I started a journey back in 2018 to document my Macintosh Performa 640CD DOS Compatible setup, and the steps it takes to re-create the software side of things should I have a hard drive crash. It’s now 2024 and I am hoping to finish this journey.

Random Facts

• Max RAM in MAC is 52MB – 4MB on Motherboard, 16MB FPM 72-Pin SIMM and 32MB FPM 72-Pin SIMM (That’s Apple’s official stand, but a 128MB SIMM works fine in one slot and 16MB in the other for 136MB)
• The DOS Compatibility card can use a 32MB FPM 72-Pin SIMM (This is the MAX size it supports)
• Hold down “C” while booting to boot off the CD-ROM
• Hard drive can be partitioned into multiple 2GB partitions (Boot can be max 2GB)
  • The boot drive on any 68K Macintosh needs to be an HFS (Not HFS+) partition with a max size of 2GB.
  • Additional partitions can be added with the max size of 2GB for HFS and up to the hard drive size limit for the hardware (133GB) if using HFS+.
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Reference Material

• Macintosh Performa 640CD User’s Guide – Some excellent information on the DOS Compatibility card that is included with this model.
• Macintosh Performa 640CD Hard Drive Sled (3D Printable .STL) – This sled should also work for any Performa 630 series Macintosh.

Web Links

The Mac Driver Museum (vintageapple.org) – This is where I found the way to the Farallon Comm Slot 1 Ethernet drivers.

Downloads

VST SuperDisk Manual for Lombard / Pisimo Laptop – I had to use my Lombard laptop to get the Farallon drivers onto a Macintosh disk that I could then use in the Performa 640CD.

VST SuperDisk Drivers

HD SC Setup 7.5.3 Patched – This version of HD Setup will bypass the need to have a special Apple branded hard drive.

Farallon Comm Slot1 Ethernet Drivers (SMC Chipset) – Other Farallon drivers can be found at – https://proxim.my.site.com/s/article/297

SCSI2SD Utility – Use this utility to configure your SCSI2SD device. This particular version is for the SCSI2SD v5.5 (External DB25) unit. Other versions of this software can be found at – http://docs.scsi2sd.com/