The Power Macintosh 6400 (also sold under variations of the name Performa 6400) 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 August 1996 to August 1997. It is the only

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

mini-tower system to be branded as a

Performa The Macintosh Performa is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Inc., Apple Computer, Inc. from 1992 to 1997. The Performa brand re-used models from Apple's Macintosh Quadra, Quadra, Macintosh Centris, Centri ...

, and alongside the

Performa 6360 The Power Macintosh 6200 (also sold under variations of the name Performa 6200, Performa 6300 and Power Macintosh 6300) is a series of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from May 1995 to July 1997. The 6200 is ...

was the last new Performa-branded model introduced by Apple. The 6400 and its Performa variants were discontinued in favor of the uniformly-named Power Macintosh 6500 in August 1997.

Hardware

Logic board: The logic board, code-named "Alchemy", is shared with the

Power Macintosh 5400 The Power Macintosh 5400 (also sold under variations of the name Performa 5400) is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from April 1996 to March 1998. The 5400 is an all-in-one computer with an integrated moni ...

all-in-one and

desktop models. Alchemy is generally believed to be superior to its 5200/6200 predecessors since it had a 64-bit data path to main memory. CPU: All 6400 models use a

PowerPC 603ev The PowerPC 600 family was the first family of PowerPC processors built. They were designed at the Somerset facility in Austin, Texas, jointly funded and staffed by engineers from IBM and Motorola as a part of the AIM alliance. Somerset was opened ...

processor that is soldered to the computer's logic board and cooled by a fanless heat-sink. Though initially considered non-upgradable, CPU upgrades did come to market that overrode the fixed CPU by use of the Level 2 cache slot. Sound: The new "InstaTower" case features an integrated

subwoofer A subwoofer (or sub) is a loudspeaker designed to reproduce low-pitched audio frequencies known as bass and sub-bass, lower in frequency than those which can be (optimally) generated by a woofer. The typical frequency range for a subwoofer is ...

speaker and supports SRS surround-sound. A knob on the back of the case controls the bass level of the subwoofer; this knob only works if external speakers are connected, otherwise the internal speaker provides full sound range. There are two audio output jacks, one on the front and one on the back. Headphones plugged into the front jack will disable the internal speaker and rear jack. Expansion: There are two PCI expansion slots as well as a dedicated communications slot that supports AAUI, Ethernet and fast modem cards. The communication slot is not compatible with similar slots on other Macintosh computers.

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 ...

cards are not supported. Operating system: The Performa 6400/180 and 6400/200 were shipped with System 7.5.3 Revision 2.1; this particular release was specific to these machines as there were stability problems with System 7.5.3 Release 2 on the new hardware, especially with the video card and transferring files over LocalTalk.

Models

All Performa models shipped with

SurfWatch SurfWatch, Inc. was a Los Altos, CA-based company which pioneered the first widely available filtering software that allowed users to block explicit content on the Internet. By disallowing computers from accessing specified sites and by screening fo ...

, a product from

Spyglass, Inc. Spyglass, Inc. was an Internet software company. It was founded in 1990, in Champaign, Illinois, as an offshoot of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and later moved to Naperville, Illinois. Spyglass was created to commercialize an ...

that provides adult content filtering capability;

content-control software An Internet filter is software that restricts or controls the content an Internet user is capable to access, especially when utilized to restrict material delivered over the Internet via the Web, Email, or other means. Content-control software det ...

was a significant issue at the time due to the recent passage of the

Communications Decency Act The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark case ''Reno v. ACLU'', the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck ...

in the United States. Introduced August 5, 1996: *Performa 6400/180: North American consumer model, 180 MHz CPU. *Performa 6400/200: North American consumer model, 200 MHz CPU. *Performa 6400/200 Video Editing Edition: The Performa 6400/200 with an Avid Cinema video I/O card and video editing software, and Introduced October 1, 1996: *Power Macintosh 6400/200: Sold in the North American and British education markets. $2,200 USD. Introduced November 12, 1996: *Performa 6410: Identical to the Performa 6400/180, sold in Europe and Asia. *Performa 6420: Identical to the Performa 6400/200, sold in Europe and Asia.

Timeline

References

External links

The 6400 Zone
a 6400 and 6500-specific resource site
Performa 6400
at Low End Mac
Performa 6400
at apple-history.com {{Apple hardware before 1998 6400 Macintosh Performa 6400 Macintosh towers Macintosh case designs Computer-related introductions in 1996