Performa 5200CD

comda said:

The only thing i really could think of was trying to see maybe if the monitor connection is simple enough for a first year University kid to hack into and convert the signal maybe to VGA.

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There were some adapters to go from the Apple monitor connection to VGA. You might still be able to find some 'out there'. Someone might have schematics too as I remember hearing about some people doing their own, not that I'd recommend doing that. I had an adapter, but tossed it a while ago.

That model is often considered one of the worst Macs ever made. Internally they do use VGA signals, you'd have to find the pin out for it though. They can run up to Mac OS 9.1, but not very well even with their maximum of 64MB of ram.

Yeah, there are adaptors. I know this because I have 3 of them. I have no idea where to get them, though...

I hope I am giving correct information here, because I use the adaptors on my performa 6320CD which may be different than the 5200CD. Mactracker does say that both models use the DB-15 display connector, so I assume that it works the same.

If it has the TV tuner card in it, you could use it as a television.

53kyle said:

I hope I am giving correct information here, because I use the adaptors on my performa 6320CD which may be different than the 5200CD. Mactracker does say that both models use the DB-15 display connector, so I assume that it works the same.

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The 5200 is an all-in-one Mac. It doesn't have a monitor port. Lemme see if I can find a pic...

bse5150 said:

The 5200 is an all-in-one Mac. It doesn't have a monitor port. Lemme see if I can find a pic...

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Yes, but there was an option to get the monitor port upon purchase, or as an upgrade card, at least according to mactracker. Anyways, I thought that the internal port was also the same connector? It would make sense considering that the monitor inside of the computer was likely just a built in version of the apple external monitor at the time.

Even with the proper adapter, one would have to find out how to get the internal display to power on without turning on the logicboard. You'd then be limited by the 15" display's limited circa ~1995 resolutions. I don' think they supported anything higher than 1024x768.

I love the design of this Mac and similar models. (if only this wasn't [considered] one of the worst). I wish I had one of these, but they are hard to find. Make sure this machine either goes to a good home or stays in yours!

As Intell said, it's not going to run OS9 well. If you go on the Macintosh Garden (.org), there are plenty of classic Mac games that you can download for it. Obviously, though, you are going to need a floppy disk to transfer the files. I don't use my old Macs for retro gaming, but there are definitely some cool titles available. It is a nice display piece as well...

Not sure what is up with your disc drive, so I unfortunately cannot be of assistance here. If you don't care about losing the drive, dry getting it closed and shutting the machine down before it can open again, and then disconnect the power/data cables; it's better non-functioning than spastic. Of course, that wouldn't be as nice as fixing it, but I don't know its issue.

It's not going to be of much use to a person, besides toying around with it and playing games on it. If you wanted to go hardcore, you COULD find a printer for it and type documents, but that is more trouble than it's worth.

You can put in an AV card that will give it RCA input. It cannot run OS X. You can clock chip it by adding a crystal chip to it that will bring its CPU speed up about 10Mhz. Not worth the increased instability that model already has.

There is no way to run OSX on a Performa 5200. You may be able to swap in a 54/6400 logic board and run OS 9 a little better. The 6400 even had a cache slot G3 upgrade.

Without lots of work on your end, you cannot use it as an external screen or speakers. To put a 6400's logicboard in there you would need to swap out the power supply as well or the PCI slots won't work.

The optional monitor port only allowed mirroring of the built-in monitor and was limited to 832x624.

bse5150 said:

The optional monitor port only allowed mirroring of the built-in monitor and was limited to 832x624.

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That was the maximum resultion because that was all the more the 1MB of VRAM could drive.

I had one back in middle school! It was impossibly slow. Had quite a few problems with the monitor. As people have said, it was not a great Mac. My dad was so frustrated with it that when we went to Apple's headquarters in Cupertino (I wanted to go because I thought it would be this really cool experience . . . it's not), he asked the person working in the little Apple shop on their campus if they'd let us dump the computer at their campus for all the hassle we had gone through with it.

I did like the design, though.

I believe it came with MegaPhone (http://www.megaphoneco.com) which was pretty cool. You could take and make calls on your Mac using the built-in modem, and it could work as your answering machine.

I also ran an SNES emulator on it, and it worked pretty well for that if you didn't have the filter smoothing effects turned on. Other than that I used it for typing reports, etc.

This came out in the burgeoning era of multimedia CD-ROMs, but it was pretty slow with regards to media generally.

My computer after this was the original bondi iMac, which was both a revelation and blazingly fast compared to this model.

Internally like other all in one macs like the original iMac G3 they use VGA, you can adapt the screen, in fact later all in ones like the G3 iMac and eMacs are easier as they have a standard monitor connection. You'd just need to replace the board.

It's been since the late 90s since I've even seen a 5200CD, I'm not sure what the internals of them are like. They were always a lemon as compared to other all in ones of the time such as the 5500 and later the G3 all in one. They were mostly sold to schools and education departments.

Prior to the G3 all in one the machine to have was the 5500/250 directors edition, it was a kind of cool experience for the time. All be it looking back on it to be stuck with an internal 15" monitor was kind crappy and the only cool thing about it was that it was one of the rare black Macs which over the years share only with 5 other Mac models.

• The 5500
• The black MacBook
• The TAM
• The PowerBook range
• The current Mac Pro

orestes1984 said:

...it was one of the rare black Macs which over the years share only with 5 other Mac models.

• The 5500
• The black MacBook
• The TAM
• The PowerBook range
• The current Mac Pro

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Don't forget the rather rare Macintosh TV

You cannot display images on the internal monitor using the video out port. You much find the internal Pinot and create your own adapter.

comda said:

Well guys. I'm only 19 years of age. I wouldnt call myself a pro at a soldering but i can do it. Once my exams are complete ill crack her open. If it seems like its way over my head then oh well. I shall post photos of how my diss assembly goes. Expect them later next week

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comda;; i know its probably way too late to respond to this.. but i was just reading this thread as there is a performa 5200CD for sale down the street from my house..

from what i read, u seem to be trying to find out if u can use the screen as a monitor for your g3... this is NOT possible.. the monitor port they were talking about is for mirroring ONLY.. which means it allows u to use an external VGA monitor to display whats already being displayed on the built in CRT only..
u cant use the monitor port to use the CRT as a display for another mac...