Performa 6200 extensions and memory

[mallikai]

I've got filemaker server running on linux...

Connected to it are a mac osx, windows nt, windows xp computers, and one mac performa 6200. (All have fmpro 5.5)

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for enhancing performance on the mac performa (operating system 8.1). The only program I want to work on performa is filemaker 5.5. All my databases are connected via relationships and menus and there are numerous scripts that run. On the performa, it is pretty slow.

The performa has 64 mb memory, os 8.1, dave, and filemaker.

I dont know what

virtual memory

cache

RAM disk

extensions

allocated memory for filemaker 5.5

should be set to in order for the performa to achieve it's best and fasted performance for filemaker and only filemaker databases.

Thanks!!

[LiveOak]

The 6200 was intoduced in May 1995. It is PowerPC 603/75 machine. It is currently worth about $15. There is not much you can do to improve preformance. Newer operating systems won't help. I don't think there is an available accelerator (and I wouldn't want to put it in!).

The best suggestion is to replace it with a newer machine. A used 7500/100 is probably about $50. Add a G3 accelerator for another $50 or so. With a G3/300 replacement CPU card, it will be about 5X faster than the 6200. This is all cheap surplus, if you want to stick with a cheap Mac in this position.

-bd

[BobWeaver]

My favourite vintage cheap Mac is the 4400/200 running OS8.6. One of my clients has an office full of them. They are easy to find at a good price and run FM very well. I've also found that a lot of current add-ons work with them. Just this week, I installed an Orange Micro USB adapter card and an ATI video card in one so that we could run two monitors, and plug in an external USB zip drive for backups.

They were designed to work with standard common PC hardware components. For example, you can upgrade the hard drive with a standard IDE unit. Most of the other older Macs used SCSI hardware that is expensive (if not impossible) to replace.

[LiveOak]

The hot ticket for replacement SCSI drives is to go to Other World Computing (macsales.com). The sell new small Ultra 160 SCA drives (which are a glut on the market) with an adapter to 50 pin SCSI. The drives are relative large, very fast and originally had 5 year warranties. I had one that ran for over 5 years, 24 hours a day, in my server.

-bd

[Steve T.]

Hi, malikai! If you don't follow the big bananas' suggestions (I think you should), here's what you should do to get the most out your 6200 (just don't expect much)...

VIRTUAL MEMORY=OFF

If possible, don't use VM. This uses your hard drive which is MUCH slower. It's been years, but if I remember correctly, I had trouble w/6200's and VM anyway. ALL programs were exceptionally bad but got much better when I disabled VM.

SET FMP APP MEMORY to almost MAX

Use whatever RAM allocation that is left for FileMaker. Try to leave yourself 1-2 MB extra for system stuff, though. In any case, about 4MB more than the suggested size should be enough. I always found that the suggested was not enough and would suffer from more crashes.

RAM DISK=OFF

RAM disks are great for people w/tons and tons of RAM... otherwise don't use it.

EXTENSIONS/CP's.

Disable as many as you can get away with so you have more RAM available for FMP. You probably don't need things like QuickTime, screen savers, etc. I used to be able to strip way down but I can't remember anymore (sorry). My guess is that you can eliminate about 80% of them, though. Don't get rid of things related to networking unless you 're sure you don't need them (like Token Ring stuff).

Rebuild the desktop and turn File Sharing OFF if you don't need it or haven't removed it.

Our Performa 6214's benefitted most from the VM disabling, though. For some reason, they had really annoying lags until we did that. Even the PowerMac 6100/60's were faster than the Performa 6214's until we disabled VM.

Good luck!