Macintosh Quadra 700
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| Release date | October 21, 1991 |
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| Introductory price | US$6,000 (equivalent to $10,442 in 2015) |
| Discontinued | March 15, 1993 |
| Operating system | System 7.0.1-System 7.1.2, System 7.5-Mac OS 8.1, or with PowerPC upgrade, Mac OS 9.1 |
| CPU | Motorola 68040 @ 25 MHz |
| Memory | 4 MiB, expandable to 68 MiB (80 ns 30-pin SIMM) |
The Macintosh Quadra 700 was introduced along with the Quadra 900 in October 1991 as Apple's first computers to use the Motorola 68040 processor, as well as the first to feature built-in Ethernet networking as many Unix workstations did. This is one of Apple's first two minitowers, along with the Quadra 900 of the same date. The Quadra 700 case was the same form-factor as the popular Macintosh IIcx and Macintosh IIci models, allowing users to easily upgrade to the more powerful computer. Users sometimes placed the older case vertically in a minitower orientation and the Quadra 700 recognized this by having the Apple logo and model name printed in the vertical orientation. The IIcx and IIci were designed to allow their rubber feet moved to the side for vertical orientation as well.
The Quadra 700 could be upgraded to 68 megabytes of RAM, which with its 25 MHz processor made it a very useful computer for scientific or design work. It was also a prime candidate for processor upgrade when the PowerPC 601 accelerator cards came along in 1994. Like the IIci it had integrated graphics built into the system board but, unlike the earlier model, the 700 used dedicated VRAM for its video memory
The onboard video came with 512 kilobytes VRAM soldered to the motherboard, and supported resolutions up to 1152x870. The video memory was expandable to 2 megabytes via 6 256-kilobyte 100 nS VRAM SIMMs in each of VRAM SIMM expansion slots on the motherboard. Expanding the video memory to 2 megabytes allowed for 24-bit (Millions) color at resolutions up to 832x624.
The sound was 8-bit stereo. I/O was available with dual serial ports, an AAUI ethernet port, mic in, and a DB-25 SCSI connector. Expansion was available via two Nubus slots and a PDS slot. This is one of the two earliest models that are able to run Mac OS 8, along with the Macintosh Quadra 900.
Trivia
- This Macintosh, along with some others, was one of the computers featured in the film Jurassic Park (1993).
| Preceded by Macintosh IIci |
Macintosh Quadra 700 October 1991 |
Succeeded by Macintosh Quadra 800 |