3D on the PowerPC ISA looks like a lot of fun.

What is the maximum capacity of RAM that the Performa 6360 can take?
128MB, or more?

 

[GiGaBiTe]

It has a Performa 6400/180 motherboard in it (hence the 6360/180, the normal 6360 is 160 MHz) and the maximum memory it can support is 136 MB (2 x 64 MB DIMMs + 8 MB on the logic board.)

Finding 64 MB sticks at a reasonable price would be a pipe dream.