Quoting someone - I can't see who wrote this: > I hate to even get into this, in part because I can't really even remember > why this thread started ...
It was me, trying to start up an interesting discussion... > BUT, first let's re-visit what a "Road Apple" is > (I'm assuming LEM coined this term and if not, is certainly the defacto > guardian of it's use) : http://lowendmac.com/roadapples/index.shtml To quote that page: $ Apple has produced a few computers that could have provided more $ performance -- and should have, based on the CPU they used. $ However, they were hobbled by other design considerations: $ keeping costs down. $ $ These are Apple's more compromised hardware designs. For the most $ part, they're not really bad -- simply designs unable to provide $ all the performance they should have. > If this is to be the universal definition of a "Road Apple" then the Plus is > definitely NOT one. Whether Apple continued making it past the innovation > threshold of technological implementation is moot. Actually, that's the main thrust of my argument. Technologically, Apple had no excuse for not phasing out the Plus in 1988 and allowing the SE, perhaps with a suitable price drop, to become their entry-level machine. Indeed, at the time the SE came out (for the April 1987 edition), MacUser magazine bemoaned the lack of expansion options and upgrade paths for Plus owners, and commented that noone would buy a Plus in favour of a SE unless the Plus fell to Amiga-like price levels. > The Plus, like most Macs, > exceeded the limitations imposed by theory or design based on the > revolutionary features at the time of its introduction. [...] > and in fact was able to handle advances well beyond it's intended > usefulness (much to Apple's chagrin). You mean the ability to run System 7 on a memory-expanded Mac with an external hard disk? Getting 7.5.5 to run on a Plus is an interesting exercise (but not much more, because it's so slow, and the system software uses up most of the available 4M RAM by itself.) > Which brings us to the Classic. The only Mac ever to be sold for > less than $1000 to that time. Was it a "Road Apple" in spite of > the fact it had no real improvements over the Plus? You betcha. > But NOT because of that. Except for one thing, I would otherwise > say it is not a "Road Apple": the Classic was an updated Plus > with and internal hard drive, ADB ports and a quicker, modern > SCSI bus (nothing revolutionary, but improvements none-the-less). I'm entirely in agreement with you over those points. > While it lacked the expansion slot of the SE, (only the 68000 SE > used that slot and Apple wanted to get rid of it in favor of a > standardized expansion slot, so continuing it in the Classic > would not have made sense and engineering something else would > have raised the cost), Interesting. Are you saying that Apple's decision to base the Classic more on the design of the Plus than the SE was a deliberate engineering decision, not just an oversight governed by Marketing's desire to create something cheap? > The fact is the Classic was not crippled by hardware in any way -- > it ran as well as the Plus and in fact better. Did it lack anything > over the SE, sure, but it was not intentionally crippled based on > what it might otherwise be able to do -- they simply did not expand > it. Other people are arguing that the Classic should have contained a few more bells and whistles. A faster 68000, or a version of the ROM that allowed the insertion of 8M of RAM, would have been nice. > BUT it was crippled, by software. While the Plus with its maximum > 4MB RAM could run the earliest 1.0 system software to the most > current in 1990 (and indeed all the way up to 7.5.5), allowing you > to maximize that tiny amount of RAM based on your application needs, > the Classic forced you to run system 6.0.7 or higher. I've just had a look at http://www.lowendmac.com/compact/guide.html and http://www.lowendmac.com/ii/guide.html -- it shows rather nicely that as the Gestalt ID increased by one from the IIx up to the LC and Classic, the minimum system requirements go up by one sub-sub-step. This implies that the differences between the various version of System 6 are just patches to support the latest ROMs, as they came out. Apple still provide 6.0.5 for the IIfx - I'm not sure whether you require this version to use the extra hardware features of that machine, or whether 6.0.8 would do just as well. The requirement that you use a certain minimum version of the system is imposed by the system software itself, not the Macintosh ROMs. For instance, Systems 1.1 and 2.0, which came out at a time when the only Macs in existence were the 128K/512K and the XL (Lisa 2), do nothing to check the Gestalt ID of the Mac they're booting. I have managed to boot a SE, a Classic and even a SE/30 with a 400K System 1.1 boot disk; I haven't yet tried this on a IIci, but I'm going to, the next time I get a chance. The same is also true of System 3.x; I haven't tried it with 4.x or 5.x yet, but since those systems predated the IIx, it wouldn't surprise me if it's true for them as well. The question is, would you want to? Systems 1 and 2 provide no support for HFS, SCSI or 800K floppy disks; system 3.x provides no support for colour; systems 4.x and 5.x predate the "snd " resource type and support for superdrives. You can in fact still use them if you want to be seriously retro, but if you have at least 1M or 2M of RAM, there's absolutely no point. The memory requirements of different system versions, for just the system file, were about: System 1.1 64K System 3.2 128K System 6.0.7 512K System 7.0.x 1M System 7.1.x 2M System 7.5.x 4M What this means is, with a 68000 compact Mac (limited to 4M), there is no practical point in loading it with system 7.5 or 7.5.3; a decent application, like Word 5.1, will have no room left to run in. Since you get a minimum of 2M to play with in a Classic (Classics with 1M were never sold, to my knowledge), it's no skin off your nose to run System 6.0.7 on it. There's enough room, even if you want to run a RAM disk or MultiFinder; although if you want to run both at the same time, you'll need 4M, but that's true even with System 3.2 and Switcher on a Plus. It's only the peculiarity of hindsight that makes you think that System 7.1 is so superior to 6 that to run anything earlier is an affront to your dignity. System 7.0 might have been in the design stages when the Classic came out (another reason to give you no less than 2M), but the heavy memory requirements of 7.1 and 7.5.x were far in the future. > It was designed as a System 7 entree computer and that is a bad > thing for an 8MHz 68000 chip and 4MB RAM (The fact they had the > nerve to sell it with less than 4MB should have been actionable > under law). So there indeed is the single overwhelming criteria > for labeling the Classic a "Road Apple". That's like saying that a PowerMac G3 inhabits the nether world between OS 9 and OS X. The fact is that a G3/233 can run OS 8, is perfectly happy with OS 9, and if you want to run OS X 10.2 on it, you'd be better off buying a faster, more modern computer. I was going to make a point about the real road apple being the Classic 2 or Color Classic, for forcing you to run system 7.1 on a machine that retailed with just 2M of memory (leaving no room for applications, as I said above). Apple just about avoided this trap: the Classic 2 works with system 7.0.1, and the Color Classic came with 4M of RAM as standard. You may have an overly optimistic view of what is reasonable (as opposed to what is possible) with a RAM-upgraded ancient Mac. The Mac Plus can do a fair few things with 4M of RAM, but it's a real nuisance waiting 30 seconds for a 4M Plus to conduct its RAM test when switched on; removing half the memory or switching to a SE (that can conduct its memory test more quickly) has something to recommend it. -- Compact Macs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/>. 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