Every four years, we get a February 29th. What’s the story behind that? And how long has this been going on?
Category Archives: Low End Mac
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Michael Roeder reports: I bought my Macintosh Centris 610 way back in 1993. It’s been a reliable and fun replacement for my Mac Plus. Because I have some way cool computers at work, I haven’t had the need to buy a new Mac of my own.
There are some fairly consistent reports of the Sonnet Presto 040 having severe problems with browsers over PPP connections.
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 […]
We are embarking on a new project, bringing our LEM Swap group, an email list we launched over 15 years ago, into the Facebook era. We’ve already launched LEM Swap UK, LEM Swap Canada, and LEM Swap Australia so we can learn from a smaller group before launching a group for the larger US audience.
I take my son’s Windows 10 laptop with its ‘free upgrade’ version and do a clean install, with a twist. Does it go well?
With all the advances in mobile phone technology, your handset still needs to be reliable as a phone, but getting that isn’t easy.
Apple completely overhauled the Mac Pro in 2013, eliminating things like drive bays and expansion slots in favor of a radical new design that includes two video cards along with the fastest SSDs available. For those who need drive bays or expansion slots, there are lots of older Mac Pros to pick from starting below $200!
Apple last updated the Mac mini in Late 2014, moving to a 1.4 GHz dual-core low-power Intel i5 CPU that can Turbo Boost to 2.6 GHz on the entry-level model and a very powerful 2.6 GHz i5 on the “better” Mini (power hungry users can upgrade that to a 2.8 GHz i5 or 3.0 GHz i7). System memory can no longer […]
Although the Classic Mac OS remains useful, it’s getting hard to find at a reasonable price. We hope these links help you do so, whether for System 6, Mac OS 9.2.2, or something in between.
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.
Personal computing never would have gotten started if not for the invention of microprocessors, which puts a computer’s CPU (central processing unit) on a single chip – sometimes with companion chips. Intel released the first commercial CPU in 1971, and the first 8-bit “home computers” arrived just a few years later.
Prior to 1986, the best Mac had 512 KB of memory with no expansion path, a 400 KB floppy drive, and no standard way of connecting a fast hard drive. The Mac Plus, introduced on January 16, 1986, changed all that.
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.
