Each week Doctor Happy Mac will take you back in time to look at a Mac from Apples illustrious history. There are plenty to choose from, some great, some insanely great and some, well, maybe less than great. Each Mac scores out of five on the DHM "how many points out of five do I give it" system. Accredited by the boffins at Strasbourg University Department of Accreditation (probably) as the most accurate measure of computer performance yet devised (probably).
This week: The Macintosh II fx
Back in the day (in this case 1990), computers were pretty slow and most of then offered little in the way of expansion capability. On to this scene burst the mac II fx, at it's debut the fastest Mac ever made and one of the fastest desktops you could buy for any money.
And talking of any money, that's what Apple wanted for their new powerhouse. The commonest reply to customers who asked "How much money does it cost?" was, "All of it". The II fx retailed at $12,000 or around £7,500 (at the time). In return customers got a mighty 40MHz Motorola 68030 chip with a dedicated math co-processor.
The II fx also offered a massive 6 internal expansion slots as well as the ability to install up to an enormous 128Mb of RAM.
All this technology was housed in a rather fetching beige box of largish size that offered scsi expansion as well as two internal floppy drives.
At launch the 11 fx was described by Apple as "wicked fast".
- Original OS - System 6.05
- Maximum OS - OS7.6
- Introduced - March 1990
- Discontinued - April 1992
DHM rates the Mac II fx as 4.00 out of 5
Previous macs of the Week
Mac of the Week - Performa 6300
Mac of the Week - PowerMac 8600
