Macintosh II

Two common criticisms of the original Macintosh, starting from its introduction in 1984, were the closed architecture and lack of color; rumors of a potential color Macintosh began almost immediately. The Macintosh II project was begun by Dhuey and Berkeley during 1985 without the knowledge of Apple co-founder and Macintosh division head Steve Jobs, who opposed expansion slots and color, on the basis that expansion slots complicated the user experience and that color did not conform to WYSIWYG, as color printers were not common. Jobs instead wanted higher-resolution monochrome displays such as the ones chosen for his own "BigMac" project begun in 1984 to develop a Macintosh successor. Initially referred to as "Little Big Mac", the Macintosh II was codenamed "Milwaukee" after Dhuey's hometown, and it later went through a series of new names. After Jobs was ousted by Apple in September 1985, the Milwaukee project could proceed openly (while Jobs' own BigMac project was cancelled). with low-volume initial shipments starting two months later. the Macintosh II was the first modular Macintosh model, so called because it came in a horizontal desktop case like many IBM PC compatibles of the time. Previous Macintosh computers use an all-in-one design with a black-and-white CRT. The Macintosh II has drive bays for an internal hard disk (originally 40 MB or 80 MB) and an optional second floppy disk drive. The primary improvement in the Macintosh II was Color QuickDraw in ROM, a color version of the Macintosh graphics routines. Color QuickDraw can handle any display size, up to 8-bit color depth, and multiple monitors. Because Color QuickDraw is included in the Macintosh II's ROM and relies on 68020 instructions, earlier systems could not be upgraded to display color. In September 1988, shortly before the introduction of the Macintosh IIx, Apple increased the list price of the Macintosh II by roughly 20%. AnimEigo notably used the Macintosh II for subtitling their earliest releases, including MADOX-01, Riding Bean, and Vampire Princess Miyu, and Industrial Light & Magic used the Macintosh II for image processing on films such as The Abyss. == Hardware ==

CPU The Macintosh II is built around the Motorola 68020 processor operating at 16 MHz, teamed with a Motorola 68881 floating-point unit. The machine shipped with a socket for an optional Motorola 68851 MMU, but an "Apple HMMU Chip" (VLSI VI475 chip) was installed by default and could not implement virtual memory (instead, it translated 24-bit addresses to 32-bit addresses for the Mac OS, which would not be 32-bit clean until System 7). Memory The standard memory was 1 megabyte, expandable to 8 MB. The Mac II had eight 30-pin SIMMs, and memory was installed in groups of four (called "Bank A" and "Bank B"). The Macintosh II does not have a PMMU installed by default. Instead, it relies on the memory controller hardware to map the installed memory into a contiguous address space. This hardware has the restriction that the address space dedicated to Bank A must be larger than that of Bank B. Though this memory controller was designed to support 16 Megabyte, 30-pin SIMMs in each available slot (for a total of up to 128 MB of RAM), the original Macintosh II ROMs have problems that limit the amount of RAM that can be installed into each slot to just 8 MB SIMMs. Although the later Macintosh IIx ROMs that shipped with the Macintosh II FDHD upgrade fixes this initial problem, these newer ROMs still do not have a 32-bit memory manager and cannot boot into 32-bit address mode, at least, not without software assistance in the form of "MODE32", thus limiting the total amount of RAM to a mere 8MB. MODE32 (originally published by Connectix, and later licensed by Apple) contains a workaround that allows for larger SIMMs to be installed in Bank B if a PMMU is also installed. With this configuration, the Macintosh II boot ROMs will believe that the computer has 8 MB or less of RAM installed. Meanwhile, MODE32 then reprograms the memory controller on the fly to dedicate more address space to Bank A, thus allowing access to the additional memory installed in Bank B. Since this makes the physical address space discontiguous, the PMMU is then used to remap the address space into a contiguous block. and was available in two configurations: 4-bit and 8-bit. The 4-bit model supports 16 colors on a 640×480 display and 256 colors (8-bit video) on a 512×384 display, which means that VRAM was 256 KB. The 8-bit model supports 256-color video on a 640×480 display, which means that VRAM was 512 KB in size. With an optional RAM upgrade (requiring 120 ns DIP chips), the 4-bit version supports 640×480 in 8-bit color. The video card does not include hardware acceleration of drawing operations. Display: Apple offered a choice of two displays, a 12" black and white unit, and a more expensive 13" high-resolution color display based on Sony's Trinitron technology. More than one display could be attached to the computer, and objects could be easily dragged from one screen to the next. Third-party displays quickly became available. The Los Angeles Times reviewer called the color "spectacular." The operating system user interface remained black and white even on color monitors with the exception of the Apple logo, which appeared in rainbow color. Storage A 5.25-inch 40 MB internal SCSI hard disk was optional, as was a second internal 800 kilobyte 3.5-inch floppy disk drive. Apple offered a well-publicized recall of the faulty ROMs and released a program to test whether a particular Macintosh II had the defect. IDT sold MacStation products as complete systems based on the Macintosh II, following up with the MacStation 2 employing the 16 MHz R3000 on its RISC CPU board, with 8 MB of RAM supplied on another NuBus card, upgradable to 16 MB, and supplied with a 160 MB hard drive if desired. The MacStation 3 upgraded the CPU to either a 20 MHz R3000 coupled with 8 MB of RAM or a 25 MHz R3000 with 16 MB of RAM, with the RAM being located on the CPU board itself, and the board gaining dedicated SCSI and serial input/output ports. The Unix filesystems accessed by the R3000 were encapsulated in Macintosh files if the host machine's storage were to be used. Otherwise, storage attached to the dedicated SCSI port could host the Unix filesystem with higher performance. With Apple's MacX software running on the host, Unix software utilising the X Window System and the Motif graphical toolkit could be used. IDT was an "authorized Apple VAR" in offering the MacStation systems. Accessories The Macintosh II and Macintosh SE were the first Apple computers since the Apple I to be sold without a keyboard. Instead the customer was offered a choice of the new ADB Apple Keyboard or the Apple Extended Keyboard as a separate purchase. The new extensions featured for the Macintosh II at the time were A/ROSE and Sound Manager. == Models ==

The Macintosh II was offered in three configurations. All systems included a mouse and a single 800 KB 3.5-inch floppy disk drive; a Motorola 68851 PMMU was available as an option and required for running A/UX. • Macintosh II CPU: 1 MB RAM. • Macintosh II 1/40 CPU: 1 MB RAM, internal 40-megabyte SCSI HDD. • Macintosh II 4/40 CPU: 4 MB RAM, internal 40-megabyte SCSI HDD. == Timeline ==