My Turn is Low End Mac's column for reader-submitted
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Mac (or iPhone, iPod, etc.) and write for the Mac web. Email your
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It's not often I get to write anything but groundless rumors for Luddite Mac,
but the opportunity to look back at one of Apple's finest
computers ever got my interest.
Like a lot of old time Mac users, I miss the modular desktop designs
that Apple introduced with the Mac
II (1987), shrunk with the Mac
IIcx (1989), and absolutely minimized with the LC (1990). From there the desktop Macs
grew to Power Mac 7500
proportions, and then ballooned to the size of the current
Power Mac G4.
The LC's drawbacks were many, as witnessed in the Road Apple report, but the size was
wonderful. The best of the "flat pack" Macs was the Quadra 605 (1993) with a 25 MHz 68040
processor, room for 132 MB RAM, support for several monitor
resolutions, and a single expansion slot. The only drawback: no
room for a CD-ROM.
The 630 Series
In 1994, Apple addressed that with a trio of computers:
the LC 630, Quadra 630, and Performa
630. Except for the Quadra using a full 68040 CPU vs. the less
costly, FPU-challenged 68LC040 in the other models, these were
essentially the same computer - a Q605 with room for a CD-ROM
drive.
Perfect.
But it got better. The 630 was also the first desktop Mac to use
IDE drives, which made adding storage cheap, cheap, cheap. (It
still does, so a 630 with an ethernet card makes a great low-end file
server.)
Not only that, but there were several new expansion slots in
addition to the LC Processor Direct Slot. The Comm Slot accepted a
modem or ethernet card, the video slot supported video I/O (hook it up
to a TV, VCR, etc.), and the tuner slot took a TV tuner. There was even
an IR port on the front for use with a remote control.
What more could you ask for?
The DOS Compatible
How about one that has two memory sockets, raising the RAM
ceiling from 68 MB to 132 MB, and also has a 66 MHz 486DX2
processor on a daughter card - complete with its own RAM socket that
could accept up to 32 MB of memory dedicated to the DOS side of the
computer?
You could end up with 132 MB available to the Mac, which included
all the AV capabilities most Mac users could have dreamt of back
then, along with a 32 MB Windows (or OS/2 or Linux, etc.)
machine sharing as huge a hard drive as you could afford.
Okay, the Quadra 660av and
840av may have had better AV
circuitry, especially for video capture, but for an entry-level
computer, either the base 630 or the DOS Compatible
version offered gobs of capability. You can read a lot more about
how one Mac user takes advantage of this in the Matt's Macs columns.
All told, a decked out 630 could still be all the computer
anyone needs. It can run Mac OS 8.1 comfortably, has all the legacy
ports, and would work very comfortably with a 15" display at 832 x
624 for browsing the Web, doing graphics work, etc. It's a heck of a
lot cheaper than the iMac and includes many things the iMac lacks -
SCSI, a floppy drive, sound and video input, and plain old fashioned
serial ports among them.
For those preferring an all-in-one design, there's also the
LC/Performa 580, which combined
the 630 motherboard with a 15" 640 x 480 display. I'd rather have the
smaller computer with a separate multisync screen, but to each his
own.
I don't believe any Mac ever matched the ease of use and
sophistication of the 630 with its multitude of dedicated
expansion slots and DOS daughtercard. If you really want the Mac
experience on the cheap, you can't beat it.
Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.
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for the Quadra using a full 68040 CPU vs. the less
costly, FPU-challenged 68LC040 in the other models, these were
essentially the same computer - a Q605 with room for a CD-ROM
drive.
