HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Macintosh LC is a
personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or te ...
designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from October 1990 to March 1992.


Overview

The first in the Macintosh LC family, the LC was introduced with the Macintosh Classic (a repackaging of the older
Macintosh SE The Macintosh SE is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, from March 1987 to October 1990. It marked a significant improvement on the Macintosh Plus design and was introduced by Apple at the same time as the Ma ...
) and the
Macintosh IIsi The Macintosh IIsi is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from October 1990 to March 1993. Introduced as a lower-cost alternative to the other Macintosh II family of desktop models, it was popular for h ...
(a new entry-level machine for the Macintosh II series), and offered for half the price of the
Macintosh II The Macintosh II is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from March 1987 to January 1990. Based on the Motorola 68020 32-bit CPU, it is the first Macintosh supporting color graphics. When introduced, a basic s ...
but significantly lesser in performance overall. The creation of the LC was prompted by Apple's desire to produce a product that could be sold to school boards for the same price as an Apple IIGS. It was designed for inexpensive manufacturing, with five major components that robots could assemble. The computer had a $2,400 list price; it and the new $600 12-inch color display were $3,500 less expensive than the Macintosh II. Not long after the
Apple IIe Card The Apple IIe Card is a hardware emulation board, also referred to as compatibility card, which allows compatible Macintosh computers to run software designed for the Apple II series of computers (with the exception of the Apple IIGS, IIGS). ...
was introduced for the LC, Apple quietly removed the IIGS from its price list, forceably retiring it, as the company wanted to focus its sales and marketing efforts on the LC. The original Macintosh LC was introduced in October 1990, with initial shipments to dealers following in December and January. It was replaced by
Macintosh LC II The Macintosh LC II is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from March 1992 to March 1993. The LC II is an update to the original Macintosh LC, replacing its Motorola 68020 processor with a 68030 and increasin ...
, which was largely the same but was built around a Motorola 68030 processor.


Hardware

The LC uses a "pizza box" case with a Processor Direct Slot (PDS) but no
NuBus NuBus (pron. 'New Bus') is a 32-bit parallel computer bus, originally developed at MIT and standardized in 1987 as a part of the NuMachine workstation project. The first complete implementation of the NuBus was done by Western Digital fo ...
slots. It has a 16 MHz Motorola 68020 microprocessor which lacks a
floating-point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can ...
coprocessor A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor (the CPU). Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating-point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, cryptography or I ...
(although one could be added via the PDS). The LC has a 16-bit data bus, which is a major performance bottleneck as the 68020 is a 32-bit CPU. The LC's memory management chipset places a limit of 10 MB RAM no matter how much was installed. The LC shipped with 256 kB of VRAM, supporting a display resolution of 512×384 pixels at 8-bit color. The VRAM is upgradeable to 512 kB, supporting a display resolution of 512×384 pixels at 16-bit color or 640×480 pixels at 8-bit color. The LC was commonly purchased with an Apple 12" RGB monitor which had a fixed resolution of 512×384 pixels and a form factor exactly matching the width of the LC chassis, giving the two together a near all-in-one appearance. An Apple 13" 640×480
Trinitron Trinitron was Sony's brand name for its line of aperture-grille-based CRTs used in television sets and computer monitors. One of the first truly innovative television systems to enter the market since the 1950s, the Trinitron was announced in ...
display was also available, but at a list price of $999, it cost around half as much as the LC itself. Until the introduction of the LC, the lowest resolution supported on color Macs had been 640×480. Many programs written for color
Macintosh II family The Macintosh II is a family of personal computers that was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1987 to 1993. The Macintosh II was the initial model, representing the high-end of the Macintosh line for the time. Over th ...
computers had assumed this as a minimum, and some were unusable at the lower resolution. 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 (as well as Color Classics which use the same resolution). Overall, general performance of the machine was disappointing due to the crippling data bus bottleneck, making it run far slower than the 16 MHz 68020-based Macintosh II from 1987, which had an identical processor but ran almost twice as fast. 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 7 System 7, codenamed "Big Bang", and also known as Mac OS 7, is a graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers and is part of the classic Mac OS series of operating systems. It was introduced on May 13, 1991, by Apple C ...
's virtual memory features. The standard configuration included a floppy drive and a 40 MB or 80 MB hard drive, but a version was available for the education market which had an Apple II card in the PDS slot, two floppy drives, and no hard drive. The LC was the final Macintosh model to allow for dual internal floppy drives. The LC, as with other Macs of the day, featured built-in networking on the serial port using
LocalTalk LocalTalk is a particular implementation of the physical layer of the AppleTalk networking system from Apple Computer. LocalTalk specifies a system of shielded twisted pair cabling, plugged into self-terminating transceivers, running at a rate ...
. Ethernet was also available as an option via the single PDS slot. If the single expansion slot was a limitation, multifunction cards were available combining Ethernet functionality with an MMU or FPU socket.


Apple IIe Card

The Apple IIe Card for the PDS slot was offered in a bundle with education models of the LCs. The card allowed the LC to emulate an Apple IIe. The combination of a low-cost color Macintosh with Apple IIe compatibility was intended to encourage the education market to transition from aging Apple II models to the Macintosh platform instead of to the new low-cost
IBM PC compatible IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones ...
s. Despite the LC's minimal video specs with a 12" monitor, any LC that supports the card can be switched into 560×384 resolution for better compatibility with the IIe's 280×192 High-Resolution graphics (essentially doubled).


Models

Introduced October 15, 1990: * Macintosh LC: 2 MB RAM, 40 MB HDD.


Timeline


References


External links


Apple Macintosh LC (Original) Specs
at everymac.com.
Mac LC
at lowendmac.com. {{Apple hardware before 1998 LC I LC I Computer-related introductions in 1990