The Macintosh Quadra 950 (also sold with additional software as the Workgroup Server 95) is a

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...

designed, manufactured and sold by

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

from March 1992 to October 1995. It replaced the

Quadra 900 The Macintosh Quadra 900 is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from October 1991 to May 1992. It was introduced alongside the Quadra 700 as the first computers in the Quadra family of Macintosh computers usi ...

that was introduced several months earlier, increasing the CPU clock rate of its

68040 The Motorola 68040 ("''sixty-eight-oh-forty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 series, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060, skipping the 68050. In keeping with general Motorola nami ...

CPU from to , and improving the graphics support. The two computers were otherwise identical, including the price. With a Macintosh Processor Upgrade Card installed, this computer is known as the Power Macintosh 950. In 1993, the 950 was overtaken in performance by the less expensive Quadra 800 and 840AV. The newer Quadras had the addition of interleaved RAM, as well as an enhanced video system and

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...

bus. However, their more compact ( mini-tower) case offered less expansion capability, so the 950 (due to its mid-tower case allowing 6 slots to be supported) was kept in continued production for the server market, outliving the 800 and 840AV. Also, the Quadra 800 was not capable of operating at 24-bit color, regardless of how much VRAM is installed or whether an external video card is used, while the Quadra 900 and 950 were capable of 24-bit color. The Quadra 950 was replaced by the

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

-based

Power Macintosh 9500 The Power Macintosh 9500 (sold as Power Macintosh 9515 in Europe and Asia) is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from June 1995 to February 1997. It is powered by a PowerPC 604 processor, a second-generation ...

in May 1995, with sales continuing until October. It was the last Macintosh Quadra sold by Apple, and one of the last 68k models to be discontinued, due to its high RAM capacity and large number of

NuBus NuBus (pron. 'New Bus') is a 32-bit parallel computer bus, originally developed at MIT and standardized in 1987 as a part of the NuMachine workstation project. The first complete implementation of the NuBus was done by Western Digital for th ...

slots. The Workgroup Server 95 was succeeded by the Workgroup Server 9150.

Hardware

The logic board has five

slots and a

Processor Direct Slot A processor direct slot (PDS) is a slot incorporated into many older Macintosh models that allowed direct access to the signal pins of a CPU, similar to the functionality of a local bus in PCs. This would result in much higher speeds than having ...

, but due to the positioning of the PDS it is not possible to use one of the NuBus slots when a PDS card is installed. The NuBus-90 standard is partially supported, allowing for cards to run at 20 MHz, and two of the slots provide 25 watts of power instead of the usual 15 watts. The logic board has 1 MB of on-board video RAM, with 4 SIMM slots that allow for upgrading to 2 MB. The 950 includes a

key Key or The Key may refer to: Common meanings * Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm * Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock * Key (map ...

to limit access to various subsystems depending on the computer's use environment. The key switch has three positions labelled OFF, ON and SECURE. The OFF position immediately cuts the power and prevented the computer from being powered on. The ON position allows the computer to operate normally. The SECURE position was intended for use as a server – power was always applied in this position. If the computer lost power, it immediately starts up when power was restored. Also, this position disables the keyboard, mouse and floppy disk drive. The Workgroup Server 95 models include the "Workgroup Server PDS Card", which provides three capabilities: Two SCSI controllers with two internal SCSI connectors (plus one external connector); a DMS SCSI control chip that reduces I/O load on the main CPU; and 128 KB of SRAM which is used as an

L2 cache A CPU cache is a hardware cache used by the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer to reduce the average cost (time or energy) to access data from the main memory. A cache is a smaller, faster memory, located closer to a processor core, which ...

. There are three additional slots that provide the ability further expand the L2 cache to 512 KB.

Models

The Quadra 950 was announced on March 18, with dealers receiving machines around May 18. Introduced May 18, 1992: * Macintosh Quadra 950: 33 MHz 68040 CPU. $7,200 for a floppy drive only model, $8,499 with a 230 MB HDD, and $9,199 with a 400 MB HDD. 8 MB of memory was standard everywhere except for some European countries, where the standard included memory was 4 MB. Introduced March 22, 1993: * Workgroup Server 95: Sold in several configurations, all of which include a 33 MHz 68040 CPU and a PDS card containing a fast SCSI connection. In the United States, the configurations were split into "File and Print", and "Database" configurations: ** File/Print: 16 MB RAM, 230 MB HDD, 128 KB L2 cache. $7,589. ** File/Print: 16 MB RAM, 500 MB HDD, DDS-DC digital tape drive, 256 KB L2 cache. $10,039. ** File/Print: 32 MB RAM, 1000 MB HDD, DDS-DC digital tape drive, AppleShare Pro, 512 KB L2 cache. $12,839. ** Database: 32 MB RAM, 230 MB and 500 MB HDDs, DDS-DC digital tape drive, 256 KB L2 cache. $11,319. ** Database: 48 MB RAM, 230 MB and 1000 MB HDDs, DDS-DC digital tape drive, 512 KB L2 cache. $12,929.

Specifications

* Processor: Motorola 68040 * Processor Speed: 33 MHz * Processor Cache: 8 KB L1 * Processor Bus Speed: 33 MHz * Hard Drive: 230 MB - 1 GB * Media drives: 2x CD-ROM drive, 1.44 MB floppy drive, optional DDSDC drive * Software: Mac OS 7.1 - 8.1 * Logicboard RAM: None * Maximum RAM: 256 MB * Type of RAM: 30-pin SIMM (16 slots) * Minimum RAM Speed: 80 ns * Interleaving Support: No * Display Connection: DB-15 * Graphics Card: None * Graphics memory: 1 - 2 MB (four sockets) * Expansion Slots: 5 - NuBus, 1 - PDS * Hard Drive Bus: SCSI * Backup Battery: 3.6 V Lithium * Max Watts: 303 W * Ports: AAUI-15 Ethernet, 1 ADB, DB-25

, 2 Serial, 3.5-mm mono input jack, 3.5-mm stereo output jack

References

External links

EveryMac.com Quadra 950 Specs

Quadra 950 at Lowendmac
{{Apple hardware before 1998

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