Second Class Macs are Apple's somewhat compromised
hardware designs. For the most part, they're not really bad - simply
designs that didn't meet their full potential. (On our rating scale,
the more brown apples, the worse the hardware.)
Believe me, no tears were shed when Apple introduced the Power Mac 8600 and abandoned the minitower case
first used with the Quadra 800. (The
Power Mac 9500 used a taller version of
this case.)
Not counting Workgroup Servers, four Macs used this case: the Quadra
800, 840av, 8100, and 8500. And
all were equally difficult to work inside.
The case itself is quite attractive with four drive bays. The top
one usually held a CD-ROM, the next a floppy, the third your hard
drive, and the fourth was available. Unfortunately, the fourth didn't
have a faceplate, so it could only be used for an internal drive.
On the other hand, it was easy to move the hard drive down one bay
and put a tape drive in the third slot (as Apple did on some Workgroup
Server configuration). You could undoubtedly do the same with a
Syquest, optical, or other removable media drive.
No, the problem wasn't drive bays. They were actually not hard to
work with once you had the case open.
Getting the case open was more work than usual, since most Macs
could (and still can) be popped open without a screwdriver - or maybe
be removing a single screw. Not so the Q800 case. There were four
screws on the back that had to be loosed before the cover could slide
off.
Once the screws were loose, the cover slid forward, and then you
lifted it up. Not bad, really, although the reverse could be a bit
difficult. Sometimes the cover didn't want to slide neatly back and
align holes with the screws on the back of the case.
But that's minor compared with working on the motherboard. Except
for replacing the CPU card in the 8500, changing anything on the
motherboard required completely removing it. That included removing the
reset button (on some model), removing a screw, disconnecting several
cables (power, floppy drive, hard drive, CD-ROM sound out, and
speaker), then sliding the motherboard assembly forward about an inch,
then pulling it away from its mounts.
Yes, it was that much work. But after all that, you could finally
upgrade your RAM or VRAM.
Of course, to test the new memory, you had to reassemble almost the
entire computer. Aligning the ports with their openings was always
tricky, as was reseating the cover after all else was done.
Compared with the slide-off case of the 7200/7500, the flip
down case of the 8600/9600, the
drawbridge case of the Power Mac
G3/G4, and even such antiques as the
Mac II and IIcx, the Quadra 800 case was a real bear. Some of
the compact Mac designs may have been worse, but by 1993, Apple should
have known better.
The computers themselves were outstanding, so only the case design
itself merits a Road Apple.
