Anyone familiar with 8600's??

[mattydiah]

I picked up a Mac 8600 300MHZ at my schools surplus sale yesterday for 5 bucks!! Needless to say I am chomping at the bit to get this thing working. I opened it up and there is only one thing missing: The power switch. The plastic switch that you push on the front of the case is there, but the actual electrical switch that mounts to that little metal backet on the motherboard is missing.

Normally this wouldnt be a big deal, I could just rig up a regular switch or whatever, but the problem is I cannot for the life of me find where the wires for the switch would connect on the motherboard?!?!?!

I'm normally a PC user, so obviously I am not very familiar with Mac hardware, but I couldnt pass up this deal and I am now itching to get into the Mac realm. If anyone could help me out by just telling me where the power switch connects, I would really really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance,
Matt

Oh, and here is a pic to describe what I am talking about:

 

[Hemingray]

Hey there Matt, welcome to MacRumors! You got a good deal for that 8600. I'd be glad to help, except that my 8600 had to be brought into the office to be used as a temporary extra work station.

Not sure if you're aware of this, but as long as you have the Apple keyboard that goes along with the CPU, you can just turn on the computer from the power switch on the keyboard (the very upper right key). That makes the main power switch almost superfluous.

 

[mattydiah]

Well, I looked really close at the motherboard, and the switch actually connects right under the bracket. Its very hard to see where the points are on the motherboard.

I hooked up a monitor to it and jumped the contacts with a paperclip and it fired right up!! I dont have a Mac keyoard onhand, but I totally forgot about the power button on the keyboards. 5 bucks well spent!!

 

[cubist]

Fabulous deal! You're gonna love it!

That is a fine machine for running Photoshop, Quark, and lots of mac games. It'll sing in mac os 9. How much RAM you got in it? Did you get a monitor, or one of those adaptor gizmos so you can use a PC monitor? You should be able to get a mac keyboard and mouse at a flea market for $5 or less.

Congrats on a great deal. 300MHz!

 

[mattydiah]

Re: Fabulous deal! You're gonna love it!

Originally posted by cubist
That is a fine machine for running Photoshop, Quark, and lots of mac games. It'll sing in mac os 9. How much RAM you got in it? Did you get a monitor, or one of those adaptor gizmos so you can use a PC monitor? You should be able to get a mac keyboard and mouse at a flea market for $5 or less.

Congrats on a great deal. 300MHz!

Its got 380-some odd megs of RAM (not sure the exact amount, but thats what the other 8600's had that were in the same lab as my machine), its got an ATI rage PCI card in it, so I can just use a standard VGA monitor. Its also got a 4-gig HD, a Zip drive and a 2gig Jaz drive. I have a Mac keyboard and mouse at home actually, from a 6100, so I'll just steal that one when I go home.

The more I figure out about this Mac, the more I realize it was a steal!!! Anyone who goes to a university and is interested in computers owes it to themselves to see if their school holds regular surplus sales. Mine has one every Friday and I get deals like I got on this Mac almost every week!!