The
Macintosh LC (meaning
low-cost color) was
Apple ComputerApple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and manufactures consumer electronics and computer software products. The company's best-known hardware products include Macintosh computers, the iPod and the iPhone...
's product family of low-end consumer Macintosh personal computers in the early 1990s. The original Macintosh LC was released in 1990 and was the first affordable color-capable Macintosh. Due to its affordability and
Apple II compatibilityThe Apple IIe Card is, in a sense, the smallest AppleII "computer" ever designed, though as a compatibility card it is technically not considered anextension of the Apple II line...
the LC was adopted primarily in the education and home markets. Together with the
Mac IIsiThe Macintosh IIsi was a compact three-box desktop unit, effectively a cut-down Macintosh IIci in a smaller case , made cheaper by the redesign of the motherboard and the deletion of all but one of the expansion card slots...
, it introduced built-in audio input on the Mac.
The
Macintosh LC (meaning
low-cost color) was
Apple ComputerApple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and manufactures consumer electronics and computer software products. The company's best-known hardware products include Macintosh computers, the iPod and the iPhone...
's product family of low-end consumer Macintosh personal computers in the early 1990s. The original Macintosh LC was released in 1990 and was the first affordable color-capable Macintosh. Due to its affordability and
Apple II compatibilityThe Apple IIe Card is, in a sense, the smallest AppleII "computer" ever designed, though as a compatibility card it is technically not considered anextension of the Apple II line...
the LC was adopted primarily in the education and home markets. Together with the
Mac IIsiThe Macintosh IIsi was a compact three-box desktop unit, effectively a cut-down Macintosh IIci in a smaller case , made cheaper by the redesign of the motherboard and the deletion of all but one of the expansion card slots...
, it introduced built-in audio input on the Mac. The "LC" name was subsequently used for a line of low-end Macintosh computers for several years and spanned the
68kThe Motorola 680x0/m68k/68k/68K is a family of 32-bit CISC microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and were the primary competitors of Intel's x86 microprocessors. Although no modern desktop computers are based on the 68k,...
to
PowerPCPowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded and high-performance processors...
transition.
History
Macintosh computers, especially the color Macs starting with the
Macintosh IIThe Apple Macintosh II was the first personal computer model of the Macintosh II series in the Apple Macintosh line....
in 1987, had always been rather expensive computers with large profit margins. The original LC was an attempt at an affordable, modular, color-capable Macintosh. Compared with earlier Macs, Apple cut some corners on performance and features in order to keep the price down.
The Mac LC sold well, and in 1991 was replaced by the
LC II, which replaced the LC's 68020 processor with a 68030. It retained the original LC's 16-bit system bus however, making its performance roughly the same as the earlier model. The main benefit of the 030 processor was the ability to use
System 7System 7 is the name of a Macintosh operating system introduced in 1991.System 7 may also refer to:* System 7 , a British dance/ambient band* System 7 , 1991 album* IBM System/7, a 1970s computer system...
's
virtual memoryVirtual memory is a computer system technique which gives an application program the impression that it has contiguous working memory , while in fact it may be physically fragmented and may even overflow on to disk storage. Systems that use this technique make programming of large applications...
feature. In spite of this, the LC II sold even better than the LC and this spawned a whole series of LC models, most of which later were sold both with the LC name to the education world and to consumers via traditional Apple dealers, and as
PerformaThe Macintosh Performa series was Apple Computer's consumer product family of Apple Macintosh personal computers from 1992 until 1997, when the introduction of the Power Macintosh 5x00 series ended this product line...
to the consumer market via electronics stores, and department stores such as Sears. (For example, the
LC 475 was also known as the
Performa 475.) The last official "LC" was the Power Macintosh 5200/75 LC, which was released in 1995 and discontinued in 1996. The
LC 580 was notable for being the last desktop Motorola 68k-based Macintosh of any kind. All subsequent Macintoshes used PowerPC processors and, later, Intel processors.
Features
Notably, the LC used a very small "pizza box" case with no
NuBusNuBus is a 32-bit parallel computer bus, originally developed at MIT as a part of the NuMachine workstation project. The first complete implementation of the NuBus and the NuMachine was done by Western Digital for their NuMachine, and for the Lisp Machines Inc. LMI-Lambda. The NuBus was later...
slots, had a 16 MHz 68020 microprocessor and no floating-point
coprocessorA coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor . Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, Savitsky-Golay derivation, or encryption. By offloading processor-intensive...
running on a 16-bit data bus (a major bottleneck as the 68020 was a 32-bit CPU), a limit of 10MB RAM and shipped with only 256KB of VRAM, therefore only supporting a display resolution of 512x384 pixels at 8-bit color on Apple's 12" RGB monitor. The VRAM was upgradeable to 512KB though, supporting a display resolution of 512x384 pixels at 16-bit color or, on a VGA-compatible display, 640x480 pixels at 8-bit color. Nevertheless, most LCs were purchased with an Apple 12" RGB monitor with a fixed resolution of 512x384 pixels. Many software programs that had been designed for other color Macs assumed that the minimum screen size was 640x480 pixels. As a result, some programs simply would not function correctly on the LC, and for several years software developers had to add support for this smaller screen resolution in order to guarantee that their software would run on LCs. Overall, general performance of the machine was disappointing due to the crippling data bus bottleneck, making it run far slower than it should have been (e.g. the same 16 MHz 68020 based Macintosh II from 1987 ran almost twice as fast as the Macintosh LC). One difference between the Mac II and the Mac LC is the latter had no socket for a 68851 MMU, therefore it could not take advantage of
System 7System 7 is the name of a Macintosh operating system introduced in 1991.System 7 may also refer to:* System 7 , a British dance/ambient band* System 7 , 1991 album* IBM System/7, a 1970s computer system...
's virtual memory features. The successor model LC II's 68030 has a built-in MMU. The CPU was the only major change to the LC II; the bus remained 16 bits. A full 32-bit bus had to wait for the
LC III successor a year later.
Apple IIe Replacement
Despite the LC's lack of NuBus slots, it did come with a
Processor Direct SlotProcessor Direct Slot or PDS, was a solution introduced by Apple Computer, in several of their Macintosh models, to providing a limited measure of hardware expandibility, without going to the expense of providing full-fledged bus expansion slots.Typically, a machine would feature multiple...
(PDS). This was primarily intended for the
Apple IIe CardThe Apple IIe Card is, in a sense, the smallest AppleII "computer" ever designed, though as a compatibility card it is technically not considered anextension of the Apple II line...
, which was offered with education models of the LCs. The card allowed the LC to emulate an
Apple IIeThe Apple IIe is the third model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer. The e in the name stands for enhanced, referring to the fact that several popular features were now built-in that were only available as upgrades and add-ons in earlier models...
. The combination of the low-cost color Macintosh and Apple IIe compatibility was intended to encourage the education market's transition from Apple II models to Macintoshes. Despite the LC's minimal video specs with a 12" monitor, any LC that supports the card can be switched into 560x384 resolution for better compatibility with the IIe's 280x192 High-Resolution graphics (essentially doubled).
Other cards, such as CPU accelerators,
ethernetEthernet is a family of frame-based computer networking technologies for local area networks . The name comes from the physical concept of the ether...
and video cards were also made available for the LC's PDS slot.
"Pizza boxes"
| Model |
Processor |
Bundled Mac OS |
Maximum Mac OS |
Hard disk |
RAM |
Expansion |
Video RAM |
Equivalent |
| LC |
16 MHz 68020 |
6.0.6/6.0.7 |
7.5.5 |
40-80 MB |
2 MB (max 10 MB) |
LC PDS |
256 KB (max 512 KB) |
N/A |
| LC II |
16 MHz 68030 |
7.0.1 |
7.6.1 |
Performa 400-430 |
| LC III |
25 MHz 68030 |
7.1 |
80-160 MB |
4 MB (max 36 MB) |
LC III PDS |
512 KB (max 768 KB) |
Performa 450 |
| LC III+ |
33 MHz 68030 |
Performa 460-467 |
| LC 475 |
25 MHz 68LC040 |
8.1 |
80-250 MB |
4 MB (max 136 MB) |
0.5-1 MB |
Quadra 605 |
All-in-one
| Model |
Processor |
Bundled Mac OS |
Maximum Mac OS |
Hard disk |
RAM |
Expansion |
Video RAM |
Equivalent |
| LC 520 |
25 MHz 68030 |
7.1 |
7.6.1 |
80-160 MB |
4 MB (max 36 MB) |
LC PDS |
512-768 KB |
Performa 520 |
| LC 550 |
33 MHz 68030 |
Performa 550-560 |
| LC 575 |
33 MHz 68LC040 |
7.1.1 |
8.1 |
160-320 MB |
4 MB (max 68 MB) |
LC PDS/Comm slot |
0.5-1 MB |
Performa 575-578 |
| LC 580 |
33 MHz 68LC040 |
7.5 |
500 MB |
4 MB (max 52 MB) |
LC PDS/Comm slot/Video |
1 MB |
Performa 580CD-588CD |
Unofficial LCs
| Model |
Processor |
Bundled Mac OS |
Maximum Mac OS |
Hard disk |
RAM |
Expansion |
Video RAM |
Equivalent |
| Color Classic |
16 MHz 68030 |
7.1 |
7.6.1 |
40-160 MB |
4 MB (max 10 MB) |
LC PDS |
256-512 KB |
Performa 250 |
| Color Classic II |
33 MHz 68030 |
80-160 MB |
4 MB (max 36 MB) |
512 KB |
Performa 275 |
| TV |
32 MHz 68030 |
160 MB |
4 MB (max 8 MB) |
LC PDS* |
N/A |
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- *filled with custom TV tuner card.
Standard desktop
| Model |
Processor |
Bundled Mac OS |
Maximum Mac OS |
Hard disk |
RAM |
Expansion |
Video RAM |
Equivalent |
| LC 630 |
33 MHz 68LC040 |
7.1.2 Pro |
8.1 |
250-500 MB |
4 MB (max 36 MB) |
LC PDS/Comm/Video |
1 MB |
Performa 630-640CD |
Specifications
680x0 Models
| Component |
LC |
LC II |
Color Classic† |
LC III |
LC 520† |
Color Classic II† |
LC 475 |
Macintosh TV† |
LC III+ |
LC 550† |
LC 575† |
LC 630 |
LC 580 |
| Released/Discontinued |
October, 1990/ March, 1992 |
March, 1992/ March, 1993 |
February, 1993/ May, 1994 |
February, 1993/ February, 1994 |
June, 1993/ February, 1994 |
October, 1993/ February, 1994 |
October, 1993/ May, 1995 |
October, 1993/ February, 1994 |
October, 1993/ February, 1994 |
February, 1994/ March, 1995 |
February, 1994/ April, 1995 |
July, 1994/ October, 1995 |
April, 1995/ April, 1996 |
Processor, Speed
(Bus speed): |
Motorola 68020 The Motorola 68020 is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1984. It is the successor to the Motorola 68010 and is succeeded by the Motorola 68030.- Description :...
, 16 MHz (16 MHz) |
Motorola 68030 The Motorola 68030 is a 32-bit microprocessor in Motorola's 68000 family. Released in 1987, the 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general Motorola naming, this CPU is often referred to as the 030 .The 68030 features an on-chip...
, 16 MHz (16 MHz) |
Motorola 68030 The Motorola 68030 is a 32-bit microprocessor in Motorola's 68000 family. Released in 1987, the 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general Motorola naming, this CPU is often referred to as the 030 .The 68030 features an on-chip...
, 16 MHz (16 MHz) |
Motorola 68030 The Motorola 68030 is a 32-bit microprocessor in Motorola's 68000 family. Released in 1987, the 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general Motorola naming, this CPU is often referred to as the 030 .The 68030 features an on-chip...
, 25 MHz (25 MHz) |
Motorola 68030 The Motorola 68030 is a 32-bit microprocessor in Motorola's 68000 family. Released in 1987, the 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general Motorola naming, this CPU is often referred to as the 030 .The 68030 features an on-chip...
, 25 MHz (25 MHz) |
Motorola 68030 The Motorola 68030 is a 32-bit microprocessor in Motorola's 68000 family. Released in 1987, the 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general Motorola naming, this CPU is often referred to as the 030 .The 68030 features an on-chip...
, 33 MHz (33 MHz) |
Motorola 68040The Motorola 68040 is a microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060 In keeping with general Motorola naming, the 68040 is often referred to as simply the 040...
, 25 MHz (25 MHz) |
Motorola 68030 The Motorola 68030 is a 32-bit microprocessor in Motorola's 68000 family. Released in 1987, the 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general Motorola naming, this CPU is often referred to as the 030 .The 68030 features an on-chip...
, 32 MHz (16 MHz) |
Motorola 68030 The Motorola 68030 is a 32-bit microprocessor in Motorola's 68000 family. Released in 1987, the 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general Motorola naming, this CPU is often referred to as the 030 .The 68030 features an on-chip...
, 33 MHz (33 MHz) |
Motorola 68030 The Motorola 68030 is a 32-bit microprocessor in Motorola's 68000 family. Released in 1987, the 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general Motorola naming, this CPU is often referred to as the 030 .The 68030 features an on-chip...
, 25 MHz (25 MHz) |
Motorola 68040The Motorola 68040 is a microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060 In keeping with general Motorola naming, the 68040 is often referred to as simply the 040...
, 33 MHz (33 MHz) |
Motorola 68040The Motorola 68040 is a microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060 In keeping with general Motorola naming, the 68040 is often referred to as simply the 040...
, 33 MHz (33 MHz) |
Motorola 68040The Motorola 68040 is a microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060 In keeping with general Motorola naming, the 68040 is often referred to as simply the 040...
, 33 MHz (33 MHz) |
†
indicates interchangeable logicboards
External links