Apple Power Macintosh 7200 (M4082LL) Mac Desktop

First off, my 7200 is the 75Mhz version, not the 90. They are completely identical save my machine running a 15Mhz slower clock speed from the factory. When I bought this back in 1995 I actually worked for Apple, and had a 7200/90 assigned as my office computer for a while, so I used both on a daily basis. The 90Mhz was a bit faster at computational tasks like applying Photoshop filters or frame rates in Marathon (a popular first person shooter for the Mac in 1995), but not noticeably, which is why I spent less for the 75Mhz.

That was in the days of System 7.5.1. I upgraded my 7200/75 all the way up through OS 8.6, at which point it began to feel slow, so I ended up backpedaling to OS 8.1, which on the 7200 was fast and stable. Some 7200s came without a level 2 cache, which these days is a very cheap ($5 on eBay) upgrade that does wonders for performance. With an L2 cache installed (I had 256K, 512K or 1MB are much better) and an older OS, a PowerMac 7200 can still be a very useful computer today, and at roughly $10 plus shipping (going rate on eBay) they are an outstanding value.

So what made me write a review of the 7200 after 9 years? Well, I just recently switched back from Windows to Macintosh (I switched in the other direction in 1998), buying a brand-new PowerBook G4 (12" 1Ghz) for myself, and a used Power Mac G3 (blue and white) for my wife and daughter. On the G3 I installed both OS 9.2.2 and OS X Panther, and was curious about what useful utilities and apps, not to mention nostalgic documents were sitting on my old PowerMac 7200, which had lived in my storage for the last 6 years.

First, imagine my surprise when I plugged in the old computer, keyboard and mouse, attached my semi-modern 15" LCD modern (through a Mac-to-VGA adapter) and watched OS 8.1 boot up as though the computer had never taken a break. It was so easy, and actually fast enough to not be annoying.

Next I plugged the Ethernet cable that normally goes to the desktop into the back of the old 7200, and from my PowerBook browsed the 7200's 1GB SCSI hard drive (remember those?). This was easy both because back in 1998 the 7200 was networked and set up to share files with a PowerBook, and because OS X Panther supports the same old AppleTalk networking protocol that Apple has used since at least System 7, and probably long before.

I found some old utilities that brought back memories such as an extension that gave me the equivalent to the Windows start button, and the old RamDoubler and SpeedDoubler programs which were necessary back before the Mac OS had gone completely PPC native (8.1 didn't really need it, but 7.5 sure did).

I also found Word 5.1a, which sadly won't work in Classic or OS 9, and Marathon, that game I so enjoyed in 1995. The 7200 also had Office 98 for Macintosh installed, Claris Emailer and a number of other productivity apps, which are surprisingly modern and surprisingly fast.

The 7200 really shows its age when you look at the ports on the back. There are the old Apple ADB ports for keyboard and mouse, a pair of serial ports for printer and modem, and a SCSI port for drives, scanners and the like. There is also an Ethernet port, but no USB or FireWire (this was 1995, after all). Also, unlike the more expensive 7500, 8500 and 9500 models, the processor on the 7200 was soldered to the logic board, and thus not upgradeable. There were a few clever upgrades designed for the 7200, including some 604-chip upgrades that ran from a PCI card (essentially a whole computer on the card), and a few G3 upgrades that connected through the L2 cache slot. I have no experience with any of these and merely contented myself with 75Mhz at home and 90Mhz at work.

The case design is actually rather elegant, far better than most desktop (non-tower) style cases on PCs even today. The top slides off easily, revealing a platform that drives mount to with sliding trays. Drives are easily added and removed, while the entire platform swings up and out of the way to expose the RAM slots, L2 cache slot and 3 PCI slots. My 7200 had upgraded video ram (1MB if I remember correctly, perhaps 2MB), 128MB of ram and the aforementioned L2 cache. The case is the same unit used for the 7300, 7500 and 7600, so if you find a logic board for one of those faster, more upgradeable models on eBay, you can swap it out with the 7200 board.

So how useful is the 7200 today? It depends on what you do. If you want a computer to watch movies, rip songs from CDs and play modern games on, forget it, even a beige G3 would likely require some serious upgrade dollars to satisfy that role. If, on the other hand, you want a basic computer to do word processing, light web browsing (iCab is fast enough, IE 5 is a bit sluggish), email and light spreadsheet work, a 7200 running Mac OS 8.1 and Microsoft Office 98 would actually be a stable, fast-enough computer that will cost you next to nothing. Microsoft Office 2001 will run on OS 8.1 as well, though if you run OS 8.6 you can even add a PCI USB and FireWire card, giving compatibility with many of the latest printers, scanners and other accessories. Not bad for a $10 computer.