Macintosh IIfx

The Apple Macintosh IIfx was for its time an exceptionally fast Motorola 68030 -based computer, which remained unaffordable for many in the base configuration with prices starting at the equivalent of about 9000 EUR. It was built from spring 1990 to spring 1992.

It was used for classical Numbercrunching on the desk, academic papers, DTP and graphics workstation or departmental server under A / UX. The IIfx shipped with System 6.0.5, but it can also be the more modern Mac OS 7.6.1 or A / UX Run up to version 3.1.1.

The CPU Motorola 68030 and Motorola 68882 math coprocessor are clocked at 40 MHz. On the motherboard there are 32 KB Level 2 cache, eight RAM sockets for the proprietary IIfx SIMMs with 64 pins for a maximum configuration of 128 MB RAM ( for that time unheard much), a SCSI interface with DMA support, high-speed serial interfaces as well as a PDS and six NuBus expansion slots.

The SIMMs of IIfx had, as at the time of its popular 30-pin SIMMs are equipped the same size and organization in groups of four (a bank with 4 SIMMs). The additional 34 pins per SIMM a simultaneous writing and reading access to the same SIMM bank was possible, which enabled a further acceleration of memory accesses.

In contrast to other models with PDS at IIfx from the PDS from no access to the NuBus slots was possible. Thus, the construction of accelerator cards was difficult, there were only a few exceptions: There, the accelerator card in the PDS was connected to a cable bridge to an additional, the accelerator belonging NuBus card and so the link PDS NuBus made ​​.

The case format was adopted by the Mac II, were two internal HD floppies and two SCSI hard drives accommodated. Typical hard disk sizes of the time were 40 to 200 MB, mostly in the format 5.25 ".