[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in defence of the Mac Plus: > The Macintosh Plus is definitly not a Road Apple: > > It was: > * first Apple Computer with SCSI. > * first Apple Computer with upgradeable RAM > > In 1990/91 when Classic and classic II came out, both were crippled: > No expansion, no ethernet, limited memory, b/w. Windows was close at > hand and PC's were getting faster. -> Road Apples
That's the thing: the Classic is really Apple's replacement for the Plus, and has very little to do with the SE FDHD; if anything, it's best to view the simultaneous phasing out of the SE FDHD as a coincidence, rather than a sensible Apple marketing decision. *That* is the act of revisionism I'm advocating here. The objections you gave to the Classic apply equally to the Plus, and in fact the Classic does do some things better. For example, the SWIM chip, the larger ROM chip (*) and the standard configuration being boosted from 1M to 2M (surely noone had to buy that weird memory board separately?). (*) Of the 512K ROM chip, just over 128K was used up to provide a slight superset of the contents of the Plus ROM. That left almost 384K for the ROM disk. The Classic would have been much better if Apple had designed it from the starting point of the SE, rather than the Plus. It wouldn't have cost much to add a SE bus to the Classic: unlike NuBus, it's only buffered wires leading from the CPU to the connector. That would have been two of your four objections gone at a stroke. As for it having one-bit colour and a ROM that limited the computer to 4M of RAM, a nostalgia freak like me is actually rather pleased that Apple did so little that could have broken compatibility. This was the affordable version of the computer that I had coveted ever since my dad took me into work and let me play on his boss's Mac 512. I'm unsure as to whether it would have broken anything to stick a 16MHz 68000 into the putative replacement for the SE FDHD, as someone suggested elsewhere in this thread. If Mac games had their timings controlled by interrupts, rather than by how fast the CPU can run, then sure, why not? However, I have played the game Jetpac on a Sinclair Spectrum (a leisurely affair, at 50Hz interrupt frequency) and on an Acorn BBC (a hectic blast, at 100Hz). The Classic 2, since you mention it, is a continuation of the same flawed development path (Plus to Classic, not SE to Classic). It had nothing to do with the superior but expensive SE/30 (which again, by a pure coincidence (!), was phased out at the same time as the launch of the Classic 2), and was just a replacement for the Classic - one that addressed the problems of limited speed and memory, but din't even think about the importance of LC-slot expandability or 32-bit operation. My biggest regret, as far as the history of the Mac is concerned, is that Apple didn't phase out the Plus about a year after introducing the SE, and allow the SE to drop in price and become the low-cost, entry-level all-in-one Mac (that we know and love so well from later years in the form of the revision A iMac - a design classic, just like the original Plus was.) We then wouldn't have hundreds of orphaned Pluses floating around on ebay, without keyboards, mice or boot disks. We'd have a load of SE FDHD machines, for which it is easy to buy a ADB keyboard and mouse, and to download software with a PC onto 1.4M floppies. -- Compact Macs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/>. Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Compact Macs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/compact.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:compact.macs@mail.maclaunch.com> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/compact.macs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
