Based on the TNT architecture, the PowerMac 7300 was seen by many as nothing more than a sped-up PowerMac 7600, but that certainly wasn't the end of the story. While it was true that the 7300 and the 7600 were, essentially, the same machine, the 7300 was one of the few examples of Apple releasing a machine under a lower model number - why this was, was never officially stated but many credited it to the 7300 having had its video in capability removed.

Elsewhere the 7300 did very little else different. In fact aside from a case modification (to make the machine harder to dismantle), the speed bump and the loss of the video input, the two machines were identical. A speed bump was a speed bump though and the 7300 was a solid, if unremarkable, beige box that did exactly what it said on the lid.

Initially available in either 166MHz or 200MHz versions, the line was later joined by a 180MHz machine that also sported a 166MHz Intel Pentium DOS card. The concept of a dedicated DOS card was nothing new to the Mac line (the Quadra and Centris machines had sported DOS variants and hardware DOS cards had been available as optional extras long before them) and the 7300 allowed up to 64Mb of dedicated to it.

A Mac is Mac is a Mac, regardless of how beige and uninspiring it is. This was very much the feeling towards the 7300 when one came the museum's way but at the bargain price of £2.99 we were hardly going to say no - who would say no to a 200MHz machine for under £3? At that price though there were bound to be problems and the 7300 had a couple straight away - no hard drive and no CD-ROM. With a stack of parts cluttering up the shelves, both were duly found (although 50 pin SCSI drives are starting to get a bit thin on the ground nowadays) and fitted and the machine promptly booted.

Then the hard drive failed and refused to spin up. In went a replacement (a measly 1Gb drive) but that started playing up too and seemed that the 7300 simply refused to want to install OS 8. OS 8.1 promptly did the same and OS 8.5 wouldn't even boot from the startup CD. Partitioning the hard drive (or even seeing the hard drive) was proving to be a massive thorn in the 7300's side but, thankfully, help came in the shape of OS X - hook up the SCSI drive to the PowerBook G3, boot OS X, and then get it to re-partition. The 7300 still complained but was now happy to re-partition the drive itself, boot from OS 8.5 and actually install. Hooray, we have another live one.

Putting the issue of installing the OS aside, the 7300 is a nice machine. OK it's not exactly pretty but it is nice to use. I'd ended up with the 200MHz version and it had arrived with a reasonable 96Mb of RAM, all of which means that it runs at a decent pace and actually feels responsive and usable. Round the back there is also a very nice collection of A/V sockets which certainly present possibilities.

All good news then? A machine consigned to the scrapheap now brought back to life. Err not so fast. The 7300 is, undoubtedly, a nice machine to use ('look at' is another matter though) but Apple's attempts to make the machine harder to dismantle are certainly effective as the 7300 is a pig to get inside of. Although similar to the 7200 (in that it has two 'buttons' to press on the underside at the front of the machine) the 7300 requires supreme patience to get the case either on or off. Don't ask me how I managed it each time but it's more an act of magic rather than some sort of set procedure.