For the first time since Apple released OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion in July 2012, Apple has dropped support for a number of older Macs that had supported OS X 10.8 through 10.11 El Capitan. No MacBook and iMac models prior to Late 2009 and no MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and Mac Pro […]
Author Archives: LEM Staff
Introduced in January 1984, Apple’s Macintosh changed everything – but the world of personal computing was nearly a decade old, and Apple was already successful with its Apple II line. These articles look at Apple before the advent of the Mac, as well as the broader world of personal computing.
This is the Unofficial PowerPro 601 Homepage. The PowerPro is an upgrade card that was manufactured by DayStar Digital and sold both under the Apple and DayStar brand names. It enables some members of the Quadra series of Macintosh computers with a Motorola 68040 CPU to be upgraded to a PowerPC 601 processor.
Supporting the exchange of information about the DayStar Turbo 601 PowerPC upgrade card manufactured by DayStar Digital. This page has not been updated since January 1999 and is published here as a useful historical resource.
Whether marked Quadra 630, LC 630, or Performa 63x, this model has 4 MB of RAM soldered to the motherboard and a single 72-pin SIMM socket for memory expansion up to 36 MB. (The DOS Compatible version and some 630s have a different motherboard with two SIMM slots and are covered on a separate page.)
Most early Mac clones were built around 8-16 MHz 68000 CPUs or 16-40 MHz 68030 chips, but the 68000 Dash 30fx ran its 68030 at a blazing 50 MHz – 25% faster than the “wicked fast” Mac IIfx, which was the fastest computer on the market when it went on sale in March 1990.
You may not remember the Atari ST family, a series of computers based on the same 8 MHz Motorola 680×0 CPUs as the early Macs. They never really carved out a niche in the US, although they were moderately popular in Europe. The STs offered PC compatible floppy drives, a DOS-compatible filing system, and GEM, […]
Thanks to Richard Savary for sending information about the Dynamac. Mentioned in Byte (May 1988), the jet black Dynamac EL weighs 18 pounds, uses an 8 MHz 68000 CPU, has an 800K floppy, and shipped with 1 MB RAM (expandable to 2.5 MB or 4 MB). It was essentially a portable Mac Plus.
In addition to building the first commercial portable Mac, the WalkMac, Chuck Colby also developed the first Mac tablet, which he called the Colby Classmate™ Portable Computer. It was introduced at the August 1991 Macworld Expo in Boston.
In the era of the Sony Walkman™, it was inevitable someone would create a WalkMac. That’s what Chuck Colby called his portable when it was introduced in 1987.
Perhaps the best known early portable Mac clone came from Outbound systems. It was announced in August 1989, just weeks before Apple unveiled the Macintosh Portable.
This could be the rarest Mac compatible ever made. Outside of a few prototypes, only about 100 McMobiles were ever made.
Since Brazil didn’t allow the import of microcomputers until 1993, anything users wanted had to be made in and for the local market. For those who wanted a Macintosh, Unitron created the Mac 512, essentially a clone of the 512 KB “Fat Mac”.
Just over a year ago, Apple introduced a whole new model under the MacBook name – barely a half-inch thick and just a touch over two pounds. The Early 2016 model takes the next step forward with Intel Core m3, m5, and m7 processors and Intel HD Graphics 515.
It’s been rumored that Apple was working on a new low-end model to replace the 4″ iPhone 5S, and that new model is called the iPhone SE. It looks like an iPhone 5S, but it has the same A9 CPU as the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus which gives it double the power of the 5S. It’s […]
Luca Fornari reports: About a year ago, a friend of mine gave me a Mac SE (you know the type: 68000 8 MHz, 2.5 MB RAM). A real snail, almost useless, but it was so cute I decided to keep it and put in 4 MB so I could run some software on it – mostly […]
The Mac LC/Performa 580 shipped with 4 MB soldered on the motherboard and two 72-pin SIMM sockets for memory expansion – twice as many as the LC 550 and 575 – for up to 52 MB total system memory, the most possible in any 500-series Mac. Like other 500-series Macs, it has a slide-out motherboard.
The Quadra 605 (and its twins, the LC 475 and Performa 475/476) has 4 MB of RAM soldered to the motherboard and a single 72-pin SIMM socket for memory expansion. It supports up to 36 MB of system memory.
The LC 520 and Performa 520 are twins, larger versions of the all-in-one Macs of the past. They have 4 MB soldered on the motherboard and a single SIMM socket for memory expansion. Like other 500-series Macs, the 520 has a slide-out motherboard.
The Mac TV is pretty much a black LC 550 with a built-in TV tuner and a remote control for the TV portion of the computer. It has 4 MB soldered on the motherboard and comes from the factory with a 1 MB 72-pin SIMM in its only memory socket. Mac TV only had one […]
The Mac LC III and its 33 MHz siblings – the LC III+, LC 460, and Performa 460 – have 4 MB of RAM soldered to the motherboard and a single 72-pin SIMM socket for memory expansion.
The Mac IIvx, Mac IIvi, and Performa 600 were odd ducks, running a 16 MHz motherboard when most of Apple’s other machines were already faster than that. Since the IIvi had a 16 MHz 68030 CPU, that wasn’t a bottleneck, but the IIvx and Performa 600 had 32 MHz CPU, which were hobbled by the […]
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.
The Mac LC 550 and 575, also sold as the Performa 550 and 575 to the home market, have 4 MB of RAM soldered to the motherboard and a single 72-pin SIMM socket for memory expansion. They can handle up to 36 MB of memory.
The Centris 610, Quadra 610, and Apple Workgroup Server 60 have 4 MB of RAM soldered to the motherboard and two 72-pin SIMM sockets for memory expansion as far as 72 MB.
The Centris 650 has 4 MB or 8 MB soldered to the motherboard; the Quadra 650 has 8 MB on the motherboard. Each has four 72-pin SIMM sockets for memory expansion.
The Quadra 800 and Apple Workgroup Server 80 have 8 MB of memory on the motherboard and a single bank of four SIMM sockets for memory expansion as far as 136 MB. This was one of the first generation of Macs to use 72-pin SIMMs.
The Mac LC II (a.k.a. Performa 400, 405, 410, and 430) has 4 MB of RAM soldered to the motherboard and room for two additional SIMMs. (Apple says that some LC IIs have 2 MB of onboard RAM, but I have never run into one.)
The Mac Classic II (a.k.a. Performa 200) has 2 MB soldered to the motherboard. There are two SIMM sockets, which can be used to expand this Mac to a total of 4 MB, 6 MB, or 10 MB.
The Quadra 900 and 950 have no RAM on the motherboard and 16 sockets for four banks of memory expansion. They shipped with 8 MB and can support up to 256 MB of system memory – twice as much as any previous Mac.
The Quadra 700 has 4 MB soldered to the motherboard and one bank of 30-pin SIMMs for memory expansion, allowing up to 68 MB of system memory.
The Mac Classic has 1 MB of memory soldered to the motherboard. A second megabyte is added with a memory expansion board, which also has two SIMM sockets. Using these sockets, RAM can be expanded from 2 MB to 2.5 MB or 4 MB.
The Mac LC has 2 MB of RAM soldered to the motherboard and two SIMM sockets for upgrading memory to as much as 10 MB.
The Mac IIsi is essentially a more compact version of the Mac IIci with no NuBus expansion slots and operating at a reduced CPU speed. It uses the same architecture, sharing the first 1 MB of RAM for video and computing.
Apple broke the speed envelope with the Mac IIfx – the 40 MHz 68030 CPU on a 40 MHz data bus left everything else in the dust. Because it needed faster memory than any previous Mac, it used a special 64-pin dual-ported SIMM. It was the first Mac to ship with 4 MB of RAM.
