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Color Classic
I picked up this Color Classic on eBay in 2002. It came with an 80 MB hard drive and 10 MB of RAM. I upgraded it with a Sonnet Presto Plus with FPU and a 2.1 GB hard drive. Installation was a snap.
The following comes directly from Sonnet's website:
The Sonnet Presto™ Plus multi-functional card brings essential hardware features to your Macintosh Color Classic, LC, or Performa series computer. With the Presto Plus you finally have the processing power and memory expansion capabilities to run web browsers, large applications, and educational programs. The built-in Ethernet port is perfect for schools and individuals wanting to hook up to the Internet through an Ethernet network.
The Presto Plus features a 66/33 Mhz 68040 processor, delivering up to 650% overall speed improvement and can be configured with an optional FPU (math coprocessor) for faster mathematical calculations. The onboard RAM expansion SIMM slot includes a 32MB SIMM, adding to the existing RAM in your system.
The Sonnet Presto Plus is the only 68040 processor upgrade card that allows you to run virtual memory, RAM Doubler, 68040-based applications and games, and Mac OS 8.1.
I compiled a Dot Mac slideshow showing the process. To see it, click here.
 | This Color Classic currently runs System 8.1. It is really too slow to handle System 8.1 and would be a more "usable" machine if it had System 7.5.5. In my opinion, you should never use anything more than System 7.5.5 on a 68040 Mac. Apple released 7.6 as a bridge between 7.5 and 8.1. System 7.6 includes native PowerPC as well as native 68K code while 7.5 is optimized for 68K machines. 7.6 allows PowerPC CPU's (RISC) to run more efficiently at the expense of being less efficient on 68K Macs. Furthermore, a lot of your 68K programs may break if you upgrade to System 7.6. System 8.1 is the last version of MacOS to contain 68K code. All subsequent versions are strictly RISC-native. I put System 8.1 on the Color Classic to see how it would handle it. It works well, but it is considerably slower than 7.5 and does occasionally suffer from bus errors.  |
Screen Shots of System 8.1 on a Color Classic:
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