A quick question about a Power Macintosh...

compyislife

compyislife

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Hello fellow collectors,

There was a certain model of Power Mac 6100 with hardware to be compatible with Ms-Dos. I've also heard a bit about cards/peripherals that can do the same thing. Hypothetically speaking, if I had a Power Mac 9600 (which I don't, at this time...) is there some sort of PCI card for it that can be Ms-Dos compatible? Hopefully, one with at least the speed of a 486, SVGA graphics, etc. for gaming. Also, if such a card does exist, how hard would it be to get one?

Thanks for the help,

compyislife :)
 
It was called the Power Machintosh 6100/66 DOS Compatible, and was released in 1994. It included a special card with a Cyrix CX486 DX2/66 80486 processor and single SIMM RAM slot supporting up to 32MB of RAM, and it also a Creative Technology Vibra 16 sound chipset, plus supporting standard PC VGA and joystick port.

It could run DOS/Windows 3.1 alongside Mac OS 8/9. I also seem to remember it could be made to run IBM OS/2. And maybe Windows 95 would run too, but I'm just guessing at that by looking at the specs.
 
Thank you very much for the reply, Harrison. What I'm wondering, though, is if there's a way to get a later Power Macintosh to behave in the same way as the 6100 Dos Compatible. If not I, guess I could just upgrade a 6100... :D

Thanks again!
 
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If you could find the same Cyrix card I don't see why not. I'm unsure how Apple implemented the card though. Did it have a custom bootstrap to allow it to run alongside the main Mac? Or was it accessed and run once Mac OS had booted? In which case it would have needed dedicated drivers and extensions in Mac OS to work. I don't know any of that information.

An alternative is emulation. If you can find an old version of Virtual PC or Boxer.
 
The 6100 DOS card actually ran along side the MacOS, It had a breakout cable as well that tied the DOS card video in with the Mac Video. The Chip is upgradeable. At one point I had a DX2 80 in mine.

Another nice thing about the 6100 DOS card, is once you remove it from the Adapter card, It will fit in any mac with an 040 PDS Slot such as the Quadra 700,900 and 950.

I have one in my 950 with a 32MB SIMM on the card. Runs windows 95 nicely.

They did make a number of PCI versions of the DOS card as well.

The 6100 with a dos card is quite a capable machine, DOS cards can be had relatively easily for it as well.
 
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