Macintosh
PowerMac 5260

The PowerMac 5260 continued the Apple tradition of an all in one computer albeit it was rather large compared to the original compact Macs. Still having a computer that was plug and play appealed to many folks who did not want to contend with a tangle of cables.

The back cover of the 5260, my particular computer has the optional Apple TV/Video cards installed which gives it av inputs as well as a coax connector for cable tv. To gain access to the motherboard you remove three screws and remove the plastic trim.

Once the trim is removed you unclip the handle and pull the mother board out.

The 5260 motherboard has two ram slots, a cache slot, comm slot and nubus slot. The CPU is soldiered to the motherboard so upgrade paths are limited. My particular 5260 has the Apple TV tuner and AV cards installed. (card on far left with ribbon cable). Next to it is the cache card slot, then the CPU under the blue heat sink, two ram slots, then the DOM or DOS on Mac card and finally the 10T comm slot card.

This is the bottom of the DOM 5260, note the nubus plug as well as the two on the far left. These clip into two slots on the motherboard.

The 5260 DOM card is put together as two boards, in order to add memory into the single 72 pin slot you need to unscrew the five plastic screws holding the boards together. Once this is done the boards pull apart. Just be careful you don't damage the pins that connect the two boards.

The 5260 DOM card appears to have a standard Mac monitor plug as well as a SCSI 2 connector. I have installed the card and software in my 5260 but I cannot get the card to work with any display either internal or external. The software does load properly and I can switch into DOS but can't see what is going on. Could be the OS I am running.

The 5260 uses a first generation comm slot 10T card. Though these cards are only 10T they have decent speed and allow you to free up the single nubus slot for other upgrades.

This is the Apple MPEG nubus card. I removed it when I installed the DOM card. The nubus slot can also accept a standard LC nubus ethernet card.

The 5260 is an interesting all in one Mac but is fairly crippled by it's slow motherboard. Still it is handy to keep around for downloading pix from my old QuickTake cameras.

Comments? Feel free to e-mail me at kevino@newsroom.net.