The Macintosh Classic can
best be described as a Macintosh SE without the expansion slot, but at
half the price. It replaced both the Mac Plus and the Mac SE in the
product line. There were two versions of
the Classic, a $999.00 version that had only a single floppy drive and
1MB of built in RAM, and a $1499.00 version that included a 40MB hard
drive and 2MB of RAM standard and are both capable of being expanded to
4MB internally. The cheaper Mac was intended to go head to head with the
just released IBM PS/1. The Mac Classic came with a 1.4MB Super Drive
that was able to read and write MS-DOS, OS/2, and Apple II ProDOS
disks.
The Classic has six
ports along the bottom of its case in the rear. From left to right they
are a 4 pin mini-DIN plug for connecting up to 3 input devices (such as
the keyboard, mouse, and light pen), a19 pin female D-plug for
connecting an external floppy drive, a 25 pin female D-plug for
connecting up to 7 SCSI devices ( such as hard drives, CD ROMS, or
scanners), an 8 pin mini-DIN plug for connecting a printer, another 8
pin mini-DIN plug for connecting a MODEM, and finally a mini stereo jack
for earphones.
As with all the
earlier models of the Macintosh, the Classic comes with a built in 9 inch
monochrome monitor capable of producing a very sharp image of 512 pixels
by 342 pixels.
This Mac
Classic was
added to the museum on August 15, 1999. It was purchased at a local flea
market along with an Image Writer II printer and complete
documentation. This was my first Mac and I was so impressed with
it that I decided to add the Macintosh line to my museum even though
they are not really 8-bit machines.
