The Color Classic has been lauded by many Mac faithful as what the original Macintosh should have been. The computer was made available to the general public on February 10, 1993, and was received well by reviewers.
Tag Archives: Color Classic
The Color Classic has 4 MB of system memory soldered to its motherboard. There are two SIMM sockets that can be used to expand it to 6 MB, 8 MB, or 10 MB.
In 1992, Apple decided that the education and design markets weren’t enough – it wanted to target mass market consumers. Rather than develop new computers for this market, Apple created a new brand and renamed three existing Macs as Performas.
MicroMac provided several products to upgrade the Color Classic, a perennial favorite among Mac collectors, as well as many other Macs. Although pages on the company website have not been updated since 1998-2000, we provide this as a look back at some very innovative upgrades.
Many Mac models can be “chipped” to run at a higher speed, but none of the compact Macs can. That said, some can be upgraded with third-party accelerators, so you’re not necessarily stuck with the original CPU speed – although finding those upgrades nowadays may be difficult.
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. The first color compact Mac, the Color Classic, was full of compromises.
As a longtime Apple user – I cut my computing teeth on an Apple II+ circa 1979 – I get a kick out of reading articles about the 10 best or 10 worst Apple products of all time. The latest of these, Top 10 Worst Apple Products of All Time, appeared on the Australian PC […]
One of the things that sets Macs apart from other computers is their longevity. People don’t just throw them away. Macs tend to soldier on long after their spec sheets say that they’re “obsolete”. This may explain another phenomenon almost unique to the Macintosh subset of the computing world: Mac collectors. It’s understandable when you […]
Bong! . . . :-) . . . Welcome to Macintosh! All Hallows Eve has crept up on us yet again, and for me it means getting my Classic Macs ready for the occasion.
Yesterday (October 22, 2007) Oobject published a list of the 16 worst Apple products ever (since updated to 18) – and we just have to disagree with some of them.
2006 – Over the past few years, I’ve been cutting back on some of the old Macs lying around the house. At one point I had an example of just about every Mac made until the late 1990s. As software is updated and time goes on, most of these computers become less and less useful […]
February 10, 1993 was one of the biggest days in Mac history. Apple introduced six new models at once.
2002 – It all started with the purchase of a refurbished iceBook three months ago. No longer would I have to retreat to my study to check my emails – instead I could sit in the lounge, keeping half an eye on the TV, and being part of the family at the same time. Other […]
Hi! I thought it was about time to make a FAQ (or sub-FAQ) to deal with all the Color Classic (Colour Classic outside the USA) questions out there, which seem to be on a Möbius type path. So, here it is. What I have done, is combined much of my email correspondence to answer many […]
Yesterday I received my eagerly-awaited Presto Plus from Sonnet; I promptly canceled my other plans for the evening and started playing with it in my Color Classic. To make a long story short: “Oh BABY!”
Reviews and comparisons of the MicroMac ThunderCache Pro and Sonnet Presto accelerators for the original Color Classic.
The Color Classic (also sold as the Performa 250) uses a 16 MHz 68030 CPU, but the Sonnet Presto accelerator provides either a 25 MHz 68040 or a 68LC040 (a 68040 without a math section), which are much more powerful. But how much more powerful is it?
The Color Classic uses a 16 MHz 68030 CPU, so performance should be comparable to a 16 MHz Mac IIcx or Mac LC. The tested unit also has a 16 MHz 68882 math coprocessor. The hard drive is an 80 MB Apple branded drive formatted with Apple HD SC Setup 7.3.5.
This was the first Mac Daniel column published – way back in October 1998.
First available in Canada (1993), and then Asia and Europe (and never sold in the home US market), the Colour Classic II (also known as the Performa 275) shares the motherboard design of the LC III. Running at a relatively fast 33 MHz, memory can be expanded as far as 36 MB.
The end of the Classic line in the North American market, the Color Classic (a.k.a. Performa 250) shared the motherboard design of the LC II – equally limited in RAM expansion, constricted by a 16-bit data bus, and able to use 16-bit PDS cards designed for the LC. The only significant difference is the presence […]
