The Macintosh Quadra 660AV, originally sold as the Macintosh Centris 660AV, is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

from July 1993 to September 1994. It was introduced alongside the

Quadra 840AV The Macintosh Quadra 840AV is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from July 1993 to July 1994. It was introduced alongside the Centris 660AV, where "AV" signifies audiovisual capabilities, such as video input ...

; the "AV" after both model numbers signifies video input and output capabilities and enhanced audio. The 660AV was discontinued a few months after the introduction of the Power Macintosh 6100/60AV. Apple sold a Power Macintosh Upgrade Card that upgrades the 660AV to match the 6100/60AV's specifications for . This and the

Quadra 630 The Macintosh Quadra 630 (also sold as the Macintosh LC 630 and Macintosh Performa 630) is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from July 1994 to October 1995. It was introduced as the replacement for the Quadr ...

were positioned for users who were not ready to move to PowerPC.

Hardware

The 660AV uses the

pizza box form factor In computing, a pizza box is a style of case design for desktop computers or network switches. Pizza box cases tend to be wide and flat, normally in height, resembling pizza delivery boxes and thus the name. This is in contrast to a tower s ...

of the earlier

Centris 610 The Macintosh Quadra 610, originally sold as the Macintosh Centris 610, is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from February 1993 to July 1994. The Centris 610 was introduced alongside the larger Centris 650 a ...

. The 660AV has a full Motorola 68040 instead of the 610's

FPU FPU may stand for: Universities * Florida Polytechnic University, in Lakeland, Florida, United States * Franklin Pierce University, in New Hampshire, United States * Fresno Pacific University, in California, United States * Fukui Prefectural Univ ...

-less 68LC040. Like the 840AV, the 660AV features video input/output capability and an onboard AT&T 3210

digital signal processor A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor chip, with its architecture optimized for the operational needs of digital signal processing. DSPs are fabricated on MOS integrated circuit chips. They are widely used in audio si ...

(here clocked at 55 MHz) to make the video handling less of a burden on the CPU. The 660AV is the first Macintosh to include GeoPort; an optional GeoPort Telecom Adapter enables fax and modem capabilities. Some of the earliest Centris 660AVs have the older auto-inject floppy drive opening similar to the 610, but most of the Centris models and all of the Quadra models have a drive similar to the Power Macintosh 6100, lacking the auto-inject feature. These models have a deep round indentation at the center of the floppy drive slot to make it possible to fully insert the disk. The Quadra AV Macs introduced a new universal ROM (codenamed SuperMario) that would later be used in all PowerPC systems. It includes SCSI Manager 4.3 and Sound Manager 3.0. It also is "vectorized", making it easier to patch.

Models

Introduced July 29, 1993: * Macintosh Centris 660AV Introduced October 21, 1993: * Macintosh Quadra 660AV

Reception

Jonathan Chevreau of the ''

National Post The ''National Post'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper available in several cities in central and western Canada. The paper is the flagship publication of Postmedia Network and is published Mondays through Saturdays, with M ...

'' said on August 7, 1993 that the

and Centris 660AV were the next most interesting multimedia computers behind the new SGI Indy, putting Apple among the forefront of the birth of the major industry of desktop multimedia. '' Byte'' magazine said in September 1993 that Apple and Silicon Graphics were trailblazers by setting audio and video input as default features of these two Macintosh and of the Indy desktop PCs, which "could change the way businesspeople communicate".

References

External links

Centris 660av (Quadra 660AV)
at Low End Mac

an

at EveryMac.com {{Apple hardware before 1998 660AV 660AV

Quadra 660AV The Macintosh Quadra 660AV, originally sold as the Macintosh Centris 660AV, is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from July 1993 to September 1994. It was introduced alongside the Quadra 840AV; the "AV" after ...

Computer-related introductions in 1993