Macintosh II: The Mac's Major 80s Evolution

hey everyone it's colin how's it going apple's macintosh debuted in 1984 as a cute compact all-in-one computer but one that also lacked expandability in just a few years though the company abruptly changed and what came next set a new tone for the platform [Music] [Music] by 1987 the mac needed to evolve it had been positioned since its launch as a computer useful for business functions but its lack of expandability limited its growth to reach a wider market it needed to offer increased performance larger displays and the option for color and so that's exactly what was delivered with the macintosh ii the most obvious change is that it embraced the modular desktop form factor that the rest of the computer industry had been offering for some time buyers could connect the monitor of their choice and for the first time on the mac with the right video card it could support color output but there were many changes under the hood as well the machine offered two built-in 800k floppy drives and was one of the first macs to include an internal scuzzy hard drive as an option this particular machine appears to have had its drive replaced at some point given its sticker indicating 1990 but the capacity of 40 megabytes is period accurate to when the machine shipped the mach 2 saw a solid step up in performance thanks to its use of a 16 megahertz motorola 68020 cpu the mac line up to that point had relied on an 8 megahertz 68 000. improving performance further was an included floating point co-processor along with eight ram slots supporting at least initially up to eight megabytes of ram what was most exciting to some though was the inclusion of expansion slots apple didn't skimp here either offering six new bus connectors on the motherboard nubus is often thought of as a proprietary mac technology given that no other mainstream computers used it but it was actually developed by mit later western digital and texas instruments extended it for use in their own computer platforms and it was ratified as the ieee 1196 standard in 1987. complying with a standard would make it easier for manufacturers to make cards for the mac the first new bus card every mac 2 owner got was a video card because the machine didn't otherwise have one built in the most common option supported up to 256 colors at a resolution of 640 640x480 but in short order third parties started offering their own higher end cards early mac 2s had an interesting bug when it came to those slots though high-end cards that had more than one megabyte of on-board memory couldn't be recognized correctly due to a problem with the computer's rom the upside is that at the time only one such card existed a ram disk from national semiconductor and apple was quick to fix the problem and offer replacement roms for affected customers a small but impactful change was how keyboards and mice connected the mac 2 used the new apple desktop bus protocol for input devices adb had actually made its debut in 1986 with the apple 2gs but all new macs going forward would use it as well it allowed for daisy-chaining keyboards mice and other devices like trackballs and graphics tablets and ended up on every mac until 1999. the machine also introduced the concept of soft power to the platform instead of needing to flip a physical switch to turn the computer on and off one could simply press a power key on the keyboard [Music] that new interface required new keyboards and mice of course and apple introduced them with the mac 2 as well the adb mouse was slimmer and sleeker than the serial base mice previous max used and now there were two adb keyboards to choose from both included numeric keypads but the larger apple extended keyboard was full sized and solidly built it and its second revision used alp's mechanical key switches which provide a nice tactile but not overly clicky typing experience these extended models are actually fairly sought after by keyboard enthusiasts today who can through the use of adapters put them to use on modern systems of course a mac 2 setup wouldn't be complete without a monitor and apple debuted two models alongside it one was a grayscale 12-inch display but the other had a 13-inch color screen and that's what the majority of owners went with it featured a resolution of 640x480 which was a nice improvement from the all-in-one max 512 by 342 reviewers raved about its sharpness and color rendition which was likely thanks to its use of a sony trinitron crt the mac 2 wasn't the only new machine apple introduced in 1987 though the company was still interested in producing compact max and launched the mac se alongside it se stood for system expansion and like its larger sibling it included a card slot though just one due to its cramped internals it also offered the option of an internal hard drive though it stuck with the 68000 processor reportedly both machines had been developed partly in secret not for fear of the competition but rather because of steve jobs he hated the idea of expandability on the mac and would have killed the projects if he had found out about them it's likely that the machines only ever saw the light a day because jobs was pushed out of apple in 1985 the mac 2's goal was to expand the platform's reach in business while the machine had its work cut out for it in the face of ibm's pc and clone systems the mac 2 was somewhat successful not only would it provide a major boost for the graphic design and desktop publishing industry that had fallen in love with the mac but other companies also started to support it like silicon beach software's super 3d in july of 1987 and autodesk's autocad software in 1988 the machine was also appealing to universities for research purposes because apple promised a version of the unix operating system but for various reasons that never really fulfilled its potential still the mach 2 was a gargantuan leap for the platform one that spawned two direct successors in 1989 apple released the 2x which bumped the cpu up to a 16 megahertz 68030 and upgraded the floppy drive to one that supported high density discs but that machine paled in comparison to the final one that used the mac 2 case design the 2fx from 1990 apple went all out with it using a 40 megahertz 68030 processor and bumping the maximum ram up to an insane at the time 128 megabytes it was an incredibly fast machine but of course that power also came at a price nearly ten thousand dollars u.s for one with four megabytes of ram and an 80 megabyte hard drive at its launch in early 1987 the original mac 2 wasn't nearly that expensive but still wasn't cheap either a bit over five thousand dollars that put it squarely in the professional market very few would buy one for personal use so the mac se ended up being a far bigger seller at 2 900 bucks these days while the mac 2 is an interesting machine retro collectors find it less desirable than some of its counterparts while there are some bragging rights to be had by owning such a battle station of a computer there are some practical trade-offs to be made those 800k floppy drives are a big limiting factor you can't just swap them for more convenient 1.44 megabyte drives as the machine's rom can't support them and with no external floppy drive connector hooking up something like a floppy mu gets a bit messy other than the typical concerns about failing electrolytic caps the mach 2 also needs to have working batteries on its motherboard yes plural one battery is for the system clock or pram and the other is for the soft power circuit if they're dead the machine won't boot and on some motherboard revisions they're soldered in place and finally they're simply the issue of size these are big heavy and somewhat awkward to store a slightly newer machine like a mac 2cx or 2ci is about half the size but performs even better and still has plenty of late 80s retro mac appeal still though the mac 2 was a groundbreaking machine for its time and showed that apple was serious about the business market and while over the long term the company found only mixed success in that regard the machine pioneered a few technologies that found their way into new macs for over a decade and perhaps more importantly it signaled that apple was finally ready for the mac to evolve beyond cute compact machines and into a platform all its own if you like the video i'd appreciate a thumbs up and be sure to subscribe you can follow me on social media at thisdoesnotcomp and as always thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: This Does Not Compute

Views: 101,026

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Id: exhKK7NCWzw

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Fri May 13 2022