Apple  Macintosh II-CX
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Macintosh IIcx

The Macintosh IIcx has, since it is an x, the 68030 CPU and the 68882 FPU on board. The L1 cache is now 512 Bytes, and the computer has 3 NuBus expansion slots. The machine was introduced in 1989 and discontinued in 1992. It came with 1 or 2MByte of RAM, expandable to 128MByte. Unique to the case was that components and parts such as RAM and NuBus expansion cards could snap into place without the need for screws.

The c in the name stood for Compact but this formfactor caused some problems fitting 5.25" floppy or full height hard drives.

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-CX CPU Class 68000 CPU Motorola 68030 @16MHz 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-CX (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