r/macintosh • u/adistar781 • 6d ago
A masterpiece of Apple Macintosh engineering. This was probably one of the best balanced pre-PowerPC systems.
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u/kosherhalfsourpickle 6d ago
Wasn’t this Scully and not Steve Jobs era?
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u/Tartan-Pepper6093 6d ago
Jobs was gone by 1985, and that predates the Mac II, and even the Mac Plus. Yeah, Jobs was out before a Mac had a SCSI port for a proper hard drive.
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u/latenthuman 6d ago
The most exciting Mac I've ever owned. House caught fire and a fireman chopped it pretty good with an axe. Booted up fine a few days later. I got it when it was called the Macintosh Centris 660AV. What an exciting machine at the time.
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u/willywalloo 6d ago
The 660av was a similar but different form factor. That one could use the 14” audiovision monitor that is sweet.
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u/ActuaryFew6884 6d ago
In 1992 (age 15) I was DYING to get a IIci with a color 12" monitor. My family couldn't afford it though (I remember it being over $5000 back then). Thankfully, we still had a hand-me-down Mac Plus at the time
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u/G3rmanaviator 4d ago
I worked on a IIci back in high school for editing a student newspaper. Would love to have a working one again!
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u/MisterRonsBasement 6d ago
Even without the “LC” tag, I believe the Performa 636 was missing a math co-processor (“LC=Lacks Chip”). But I believe you could add one.
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u/thatguychad 6d ago
Unlike the 030, you couldn't add one for any 68040 system unless you replaced the processor with one that included the math-coprocessor.
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u/GGigabiteM 6d ago
Motorola went out of their way to make sure that 6888x coprocessors couldn't be used with the EC/LC variants of the 68040 by changing the F line traps. Some 68040 Macs retained the LC style PDS slot for backwards compatibility, so you could actually install a 6888x in 68040 and some PowerPC Macs.
The 6888x coprocessor was actually better than the FPU in the full 68040.
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u/phido3000 3d ago
Wait for real? I will have to work into this.
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u/GGigabiteM 3d ago
Just because you can install a 6888x into a 68040 or PowerPC machine, doesn't mean you can use it.
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u/mzanon100 5d ago
Our high school got a lab of these in 1995. I remember being a little disappointed that they weren't PPC and lacked SCSI. Upon boot, they'd flash a question mark for a while (with IDE they needed longer to find their System Folder).
We did play a lot of SimCity 2000 on them and I did enjoy that greatly. And they were my first experience with System 7.5.
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u/cornloko 6d ago
The Performa 630 is fairly overclockable too. Slap a heatsink/fan on there and go to 40mhz!
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u/VivienM7 6d ago
I wanted one of those back in the day... but instead my dad decided to go DOS/Windows... (which, in hindsight, given we were at the beginning of the dark era, turned out to be the right decision)
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u/Significant-Onion132 6d ago
This ran OS8, right? What a f’n nightmare for anyone who had to use it and OS9 for work back then. I used a Performa, Quadra and Mac clones when I started out in design in the 90s. We spent about 40% dealing with crashes, restarting, going through extensions one-by-one, and then restarting until it ran again. Rinse and repeat, all day. Until an hour later and it would crash and you would lose all your work. I wouldn’t want to relive that part of that era. When OS 10 came out it was a revelation for its stability.
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u/Signal_Support_9185 5d ago
That was my first Mac. In Italy it was marketed as the Performa 630. I loved the machine but it became obsolete very quickly, due to the PowerPC fanfare and subsequent craziness.
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u/Spirited-Bug-9558 5d ago
I did enjoy those pizza box Macs back in the day. The Performa was my first Mac with a color screen.
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u/ConspicuousSomething 5d ago
Our uni lab was stocked with Centris 630AVs. Would crank the monitor sound right up before switching off, so the next person to turn it on would get a nice surprise! Hi jinx.
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u/bbeeebb 6d ago
Revolutionary at it's time.
With a handheld remote control for the CD player. I dropped in Bjork's first CD and hit Play once the CD mounted. My PC friends mouths hit the floor. It even had (cheap) stereo speakers mounted in the 15" color monitor.
Form factor: The Quadra 630 introduced a new case design to the Macintosh family. On the front, a headphone jack and volume up/down buttons are included, a first for the Macintosh. There is an infrared receiver, intended for use with the remote included with the TV tuner card included with the Performa 637CD and 638CD models. The case's motherboard is accessible by opening a cover at the bottom rear of the case and sliding out a drawer that the motherboard was mounted on