Macintosh LC

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Macintosh LC "pizza box" computer, circa 1990.

The Macintosh LC (meaning low-cost color) was Apple Computer's product family of low-end consumer Macintosh personal computers in the early 1990s. The original Macintosh LC was released in 1990, primarily for the education and home markets, and notable for being the first affordable color Macintosh to the average first-time computer buyer. Together with the Mac IIsi, 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 68k to PowerPC transition.

1 History
2 LC models
3 External links

[edit] History

Macintosh computers, especially the color Macs starting with the Macintosh II in 1987, had always been rather expensive computers with large profit margins. The original LC was an attempt at an affordable Macintosh. Compared with earlier Macs, Apple cut some corners on performance and features in order to keep the price down. Notably, the LC used a very small "pizza box" case with no NuBus slots, had a 16 MHz 68020 microprocessor and no floating-point coprocessor running on a 16-bit data bus (a major bottleneck as the 68020 was a 32-bit CPU), a limit of 10 mebibytes RAM and shipped with only 256 KiB of VRAM therefore only supporting a display resolution of 512 pixels by 384 pixels at 8-bit color on Apple's 12" RGB monitor. The VRAM was upgradeable to 512 KiB though, supporting a display resolution of 512 pixels by 384 pixels at 16-bit color or, on a VGA-compatible display, 640 pixels by 480 pixels at 8-bit color. Nevertheless, most LCs were purchased with an Apple 12" RGB monitor with a fixed resolution of 512 pixels by 384 pixels. Many software programs that had been designed for other color Macs assumed that the minimum screen size was 640 pixels by 480 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 ran almost twice as fast as the Macintosh LC).

Despite the LCs lack of NuBus slots, it did come with a Processor Direct Slot (PDS). This was primarily intended for the Apple IIe Card, which was offered with education models of the LCs. The card allowed the LCs to emulate an Apple IIe. 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.

The Mac LC sold well, and in 1992 was replaced by the LC II, which had basic virtual memory support, and sold even better. 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 Performa 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.) All PowerPC-based LC models were sold as "Power Macintosh xxxx LC" (and as "Performa xxxx"). The LC line lived on until the iMac was released in 1998. The LC 580 was notable for being the last desktop Motorola 68k-based Macintosh of any kind. All systems after that one used PowerPC processors.

[edit] LC models

[edit] "Pizza boxes"

Macintosh LC (1990)
Macintosh LC II (1992) — also known as Performa 400, Performa 405, Performa 410, Performa 430
Macintosh LC III (1993) — also known as Performa 450
Macintosh LC III+ (1993) — also known as Performa 460, Performa 466, Performa 467
Macintosh LC 475 (1993) — officially sold as Quadra 605, also known as Performa 475, Performa 476

[edit] All-in-one

Macintosh LC 520 (1993)
Macintosh LC 550 (1994) — also known as Performa 550, Performa 560
Macintosh LC 575 (1994) — also known as Performa 575, Performa 576, Performa 577, Performa 578
Macintosh LC 580 (1995) — also known as Performa 580CD, Performa 588CD
Power Macintosh 5200 LC (1995) — also known as Performa 5200CD, Performa 5210CD, Performa 5215CD, Performa 5220CD
Power Macintosh 5260 LC (1996) — also known as Performa 5260CD, Performa 5270CD
Power Macintosh 5300 LC (1995) — also known as Performa 5300CD, Performa 5320CD
Power Macintosh 5400 LC (1996) — also known as Performa 5400CD, Performa 5410CD, Performa 5420CD, Performa 5430CD, Performa 5440CD, Performa 5420 (black case)

[edit] Regular desktop

Macintosh LC 630 (1994) — officially sold as Quadra 630, also known as Performa 630, Performa 630CD, Performa 631CD, Performa 635CD, Performa 636, Performa 636CD, Performa 637CD, Performa 638CD, Performa 640CD