Power Macintosh 7100

The Power Macintosh 7100 is a mid-range Apple Macintosh personal computer that was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from March 1994 to January 1996. The PowerMac 7100 was faster and more expandable than the Power Macintosh 6100, and was a part of the original Power Macintosh line along with the 6100 and the Power Macintosh 8100. It came in a slightly restyled Macintosh IIvx case, and received a speed increase to 80 MHz (from its original 66 MHz) in January 1995. When it was discontinued it was succeeded by two new models, the Power Macintosh 7200 and the Power Macintosh 7500.

A higher-priced audio-visual variant (the 7100AV) included a 2 MB VRAM card with s-video in/out. Non-AV 7100s had a video card containing 1 MB VRAM and no s-video in/out capability.

Codename lawsuit

The Power Macintosh 7100's internal code name was "Carl Sagan", the in-joke being that the mid-range PowerMac 7100 would make Apple "billions and billions". Though the project name was internal, it was revealed to the public in a 1993 issue of MacWeek. Sagan, concerned that the public might interpret this as an endorsement, reportedly contacted Apple and requested that they clarify that the codename didn't constitute an official endorsement on his part. When they reportedly refused, he wrote a letter to the editor that appeared in a 1994 issue of MacWeek, seeking to inform their readers of the situation.

Power Macintosh

Power Macintosh, later Power Mac, is a line of Apple Macintosh workstation-class personal computers based on various models of PowerPC microprocessors that were developed, marketed, and supported by Apple Inc. from March 1994 until August 2006. The first models were the Power Macintosh 6100, 7100, and 8100, which offered speeds ranging from 60 to 110 MHz. These machines replaced Apple's Quadra series of personal computers, and were housed in cases very similar to systems sold by Apple up to that point. The Power Mac went on to become the mainstay of Apple's top-end offerings for twelve years, through a succession of case designs, four major generations of PowerPC chips, and a great deal of press coverage, design accolades, and technical controversy. In August 2006, the Power Mac's retirement was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference by Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller, making way for its Intel-based replacement, the Mac Pro.

Models

Old World ROM

Power Macintosh 9600

The Power Macintosh 9600 (Codename: "Kansas"; also sold with additional server software as the Apple Workgroup Server 9650) is a personal computer that is a part of Apple Computer's Power Macintosh series of Macintosh computers. It was introduced in February 1997 alongside the Power Macintosh 7300 and the Power Macintosh 8600, and replaced the Power Macintosh 9500 as Apple's flagship desktop computer. It was the last Macintosh model able to boot and run System 7 natively.

The 9600 came in the same new case as the 8600, but was internally very similar to the 9500 that preceded it, with 12 RAM slots and 6 PCI slots instead of the 8 RAM and 3 PCI slots on the 8600. The 9600 used the new PowerPC 604e CPU, an enhanced version of the 9500 604. On introduction, three processor configurations were available: single 200 MHz, dual 200 MHz and single 233 MHz. In August 1997, they were replaced by two new models, with a single 300 MHz or 350 MHz "Mach 5" 604ev with a larger L2 cache. The 350 MHz model was initially discontinued in October due to CPU supply problems, but reintroduced on February 17 when the 300 MHz model was discontinued in favor of the new Power Macintosh G3 minitower - while the G3 was faster, its expandability was only on par with the 8600, so the 9600 was kept available until March for users that needed that kind of expandability.

Power Macintosh G3 beige

The Power Macintosh G3, commonly called "beige G3s" or "platinum G3s" for the color of their cases, is a series of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from November 1997 to January 1999. It was the first Macintosh to use the PowerPC G3 (PPC750) microprocessor, and replaced a number of earlier Power Macintosh models, in particular the 7300, 8600 and 9600 models. It was succeeded by the Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White), which kept the name but introduced a radically different design. The introduction of the Desktop and Minitower G3 models coincided with Apple starting to sell user-configurable Macs directly from its web site in an online storeArchived May 9, 1998 at the Wayback Machine, which was unusual for the time as Dell was the only other major manufacturer then doing this.

The Power Mac G3 introduced a fast and large Level 2 backside cache to Apple's product lineup, running at half processor speed. As a result, these machines were widely considered to be faster than Intel PCs of similar CPU clock speed at launch, an assertion that was backed up by benchmarks performed by Byte Magazine, which prompted Apple to create the "Snail" and "Toasted Bunnies" television commercials.