Macintosh Colour Classic

In September 2009 I started to downsize this collection to a few items and then archived this section to its own subdomain at the start of October 2011. Remaining items sold off in mid 2024.

Introduced in February of 1993 as the last of the Classic line-up the Colour Classic is essentially a LC II logic board inside a all-in-one case. Unfortunately the Colour Classic has the same 10MB RAM limitation as the LC II and the low 512x384 on the 9" trinitron tube doesn't help much. Almost all of the flaws in the design were rectified with the Colour Classic II released in late 1993 (not in North America I believe and was essentially an LC III logic board).

One popular upgrade to the Colour Classic is to first modify the screen to display 640x480 and then upgrade the motherboard (and power supply and hard drive) to something with a faster 68k processor or even a PowerPC processor (see link at bottom). Some people have even managed to fit a slot load cdrom inside the case.

Specifications

CPU 16MHz Motorola 68030
RAM 4MB on logic board
up to 10MB using 2 30-pin SIMMS
Video Built-in 9" Trinitron at 512x384
I/O Ports Apple Desktop Bus, Printer, Modem, Speaker
Expansion LC PDS Slot
Sound Mono 8 bit input and output
Drives 1.44MB Floppy Drive
40-80MB SCSI Hard Drive
External SCSI Connector
Operating System Mac OS (7.0.1 up to 7.6.1)

Images

A complete system comprised of the Colour Classic with an Apple Design Keyboard and Apple Desktop Bus Mouse 2. - colour-classic-01.jpg colour-classic-01.jpg, 1280x1024, 141KB
A complete system comprised of the Colour Classic with an Apple Design Keyboard and Apple Desktop Bus Mouse 2.
Rear of the unit showing the exhaust fan, power socket and switch, and ports on the logic board across the bottom. - colour-classic-02.jpg colour-classic-02.jpg, 1280x1024, 133KB
Rear of the unit showing the exhaust fan, power socket and switch, and ports on the logic board across the bottom.
The logic board removed from the case (left) and a PDS ethernet card (right). - colour-classic-03.jpg colour-classic-03.jpg, 1024x768, 156KB
The logic board removed from the case (left) and a PDS ethernet card (right).
The PDS ethernet card mounted on the logic board. - colour-classic-04.jpg colour-classic-04.jpg, 1024x768, 138KB
The PDS ethernet card mounted on the logic board.

Other resources