Working from home at 25MHz: You could do worse than a Quadra 700 (even in 2020)

Pimping my Quadra (but also trying not to break it)

If trying to modernize a machine like this, maxing out the RAM and VRAM is a logical upgrade. To bring the system up to a total of 68MB of RAM, I went online and purchased four 16MB 30 pin SIMMs. The 700 comes with four megabytes soldered to the logic board, bringing the total up to 68MB. This is not only plenty for most 68k-based applications, but it also allows for a generously sized RAM disk (should you need one).

Since the floppy and hard drive caddies needed to come out for the upgrade, I also went ahead and bought a total of six 256KB VRAM SIMMs. With 512KB already on the logic board, this brings the VRAM up to its maximum supported 2MB (2048KB).

Adding VRAM to a Macintosh did not necessarily improve performance, but it did enable more color depth and higher resolutions. With 2MB of VRAM in the Quadra, I would be able to use my “two-page” 21-inch display at 1152x870 resolution and with 256 colors, a very respectable setup. Lower resolutions such as 832x624 enable thousands or even millions of colors.

The Quadra 700 supported Macintosh operating systems all the way up to Mac OS 8.1, the last version that ran on Motorola processors. Mac OS 8 added a lot of cosmetic features such as desktop pictures and the 'Platinum' interface. In 1998, Mac OS 8.1 introduced the HFS+ file system. HFS+ (or Mac OS Extended) was not superseded until 2017 with APFS, introduced with macOS High Sierra (10.13).

Apple included an Ethernet port with the Quadra series for the first time, but there’s one massive caveat. The port uses the AAUI (Apple Attachment Unit Interface) standard, meaning that a dongle transceiver is needed to mechanically convert this socket into something more familiar, such as 10BASE-T and the 8P8C (RJ45) connector. Of course, Apple sold its own version of transceiver as did many other companies.

Despite the interface issues, this was still a big deal for home computers of the time. With in-built Ethernet as standard, there is no need to fill a NuBus slot with a network controller card. Apple baked in drivers for their on-board Ethernet from System 7 onwards, meaning that getting online is a breeze. The OpenTransport extensions and TCP/IP control panel were able to negotiate DHCP settings with my modern router, and pretty soon I was out on the information superhighway.

Macintosh computers had built-in SCSI support since the Macintosh Plus. Data transfer rates are a little pokey when compared to today, around 5MBps theoretical and much less in practice. Daisy-chaining SCSI devices is a cinch, so it wasn't long before my Quadra was upgraded with a 4x Apple CD-ROM drive, 1GB external hard drive, and an Iomega Zip 100 drive. While making these changes, I also replaced the smaller internal hard drive with another 1GB, for a total of 2GB in hard drive capacity.

The NuBus interface supported the aforementioned network cards as well as a plethora of video cards. I happened to have a Macintosh 24-bit 'Display Card' handy, and in the midst of writing this story, I found myself pining for a second monitor. Apple's display card naturally supported the Apple Portrait Display, so before long I was using two absurdly large CRT monitors with the Quadra 700. Happy days.

If money and time were no objects, there are several more improvements that could be made. Adding a Fast SCSI bus is an option with NuBus, as is adding accelerated high-resolution high color-depth video. The Quadra 700 can be overclocked from 25MHz to 33MHz with a touch of soldering and a new oscillator, bringing performance much closer in line with the updated Quadra 950 and its successors. PowerPC upgrade cards for the Quadra and Mac II line were also very popular.

So for now, my pandemic project is not the most powerful Quadra 700 out there, but it's not far off the pace.

Benchmarking the Quadra 700

There are some obvious tasks that are still well suited to the 700, or even older computers like the Macintosh II series. General office tasks such as word processing, database entry, and the like are well within its capabilities. The pimped-out Quadra 700, with its extra VRAM and larger system memory, makes these tasks a complete and effortless breeze. The high screen resolution of the Quadra 700 reduced my eye strain when compared to using something smaller, such as the Macintosh SE.

Vintage computers are well suited as distraction-free workspaces, and the extra performance of the Quadra 700 makes this particularly intriguing. For example: a lightweight word processor, such as Microsoft Word 5.0, is lightning fast and a true pleasure for just... writing. No cloud, no templates. You’re presented with just a blank page and some basic fonts.

While multitasking is definitely possible, the technology of the day only supports cooperative multitasking, meaning programs are at the mercy of other programs when it comes to handing off processor resources cleanly and on time. It's good enough, but preemptive multitasking was just a few years away with PowerMac (that would be a night and day improvement).

These basic capabilities are further supported by a decent network interface. FTPing to another local computer allows easy document backup and retrieval. Email applications such as Mulberry are still just as useful today; just make sure to set up your IMAP and SMTP correctly, and you're good to go. As I did with IIsi, I even used Mulberry to talk back and forth with Ars Technica editors for this story.

The extra horsepower of the Quadra 700 came in especially handy when it came to Web browsing. For testing purposes, I used both Netscape Communicator 4.04 and Microsoft Internet Explorer for Macintosh 3.01. Both of these browsers were snappy enough to use; however, there's still no easy way around modern Internet security protocols. Any site using https is strictly off limits for these browsers, shrinking the usable Web significantly. The websites that do load, however, can be surprisingly responsive. Proxy services such as theoldnet.com are a simple way to load websites as they were from various years past (using the resources of archive.org, and removing SSL to just make it work). Loading the Ars Technica homepage from 2001 was a slog, taking several minutes to load in all the text and images and eating up a good chunk of memory.

In practice I was at least able to use these browsers to access sites like the Macintosh Garden to download new software and browse support forums. While the Quadra 700 isn't capable of browsing the latest websites, it still supports a useful amount of Web content.

Things are really put to the test when the Quadra is paired with resource-demanding creative and business software. Infini-D (and its Backburner engine) for Macintosh 68k computers was an incredibly capable program for its time, arguably bringing studio-quality 3D rendering and animations to the home desktop. In an era when many professionals preferred Silicon Graphics workstations, the Quadra 700 was an intriguing option at a fraction of the cost.

Still, it's 25MHz. There's no getting around this, and making any meaningful comparisons to rendering on modern systems is an exercise in nonsense. The Quadra 700 takes 15 minutes to render a static test scene at 375x295 pixels, in millions of colors in maximum ray-tracing quality. On the 'shade fast' setting, it takes just 37 seconds, but that results in noticeably worse quality. On the 'shade best' setting, with shadows included, rendering the same scene took three minutes and five seconds with quite decent results. No doubt, the same operation would take microseconds on any modern platform.

Photo retouching in Photoshop had its limitations also. The JPEG standard is excellent from a compression standpoint, but it’s taxing on older processors. Loading a full-resolution image from a modern DSLR can take an age, and making edits can be slightly painful. For touching up a basic 6x4 print, however, the Quadra definitely gets the job done. JPEG accelerators were a common sight in Quadra workstations of the day and significantly improved the graphics design workflow.

Playing MP3s is definitely possible, but don't expect to get any work done while the processor races to decode everything. It's still great to have the option of doing this even if the Quadra is just barely capable of being an MP3 player. It's much better as an AIFF player and can decode files into this format quickly if needed.

Full motion video is right at the edge of this system's limitations. The best results come when playing videos at a low resolution, low(er) frame rates, and making sure that videos are encoded using the Cinepak codec. All of that means YouTube is not going to happen.

However, not all Cinepak codecs are made equal. I had best results when using a 'modern' PowerBook G4 and Quicktime to re-render videos using Cinepak, and then bringing these over to the Quadra. Don't bother trying to play anything but Cinepak video, it's just not going to happen. It also helps to have the video file inside a RAM disk, as the SCSI bus is another bottleneck for FMV. Many third-party vendors such as Radius would later bring out NuBus cards that promised 30FPS video at SD resolutions. In a commercial for the Macintosh Quadra, however, a smug-looking office drone somehow uses his snazzy new computer to watch some full-motion video while working on a few other tasks.

What about the games? For vintage Macintosh gaming enthusiasts, the Quadra 700 is an excellent choice. Civilization II, which can make full use of my dual-screen high-resolution setup, is stunning on the 700. The turn-based action means that screen redraw time is less of an issue, and the CD audio is phenomenal. SimCity 2000 looks gorgeous with the same screen real estate and is more than playable. More than once, it was tools down for this author while tinkering away in SimCity.

Links Pro feels like it belongs on a workstation of this calibre, considering the demographics that would have been likely to afford such a speed demon. Again the nature of the game means that redrawing the scene after each swing isn't intrusive, and the gameplay is otherwise fast.

Wolfenstein 3D pushes the 700 right to its limits, much like full-motion video from the previous benchmark. Definitely playable on a smaller resolution, the FPS that started it all gets choppy at 640x400. Later titles such as Duke Nukem 3D are far outside the capabilities for the Quadra 700, unless you're happy with a postage-sized playfield.

For any Macintosh games that were made at or around the early ’90s, this computer is probably one of the best choices for playing them, especially with the extra memory.