On Sat, May 08, 2010 at 07:43:04PM +0200, Keith J. Schultz wrote:
Hi Marcello,
read your own post!
the fact was 128kb and VM! not RAM!
regards Keith
Dear lord, there's so much misinformation on this thread, it verges on being a parody! As a Mac user of many years, and having personally worked with all of the below but the 128 kB Mac, I can assure you that: a) The first Macintosh had 128 kB of RAM, an 8 MHz 68000 processor, most definitely did not have virtual memory, and wasn't upgradable without a soldering iron. b) The Mac Plus, which was introduced in 1986 had nice additions like a SCSI port, bigger ROMs and 1 MB of RAM which could be upgraded to 4 MB RAM using 30 pin SIMMs. The OS and memory map precluded the use of more than 4 MB RAM. It also used an 8 MHz 68000, and therefore was incapable of virtual memory. c) The SE from 1987 was very similar to the Plus in terms of specs. It also had an 8 MHz 68000, could take up to 4 MB of 30 pin SIMMs but had a proprietary expansion slot and ADB for keyboard and mouse. I think there were a couple of third party 68020 upgrade boards for the SE, but these definitely weren't common. Since they would have been Apple System 5 or 6 era, they would have predated Apple's introduction of virtual memory support in System 7 in 1991. d) The SE/30, which is possibly the machine Greg was thinking of, was released in 1989, had a 16 MHz 68030 with a built-in MMU, an FPU, and could (with upgraded ROMs and dense SIMMs) use up to 128 MB of RAM (8 MB with the original ROMs). There were a large number of expansion cards produced for it, including powerful (for the time) graphics cards; ethernet cards; and CPU & FPU upgrades. Apple's System 7 and 8, A/UX, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux all supported virtual memory on the SE/30, and due to its relative power and compact size, it was often used as a low end server in universities and the like. They were also popular in graphics design and publishing circles, and many regard them as one of Apple's nicest 68k Macs. Cheers, Brian.