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Macintosh Portable
Dan Knight - 1998.01.10
Second Class Macs are Apple's more compromised hardware designs. For the most part, they're not really bad - simply designs unable to work as well as they should have.
From a technological standpoint, the Mac Portable isn't a Road
Apple. If has an efficient 16 MHz 
68000 CPU, a crystal clear b&w
active matrix screen, and it was the first 68000-based Mac that could go
past 4 MB of RAM.
The Portable is a Limited Mac for three reasons.
- Size and weight: By this time, DOS laptops were well under 12 pounds. The Mac Portable was huge and heavy - over 16 pounds!
- Power system: Using a lead-acid battery (like a tiny car battery!), you could get up to 10 hours from a charge. But the Portable would not run without a charged battery - not even from the AC adapter (see the work around below).
- Hard drive: The Portable used a proprietary Conner hard drive, so you can't just plug in a new hard drive. To use a "regular" hard drive, you have to construct your own cable.
On the innovation side, the Portable introduced the trackball. On the performance side, it had twice the power of the SE and two-thirds that of the Mac II.
Not bad, just big with an oddball hard drive. 
Details
- introduced September 1989 at $6,500; discontinued February 1991
- requires System 6.0.4 to 7.5.5
- CPU: 16 MHz 68HC000
- performance: 2.0 (relative to SE)
- RAM: 1 MB, expandable to 9 MB using a special 30ns SRAM card (only one slot)
- display: 9.8" 1-bit 640 x 400 pixel
- 40 MB hard drive standard
- ADB: 1 port for keyboard and mouse
- serial: 2 DIN-8 RS-422 ports on back of computer
- SCSI: DB-25 connector on back of computer
- proprietary modem slot
Tip
Godwin <godwin@unixg.ubc.ca> says, "If the acid battery dies, one can bypass it and convert the Portable into a luggable. One needs 2 AC adapters - the original one and a 9V DC adapter. Take out the 9V DC battery and replace it with a 9V 1A power adapter. Then remove the battery and cover (there is a switch at the battery cover which we need to disable). Plug the two adapters in and viola! one of the sleekest Macs on anyone's desktop!"
Caution
- Battery becomes unusable if discharged below 5.4V; keep it charged!
For more details on the Mac Portable, click here.
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