sgt@alice.UucP (Steve Tell) (01/21/86)
I Just came from a meeting of the local Macintosh User's group where they demonstrated a Mac-Plus, and thought that many of you out there would be interested in Apple's latest creation. I'll try to keep this breif. Keyboard: Has numeric pad and cursor arrow keys. No escape key nor function keys. It's about 4 inches longer, and similar in Weight. Memory: This demo had 1meg, the machine has a 4meg maximum when using 256k chips. 1meg chips can be accomadated, supposedly only by changing little memory boards inside, but the chips are supposed to be socketed. No word on wether this means you can do it yourself. Disks: 800k double sided 3.5" disks. They're supposed to be able to read the old disks with no problem. Old 400k external drives can be used. Rom changes: Supposedly the quickdraw graphics routines have been speeded up. A variable-size disk cache can be enabled from the control panel to speed disk operations up. Apple recomends experimenting with the size, starting at around 192k. Back Panel: The printer/modem Rs232 connectors are now those funny little round 9-pin things like on the 2c, immagewriter2, and so on. This makes room for the SCSI peripheral interface. Nothing but hype on what Apple plans for it, but it opens the door for lots of add-on devices to communicate very fast with the Mac. Availability: First available February 1, large quanitities by the end of February. Upgrades from the original Mac: There are two routes: Full upgrade with new logic board, or just the new Rom and Disk. The new Logic board requires purchase of the new Disk & Rom. Upgrading from old Mac must be done by authorized dealers. Your old hardware will be accepted as trade-in for rebate. Upgrade Cost: From What you get cost 128k old Mac New Logic Board $799 512k old Mac New Logic Board $599 Internal Disk & rom New Rom, 800k disk $299 old keyboard New keyboard $129 This doesn't include the trade-in. Remember that the new logic board requires getting the new rom&disk. If your old Mac is less than 60 days old you get a better deal. Educational institutions get discounts similar to before, But details weren't available tonight. Why's it better: It seemed much faster, but it was demonstrated with a hard Disk. Even veteran users with hard disks were impressed tonight. It has a real Hierarchical file system! With additions to the menus & things to access them more easily than the old folder system. You still have folders, but the internals about them are much different. Miscellaneous: There's still no hard-disk boot for Apple's hard disk. Lots of little improvements & new gizmos in the desktop and so on. This has gotten a bit longer than I wanted it to be but I hope there's some curiosity out there about the industry in general. I'm not associated with Apple at all, and don't own a Mac, primarily due to it's slowness, of which I saw none tonight.