Apple introduced a new case design with the Quadra 800, one later used by the Quadra 840av and two Power Macs, the 8100 and 8500. Perhaps the most frustrating case to work with, it has three front accessible drive bays. One is for the floppy drive; the others may hold CD-ROM, a DAT drive, a SyQuest mechanism, etc.
The Quadra 800 (a.k.a. Workgroup Server 80) introduced a higher speed SCSI bus to the Macintosh line as well as accelerated internal video. It also uses interleaved memory to squeeze out about 10% more performance.
By using faster memory and interleaving, the Quadra 800 outperformed the Quadra 950, according to the Macworld review.
“The Quadra 800’s motherboard is readily accessible, because it’s held in place by only a few plastic clips.” MacUser, April 1993
Tell that to anyone whose had to wrestle one of these beasts apart! Sorry, but in my experience this is one of Apple’s worst case designs.
The Centris 650 and Quadra 800 were the first Macs to ship with a bootable CD-ROM.
See our NuBus Video Card Guide for information on adding a video card.
- Got a 68040-based Mac? Join our Vintage Macs Group.
Details
- introduced 1993.02.10 at $4,700; discontinued 1994.03.14
- requires System 7.1 (with System Enabler 040 v1.0) or later; highest version supported without a PPC upgrade is Mac OS 8.1.
- CPU: 33 MHz 68040
- Performance: 16.4, relative to SE; 1.31, Speedometer 4; 29 MIPS; 5332 Whetstones; 38,216 Whetstones with 100 MHz PowerPC upgrade
- ROM: 1 MB
- RAM: 8 MB on motherboard, expandable to 136MB using 60ns 72-pin SIMMs; motherboard had 4 SIMM slots which can be filled individually but should ideally be filled in interleaved pairs; can use 4 MB, 8 MB, 16 MB, and 32 MB SIMMs
- video: 512 KB VRAM, expandable to 1 MB
- 512 x 384 @ 16-bit
- 640 x 480, 800 x 600, 832 x 624: 8-bit @ 512 KB, 16-bit @ 1 MB
- 1024 x 768, 1152 x 870: 4-bit @ 512 KB, 8-bit @ 1 MB
- L2 cache: optional, PDS
- ADB ports: 2
- DIN-8 serial ports: 2
- SCSI: DB-25 connector on back of computer
- Hard drive: 230 or 500 MB
- CD-ROM: 2x
- NuBus 90 slots: 3
- one PDS slot
- size (HxWxD): 14.0″ x 7.7″ x 15.75″
- Weight: 24.0 lbs.
- PRAM battery: 3.6V half-AA
- Gestalt ID: 35
- addressing: 24-bit, 32-bit
- upgrade path: Quadra 840av, Power Mac PDS card; Power Mac 8100, 8500
Accelerators & Upgrades
- Chipping the Quadra
- MicroMac PDS 128KB L2 cache
- Output Enablers 40-42 MHz clock accelerator
- MicroMac Speedy variable speed oscillator (to 38 MHz)
- Daystar Digital PowerPro 601, Apple Knowledge Base Archive. Runs at twice the speed of the original processor (50 MHz) and has a 1 MB level 2 cache (resource: Unofficial PowerPro 601 Page.
- Power Mac 8100
- Sonnet 100 MHz PowerPC 601 Presto PPC, discontinued
Online Resources
Cautions
- You must have a “fat” system installed to use a PowerPC upgrade.
- Serial port normally restricted to 57.6 kbps; throughput with a 56k modem may be limited. See 56k modem page. For more information on Mac serial ports, read Macintosh Serial Throughput.
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