The Mac Classic: Apple Does Cheap

Did you know that Apple once released a Macintosh with the Mac System in its ROMs? Did you know that Apple released an 8 MHz model in October 1990, so it was available at the same time as the “wicked fast” 40 MHz 68030-based Mac IIfx? Do you know how much Apple left out to […]

Memory Upgrades: Mac Classic

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.

Overclocking a Compact Mac

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.

Mac Classic Benchmarks

The Mac Classic uses an 8 MHz 68000 CPU. The installed hard drive is a 170 MB Quantum ELS170S formatted with LaCie Silverlining software. This was not the original hard drive, which was a slower 40 MB mechanism.

Mac Classic: My Lowest Low-End Mac

It was my last year of high school, and I had just moved up from typewriter to a handed-down word processor. There was an anonymous DOS clunker waiting for me to take to college. That orange-on-brown Zenith-whatever was like our old Chevy Malibu: it got you where you needed to go, but you were sort […]