The Power Macintosh, later Power Mac, is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, Inc as the core of the Macintosh brand from March 1994 until August 2006.
The Power Macintosh 8500 is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from August 1995 to February 1997. Billed as a high-end graphics computer, the Power Macintosh 8500 was initially released with a 120 MHz PowerPC 604, and unlike earlier Power Macintosh machines, the CPU was mounted on an upgradeable daughtercard. Though slower than the 132 MHz Power Macintosh 9500, the first-generation 8500 featured several audio and video in/out ports not found in the 9500. In fact, the 8500 incorporated near-broadcast quality (640×480) A/V input and output and was the first personal computer to do so, but no hard drive manufactured in 1997 could sustain the 18 MB/s data rate required to capture video at that resolution. Later, special "AV" hard drives were made available that could delay thermal recalibration until after a write operation had completed. With special care to minimize fragmentation, these drives were able to keep up with the 8500's video circuitry.
The Power Macintosh G3 is a series of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from November 1997 to August 1999. It represented Apple's first step towards eliminating redundancy and complexity in the product line by replacing eight Power Macintosh models with three: Desktop and Mini Tower models for professional and home use, and an All-In-One model for education. The introduction of the Desktop and Mini Tower models coincided with Apple starting to sell build-to-order Macs directly from its web site in an online store, which was unusual for the time as Dell was the only major computer manufacturer doing this. Apple's move to build-to-order sales of the Power Macintosh G3 also coincided with the acquisition of Power Computing Corporation, which had been providing telephone sales of Macintosh clones for more than two years.
The Power Macintosh 7100 is a personal computer that was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from March 1994 to January 1996. It is the mid-range machine of the first generation of Power Macintosh line, between the Power Macintosh 6100 and the 8100. The 7100 re-used the Macintosh IIvx case with few changes. The initial version of the 7100 was powered by a 66 MHz PowerPC 601, and an 80 MHz version replaced it in January 1995. The 7100 was succeeded in August 1995 by two new models, the Power Macintosh 7200 and the Power Macintosh 7500, though sales of the 7100 continued into early 1996.
The Power Mac G4 is a series of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from 1999 to 2004 as part of the Power Macintosh line. Built around the PowerPC G4 series of microprocessors, the Power Mac G4 was marketed by Apple as the first "personal supercomputers", reaching speeds of 4 to 20 gigaFLOPS. This was the first existing Macintosh product to be officially shortened as "Mac", and is the last Mac able to boot into classic Mac OS.
A processor direct slot (PDS) is a slot incorporated into many older Macintosh models that allowed direct access to the signal pins of a CPU, similar to the functionality of a local bus in PCs. This would result in much higher speeds than having to go through a bus layer, such as NuBus, which typically ran at a slower 10 MHz speed.
The Power Macintosh 6100 is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from March 1994 to March 1996. It is the first computer from Apple to use the new PowerPC processor created by IBM and Motorola. The low-profile ("pizza-box") case was inherited from the Centris/Quadra 610 and 660AV models, and replaced the Macintosh Quadra series that used the Motorola 68040 processor, Apple's previous high-end workstation line.
The Power Macintosh 7500 is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from August 1995 to May 1996. The 7500 was introduced alongside the Power Macintosh 7200 and 8500 at the 1995 MacWorld Expo in Boston. Apple referred to these machines collectively as the "Power Surge" line, communicating that these machines offered a significant speed improvement over its predecessors. The 7500 introduced a new case design, later dubbed "Outrigger" by Mac enthusiasts. There were two derivative models: the Power Macintosh 7600, identical to the 7500 except for the CPU which was a PowerPC 604 or 604e processor instead of the 7500's 601; and the Power Macintosh 7300, identical to the 7600 but without the video inputs found in both the 7500 and 7600.
The Power Macintosh 7600 is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from April 1996 to November 1997. It is identical to the Power Macintosh 7500, but with a PowerPC 604 CPU. Three models were available with 120 MHz, 132 MHz and 200 MHz processors. Like the 7500, it includes advanced Audio-Video ports including RCA audio in and out, S-Video in, composite video in and standard Apple video ports. The 7600 features the easy-access "outrigger" desktop case first introduced with the Power Macintosh 7500. It was eventually replaced by the Power Macintosh 7300, one of the very few times that Apple updated a computer but gave it a lower model number - the reason is that the 7300 was a joint replacement for the 7600 and the Power Macintosh 7200.
The Apple Network Server (ANS) was a line of PowerPC-based server computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from February 1996 to April 1997. It was codenamed "Shiner" and originally consisted of two models, the Network Server 500/132 and the Network Server 700/150, which got a companion model, the Network Server 700/200 with a faster CPU in November 1996.
The Power Macintosh 9500 is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from June 1995 to February 1997. It is powered by a PowerPC 604 processor, a second-generation PowerPC chip which is faster than the PowerPC 601 chip used in the Power Macintosh 8100. The 180MP and 200 MHz models, introduced August 1996, use the enhanced PowerPC 604e processor.
The Power Macintosh 4400 is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from November 1996 to February 1998. It differs from prior desktop Macintosh models in that it was built with industry-standard components such as an IDE hard drive and an ATX-like power supply.
The Macintosh Quadra 800 is a personal computer that is a part of Apple Computer's Quadra series of Macintosh computers.
The Power Macintosh 6200 is a series of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from May 1995 to July 1997. The 6200 is the PowerPC-based replacement for the Quadra 630, with the same form factor and price range. In early 1997, the rather different Power Macintosh 6300/160 / Performa 6360 based on the Power Macintosh 6400 was introduced. The whole line was discontinued when the desktop model of the Power Macintosh G3 was released.
The Power Macintosh 7300 is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from February 1997 to November 1997. It was introduced with 166, 180 and 200 MHz CPUs in February 1997 alongside the Power Macintosh 8600 and 9600. The 7300 replaced both the Power Macintosh 7200 and 7600, replacing the only remaining first-generation PowerPC system in Apple's lineup. MacUser Magazine's review says the 7300 "offers the most satisfying improvement" of the new machines introduced in early 1997 due to a significant performance jump from its predecessors, as well as offering 50% faster CD-ROM and hard disk space. The 7300 was replaced by the Power Macintosh G3 desktop model in November 1997. Workgroup Server 7350 continued to be sold until March 1998 when the Macintosh Server G3 was introduced.
The Power Macintosh 9600 is a personal computer that is a part of Apple Computer's Power Macintosh series of Macintosh computers. It was introduced in February 1997 alongside the Power Macintosh 7300 and 8600, and replaced the Power Macintosh 9500 as Apple's flagship desktop computer.
The Power Macintosh 5200 LC and Power Macintosh 5300 LC were a line of personal computers that are a part of Apple Computer's Power Macintosh, LC, and Performa families of Macintosh computers. When sold to the consumer market, the machines were marketed as variations of Performa 5200 and Performa 5300.
The Power Macintosh 5260 is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from April 1996 to March 1997. It is a replacement for the Power Macintosh 5200 LC, retaining its all-in-one form factor while replacing its PowerPC 603 CPU with the newer and faster PowerPC 603e, and dropping the "LC" brand. As was standard practice at the time for Apple, the 5260 was re-branded as a number of Performa models and sold to consumer markets, while the 5260 itself was primarily sold to the North American education market as a Power Macintosh.
A compatibility card is an expansion card for computers that allows it to have hardware emulation with another device. While compatibility cards date back at least to the Apple II family, the majority of them were made for 16-bit computers, often to maintain compatibility with the IBM PC. The most popular of these were for Macintosh systems that allowed them to emulate Windows PCs via NuBus or PCI; Apple had released several such cards themselves.
The Power Macintosh 6400 is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from August 1996 to August 1997. It is the only Macintosh mini-tower system to be branded as a Performa, and alongside the Performa 6360 was the last new Performa-branded model introduced by Apple.
