At first glance the PowerMac 8500 was no different to the ageing 8100 and 8200 machines but under the steel case (the same steel case first seen way back on the venerable Quadra 800), the 8500 was something a little bit different and pointed the way forward for the PowerMac line. Based on the Nitro architecture, the 8500 was the first mini-tower Mac that used replaceable CPU daughter cards, making bumping the processor speed an absolute doddle: Unplug the old card, plug in the new card and power up.

This technical 'first' aside, the 8500 also sported other advantages over the older first-generation PowerPC based machines. The 'new and improved' Motorola 604 boosted performance on its own but the 8500 also ramped up the speed, initially shipping at 120MHz and eventually being speed-bumped all the way up to 180MHz (the 180MHz model also used the even more advanced 604e processor). Elsewhere the effects of time marching ever onwards were apparent and the 8500 came with three PCI slots rather than the older, more Apple-centric, NUBus slots. In addition to all of this improved performance, the 8500 also sported S-Video and composite connections - not exactly 'new' but certainly nice to have on the standard specification.

Eventually replaced with the PowerMac 8600 in 1997, the 8500, while not exactly wonderful in the style department (it was produced in the middle of Apple's 'dull beige' period after all), packed a lot of speed into it's mini-tower case. At $4000 though, it had to.

Will this nightmare never end? How many machines are there that use the awful Quadra 800 case? It was these kind of thoughts that went through my head when a PowerMac 8500 landed on the doorstep. Don't get me wrong, there are worse case designs out there in Mac-land but the combination of plastic and steel is awful to say the least and even getting the outer case off is a chore. And the less said about the inside the better.

It wasn't all bad news though as this little example of Apple at it's lowest point did cost us a measly £5 so that's a definite plus. So what do you get for £5? In this case we ended up with the 150MHz model with a 2Gb hard drive, CD-ROM drive, original OS 7.5.2 install CD, and 16Mb of RAM. Yes, you read that right, 16Mb of RAM. OK, time to raid the big box of SIMMs to see what we can do about that.

Given the price paid, this could have been a total disaster of a machine but not only did it boot first time but it was actually in pretty good shape physically. Good that is until some fool manage to pull the CD-ROM bezel off, snapping the little clips good and proper - time for the superglue methings.

Performance wise the 8500 is not a bad macine. OK it looks a little pedestrian by modern standards but it's got enough under the hood to browse the web, do a little word processing and many other 'less demanding' tasks. There are some definite plus points to the 8500 though and an onboard RJ-45 ethernet jack (alongside the AAUI connector) makes networking far, far easier. The three PCI slots make push the machine a little further towards 'PC-dom' but if ever a cheap Mac USB card comes along then adding that would be a no-brainer. The jewel in the 8500's crown though is its AV connections and this is a machine that should be able to make a half decent job of being able to use them (be honest, the 660AV and 840AV were never going to have the raw processing power to do them justice).

Despite it's lacklustre exterior and, by modern standards, lack of power, the 8500 is a decent machine. It's not wonderful, it's not going to set any records, and it's not going to dazzle. What it will do though is run forever and be as solid as a rock.