Apple Macintosh Classic II
Apple Macintosh Classic II
[Vin 203]
The Macintosh Classic II was Apple’s last monochrome compact Mac, pairing the familiar all-in-one 9-inch screen design with a faster 16 MHz Motorola 68030 processor in a lower-cost machine introduced on October 21, 1991. It is especially notable for bringing more modern Macintosh performance to the beloved compact form factor, serving as a practical bridge between the earliest compact Macs and the more capable Macintosh systems of the 1990’s.
- Manufacturer: Apple Computer Inc.
- Released: 1991
- Type: Personal Computer
- Cost at release: CAD ~$4,250 (adjusted for inflation)
- MIPS: 2-3 MIPS (millions of instructions per second)
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- CPU: Motorola 68030, 16 MHz
- RAM: 2 MB standard, expandable up to 10 MB
- ROM: 512 KB
- Display: 9-inch monochrome CRT, 512 × 342 pixel resolution
- Storage:
- 1.44 MB SuperDrive floppy disk (standard)
- Optional 40MB or 80MB SCSI hard disk drive
- Ports: serial ports, ADB, floppy port, SCSI
- Weight: ~7 kg
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- O/S: System 7.0.1 to 7.6.1
- Programming Languages: BASIC, Pascal, C, C++, HyperTalk, Lisp, and other classic Macintosh programming environments
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- Apple Computer introduced it in 1991 as the last black-and-white compact Macintosh, making it the final chapter of the original compact Mac design that began in 1984.
- It was also sold as the Performa 200, helping Apple push further into the home retail market.
- Although it looked like an older compact Mac, internally it was closer in design philosophy to the Macintosh LC family.
- It used a Motorola 68030, but its 16-bit data bus made it slower than the more famous SE/30, which is one of its best-known quirks among collectors.
- It was the last desktop Macintosh with an external floppy drive port, a small but notable historical “last.”
- Apple used internal codenames including Apollo and Montana.
- Its place in computing history is as the machine that closed out Apple’s monochrome compact Mac era just before the arrival of the Color Classic.
- In advertising and retail positioning, the Performa version was marketed as an approachable home computer, often bundled for family and first-time users rather than technical professionals.