PowerMac 6100 Maintenance Tips

This page describes some rudimentary maintenance tips for the Power Mac 6100 series.

Cooling

First, find 4 pieces of something 1/2” thick or so to stick underneath the four feet of the computer. Make sure you don’t block the fan grille. It’s a bottom-breather, and if you make space underneath it’ll breathe a lot better. As an additional bonus, you can now keep your keyboard tilted and in front of the CPU and still open the CD drive :)

If you have have a G3 card, you should definitely remove the motherboard cache. It’s not necessary, and depending on how the cache controller works, it might even slow you down. More importantly, removing that cache will give you a lot better airflow underneath the AV card and over the G3’s heat sink.

Replacing the lithium battery

The 6100 has a little lithium battery inside that powers the parameter-RAM (PRAM). This little battery has a lifespan of 3-5 years, so most 6100’s are due or overdue for a battery replacement. Common symptoms of a dead or dying battery are:

• A clock with the wrong date, or that always stays at 1969 or 1956.
• Intermittent failure to boot (will boot up with a black screen, or will reboot only on a warm start, but not a cold start)
• Loss of monitor settings

If you see any of these symptoms, you probably need a new battery. The battery is stored on the motherboard under a little black plastic cover. It’s a “1/2 AA” size, which means it looks like an AA-size battery, only half as long.

Remove the cover and battery, and take the battery to any decent electronics store (like a Radio Shack). A replacement should cost no more than $6-$10.