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My Turn is Low End Mac's column for reader-submitted
articles. It's your turn to share your thoughts on all things
Mac (or iPhone, iPod, etc.) and write for the Mac web. Email your
submission to Dan Knight
.
It's not often I get to write anything but groundless
rumors for Luddite Mac, but the opportunity to look back at
one of Apple's finest computers ever got my interest.
Like a lot of old time Mac users, I miss the modular desktop
designs that Apple introduced with the Mac
II (1987), shrunk with the Mac
IIcx (1989), and absolutely minimized with the
LC (1990). From there the desktop Macs grew to Power
Mac 7500 proportions, and then ballooned to the size of
the current Power Mac G4.
The LC's drawbacks were many, as witnessed in the
Road Apple report, but the size was wonderful. The best of
the "flat pack" Macs was the Quadra
605 (1993) with a 25 MHz 68040 processor, room for 132 MB RAM,
support for several monitor resolutions, and a single expansion slot.
The only drawback: no room for a CD-ROM.
The 630 Series
In 1994, Apple addressed that with a trio of computers:
the LC 630, Quadra 630, and
Performa 630. Except for
the Quadra using a full 68040 CPU vs. the less costly, FPU-challenged
68LC040 in the other models, these were essentially the same computer
- a Q605 with room for a CD-ROM drive.
Perfect.
But it got better. The 630 was also the first desktop Mac to use
IDE drives, which made adding storage cheap, cheap, cheap. (It
still does, so a 630 with an ethernet card makes a great low-end file
server.)
Not only that, but there were several new expansion slots
in addition to the LC Processor Direct Slot. The Comm Slot accepted a
modem or ethernet card, the video slot supported video I/O (hook it
up to a TV, VCR, etc.), and the tuner slot took a TV tuner. There was
even an IR port on the front for use with a remote control.
What more could you ask for?
The DOS Compatible
How about one that has two memory sockets, raising the RAM
ceiling from 68 MB to 132 MB, and also has a 66 MHz 486DX2
processor on a daughter card - complete with its own RAM socket that
could accept up to 32 MB of memory dedicated to the DOS side of the
computer?
You could end up with 132 MB available to the Mac, which included
all the AV capabilities most Mac users could have dreamt of
back then, along with a 32 MB Windows (or OS/2 or Linux, etc.)
machine sharing as huge a hard drive as you could afford.
Okay, the Quadra 660av and
840av may have had better AV
circuitry, especially for video capture, but for an entry-level
computer, either the base 630 or the
DOS Compatible version offered gobs of capability. You can
read a lot more about how one Mac user takes advantage of this in
the Matt's Macs columns.
All told, a decked out 630 could still be all the computer
anyone needs. It can run Mac OS 8.1 comfortably, has all the
legacy ports, and would work very comfortably with a 15"
display at 832 x 624 for browsing the Web, doing graphics work, etc.
It's a heck of a lot cheaper than the iMac and includes many
things the iMac lacks - SCSI, a floppy drive, sound and video input,
and plain old fashioned serial ports among them.
For those preferring an all-in-one design, there's also the
LC/Performa 580, which combined
the 630 motherboard with a 15" 640 x 480 display. I'd rather have the
smaller computer with a separate multisync screen, but to each his
own.
I don't believe any Mac ever matched the ease of use and
sophistication of the 630 with its multitude of dedicated
expansion slots and DOS daughtercard. If you really want the Mac
experience on the cheap, you can't beat it.
Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.
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for
the Quadra using a full 68040 CPU vs. the less costly, FPU-challenged
68LC040 in the other models, these were essentially the same computer
- a Q605 with room for a CD-ROM drive.
