The ECN No Name Newsletter is no longer being published. This is an archived issue.

The New Macs

The announcement of the new Macintoshes by Apple Computer has brought with it a number of questions about the new machines. This article will summarize the features of the new Mac SE and Mac II computers.

The Mac SE is a cleaned up version of the Mac Plus. It adds several features missing from the Mac Plus including: the new 256K ROMS, 100 watt power supply, cooling fan, space for two internal floppies or a floppy and internal hard disk, and most importantly an expansion slot. One planned use for the expansion slot is an MS-DOS processor card. The new ROMs are similar to the Mac II ROMS and include new TextEdit and SCSI Manager routines. According to the April 1987 issue of Byte Magazine, the video and SCSI circuitry have both been improved for higher performance.

Although very exciting, the Mac SE announcement pales in comparison to the Mac II. The Mac II is an all new Macintosh. A list of it's features includes:

CPU:    15.667 Mhz, Motorola  68020  with  68881  Floating  Point
        Co-processor
Memory: 1 to 8 Megabytes on the motherboard
Slots:  6 NuBus slots, any slot can be system master
ROM:    256 K, provides standard Mac environment, supports 95% of
        existing Mac applications
Video:  No standard video, both monochrome and color are
        supported in software, Apple offers one video choice
        in color and monochrome

All this hardware is fitted with an amazing selection of software. Apple's own operating system is of course offered, as is an MS-DOS emulator card which plugs into one of the NuBus slots. Most importantly for ECN folks: UNIX will be offered from Apple for this machine! The details of this UNIX offering are not all available at the time I write this, but it appears to be a port of UNIX System V with numerous Berkeley enhancements including the Berkeley networking code and "r" utilities.

The NuBus slots included in the Mac II offer a wide range of expansion possibilities. According to Byte, "NuBus is a 32-bit high-performance bus that emphasizes independence of any particular system architecture and a simple yet sophisticated transaction protocol." The NuBus in the Mac II is configured to allow 8, 16 and 32 bit transfers on the bus, automatic detection and address space assignment to each card on the bus and any card on the bus can become the bus master. These features allow for several interesting expansion options including the use of a different processor from the 68020 on the motherboard, by simply plugging it into the NuBus.

The UNIX operating system for the Mac II, called A/UX, will not be offered or even given a price until this summer. It is known now that it will take a fairly good sized system to run on. Current suggestions of what you'll need in terms of hardware run like this: 2 to 4 Megabytes of memory, 40 to 80 megabytes of disk and a Motorola 68851 MMU chip. A lot of hardware, but it puts the Mac II right up there with other UNIX workstations in terms of performance.

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