The PowerBook 170 was released by
Apple Inc.
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 ...
in 1991 along with the
PowerBook 100
The PowerBook 100 is a portable subnotebook personal computer designed and manufactured by Sony for Apple Computer and introduced on October 21, 1991, at the COMDEX computer expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. Priced at US$2,500 with external flo ...
and the
PowerBook 140
The PowerBook 140 was released in the first line of PowerBooks. It was the mid-range PowerBook, between the low-end 100 and the high-end 170. As with the PowerBook 170, and unlike the 100, this PowerBook featured an internal floppy drive. Coden ...
. Identical in form factor to the 140, it was the high end of the original
PowerBook line featuring a faster 25 MHz
Motorola 68030
The Motorola 68030 ("''sixty-eight-oh-thirty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 family. It was released in 1987. The 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general ...
processor with
68882
The Motorola 68881 and Motorola 68882 are floating-point units (FPUs) used in some computer systems in conjunction with Motorola's 32-bit 68020 or 68030 microprocessors. These coprocessors are external chips, designed before floating point math bec ...
floating point unit
Floating may refer to:
* a type of dental work performed on horse teeth
* use of an isolation tank
* the guitar-playing technique where chords are sustained rather than scratched
* ''Floating'' (play), by Hugh Hughes
* Floating (psychological phe ...
(FPU) and a more expensive and significantly better quality
active matrix Active matrix is a type of addressing scheme used in flat panel displays. In this method of switching individual elements (pixels), each pixel is attached to a transistor and capacitor ''actively'' maintaining the pixel state while other pixels ar ...
display. It was replaced by the
PowerBook 180 in 1992.
Features
Though the PowerBook 100 is the direct descendant of the
Macintosh Portable
Macintosh Portable is a laptop designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from September 1989 to October 1991. It is the first battery-powered Macintosh, which garnered significant excitement from critics, but sales to customers ...
based on its internal architecture, the 170 is the Portable's direct successor. A no-compromise, portable version of the desktop Macintosh, the 170 includes virtually all of the features incorporated in the original Portable, as on a comparable desktop of the day, but in a smaller and sleeker case design. Initiated as a more suitable replacement for the Portable, the only features the first generation 170 did not include in its reduced space were an external video port and internal
ROM
Rom, or ROM may refer to:
Biomechanics and medicine
* Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient
* Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac
* ...
and
PDS
PD, P.D., or Pd may refer to:
Arts and media
* ''People's Democracy'' (newspaper), weekly organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
* ''The Plain Dealer'', a Cleveland, Ohio, US newspaper
* Post Diaspora, a time frame in the ''Honorverse'' ...
expansion slots. Indeed, Apple canceled its own external monitor adapter for the Portable shortly after it was announced, instead relying on numerous third party providers for solutions (still applicable to the 170) and FCC regulations of the day prevented any real use of the PDS expansion slot, by restricting any external connections to it. The
PowerBook 180 replacement would address external video less than a year later, but expansion slots would not return to Macintosh portables until three years later with the
PowerBook 500
The PowerBook 500 series (codenamed ''Blackbird'', which it shared with the older Macintosh IIfx) is a range of Apple Macintosh PowerBook portable computers first introduced by Apple Computer with the 540c model on May 16, 1994. It was the firs ...
series, in the form of
PCMCIA
The Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) was a group of computer hardware manufacturers, operating under that name from 1989 to 2009. Starting with the PCMCIA card in 1990 (the name later simplified to ''PC Card''), i ...
cards. The 170 also dropped the external floppy disk port (only the
Macintosh Classic II
The Macintosh Classic II (also sold as the Performa 200) is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from October 1991 to September 1993. Like the Macintosh SE/30, the Classic II was powered by a 16 MHz Moto ...
still had one) and made no provision for a second internal floppy disk port (a feature also missing from the rest of the desktop line by this time). Overall, it had roughly the equivalent features and performance of the powerful
Macintosh IIci desktop in a laptop.
The 170 was introduced with
System 7.0.1, specifically to support new power management and other unique hardware features. However, due to the RAM prices in 1991, combined with its already high list price, the 170, like the 100 and 140, only had 2
megabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Its recommended unit symbol is MB. The unit prefix ''mega'' is a multiplier of (106) in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one megabyte is one million bytes o ...
s (MB) RAM soldered directly onto the logicboard, which critics felt was restrictive for use with System 7. Further, since localized versions of System 7 were not yet available worldwide, the Japanese
6.0.7 KanjiTalk KanjiTalk was the name given by Apple to its Japanese language localization of the classic Mac OS. It consisted of translated applications, a set of Japanese fonts, and a Japanese input method called Kotoeri. The software was sold and supported onl ...
version of Apple's System software was modified to support all three new PowerBooks and released as version J-6.0.7.1. As a result, this version was unofficially adapted for use with the standard 6.0.7 allowing many users to run System 6 on their PowerBooks, rather than upgrading on-board RAM with an expensive proprietary RAM card (a 6 MB card was
US $
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
899).
The 170 shipped with an additional 2 MB RAM card already installed, so it was less of a problem; however 4 MB was the minimum recommended RAM size for use with System 7 and not practical for use with a
RAM Disk
Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:
Animals
* A male sheep
* Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish
People
* Ram (given name)
* Ram (surname)
* Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director
* RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch
* Ra ...
, a battery power-saving feature.
Design
Though released at the same time as the
PowerBook 140
The PowerBook 140 was released in the first line of PowerBooks. It was the mid-range PowerBook, between the low-end 100 and the high-end 170. As with the PowerBook 170, and unlike the 100, this PowerBook featured an internal floppy drive. Coden ...
and
PowerBook 100
The PowerBook 100 is a portable subnotebook personal computer designed and manufactured by Sony for Apple Computer and introduced on October 21, 1991, at the COMDEX computer expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. Priced at US$2,500 with external flo ...
, both the 140 and 170 were designed entirely by Apple, while the 100 was being miniaturized by Sony from the full-sized
Macintosh Portable
Macintosh Portable is a laptop designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from September 1989 to October 1991. It is the first battery-powered Macintosh, which garnered significant excitement from critics, but sales to customers ...
. As a result, the 170 represents the very first PowerBook created by Apple, with the 100 actually representing the first design improvements, though its internal architecture is the oldest in the series.
Specifications
*Processor:
Motorola 68030
The Motorola 68030 ("''sixty-eight-oh-thirty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 family. It was released in 1987. The 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general ...
CPU and
Motorola 68882
The Motorola 68881 and Motorola 68882 are floating-point units (FPUs) used in some computer systems in conjunction with Motorola's 32-bit 68020 or 68030 microprocessors. These coprocessors are external chips, designed before floating point math bec ...
FPU, both running at 25 MHz
*RAM: 2 MB on board, shipped with 4 MB, can be expanded to 6 or 8 MB
*ROM: 1 MB
*
Hard disk
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...
: 40-80 MB
*
Floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...
: 1.44 MB Superdrive
*Systems supported:
System J-6.0.7.1,
System 7.0.1-
Mac OS 7
System 7, codenamed "Big Bang", and also known as Mac OS 7, is a graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers and is part of the classic Mac OS series of operating systems. It was introduced on May 13, 1991, by Apple ...
.6.1
*
ADB: Yes (1 port)
*Serial: Yes (2 ports)
*Modem: optional (used for this model's expansion port)
*Screen: active matrix, 1bpp 640×400
Timeline
References
External links
Macintosh PowerBook 170 technical specificationsat apple.com.
{{Apple hardware before 1998
170
68k Macintosh computers