Apple  Macintosh II-CI
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Macintosh IIci

The Apple Macintosh IIci features a 25MHz 68030 CPU, a 68882 FPU, 1 or 4MByte of RAM and a 40 or 80MByte hard drive. The case was the same case as the Macintosh IIcx. It was produced from 1989 to 1993.

The Macintosh IIci is the first Macintosh with a 32-bit clean ROM and the first Mac to have level 2 processor Cach and built-in graphics card for an external display monitor. The integrated graphics however used system RAM for its frame buffer. Some users used a NuBus graphcis card so that they could use that RAM for programs, rather than Graphcis.

Easter Egg in ROM

There is an easter egg hidden in the ROM of the IIci. If the system date of the computer is set to September 20, 1989, which is the machine's release date and the following keys are held down together at boot time, Command + Option + C + I, an image of the development team is shown. The signatures of the product design team can be seen in the molded plastic of the case, if the motherboard is removed

Macintosh IIci - Signatures in Case

Motorola 68000 CPU Family

The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit microprocessor that was first released in 1979. It was widely used in computers and other electronic devices during the 1980s and early 1990s. The 68000 was known for its advanced architecture, which included a 32-bit internal bus and a 24-bit address bus, allowing it to access up to 16 megabytes of memory. This made it more powerful than many other processors of its time, such as the Intel 8086 and Zilog Z80. It was also designed to be highly modular and expandable, with a large number of on-chip and off-chip peripherals.

Some of the most famous and successful computers that used the 68000 was the Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST, both of which were popular in the home and personal computer markets. Additionally, it was also used in workstations, such as the Sun 3 and Apollo DN3000, and in a wide variety of embedded systems and industrial control systems. The 68000 was also used in the Macintosh, the first model of the Macintosh was powered by a Motorola 68000 CPU. The processor was eventually succeeded by the 68020 and 68030, which offered improved performance and additional features.

The 68000 has a 32-bit instruction set, with 32-bit registers and a 16-bit internal data bus. The address bus is 24-bit and does not use memory segmentation, making it easier to address memory. There are three ALU's (Arithmetic Logic Unit), two for calculating addresses, and one for data, and the chip has a 16-bit external address bus.

The 68000 architecture was expanded with 32-bit ALUs, and caches. Here is a list with some 680x0 versions and their major improvements:

  • 68010 - Virtual memory support
  • 68020 - 32-bit ALU & Instruction Cache
  • 68030 - On-Chip MMU, 2x 256 byte cache
  • 68040 - 2x 4K Cache, 6 stage pipeline, FPU
  • 68LC040 - No Floating Point Unit (FPU)
  • 68060 - 2x 8K Cache, 10 stage pipelinet

Technical Details
Released 1989 Brand Apple Type Apple Macintosh II Name Macintosh II-CI CPU Class 68000 CPU Motorola 68030 @25MHz Memory RAM: 1MB
RAM max: 128MB
Sound Chip TTL Logic for PWM Sound 8-bit Pulse-width modulation Display Chip none Display 640x480 4-bit color
512x384 8-bit color.
Best Color 8 bit color Best Graphics 640x480 4 bit color Sprites none System OS MacOS System 6 or 7
Related Systems
 
Apple Series I
 
Apple Series II
 
Apple Series III
 
Apple Macintosh
 
Apple Macintosh II
» 
Macintosh  II-CI (1989)
 
Apple Macintosh LC & Quadra
 
Apple Newton
Related Media
 
Apple Macintosh
Books about the Apple Macintosh, the first mass-market personal computer with a graphical user interface.
 
68' Micro Journal
Magazine devoted to the 68xx user
 
InCider and A+
InCider Magazine for Apple Computers, later fused with A+
 
Peeker Magazine
Peeker, a German language magazine for Apple Computer users.
World Wide Web Links
 
Wikipedia: Motorola 68000 CPU Family
WikiPedia page on the Motorola 68000 series of processors