The Power Macintosh 7300 (also sold with server software as the Apple Workgroup Server 7350) 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 February 1997 to November 1997. It was introduced with 166, 180 and 200 MHz CPUs in February 1997 alongside the

Power Macintosh 8600 The Power Macintosh 8600 is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from February 1997 to February 1998. It was introduced alongside the Power Macintosh 7300 and Power Macintosh 9600, 9600 with a PowerPC 600#Power ...

and 9600. The 7300 replaced both the

Power Macintosh 7200 The Power Macintosh 7200 (sold as a Power Macintosh 8200 in Europe) is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from August 1995 to February 1997. The 90 MHz model was sold in Japan as the Power Macintosh 7215, and ...

and 7600, replacing the only remaining first-generation

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 ...

system in Apple's lineup. MacUser Magazine's review says the 7300 "offers the most satisfying improvement" of the new machines introduced in early 1997 due to a significant performance jump from its predecessors, as well as offering 50% faster CD-ROM and hard disk space. The 7300 was replaced by the

Power Macintosh G3 The Power Macintosh G3 (also sold with additional software as the Macintosh Server G3) is a series of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from November 1997 to August 1999. It represented Apple's first step towa ...

desktop model in November 1997. Workgroup Server 7350 continued to be sold until March 1998 when the Macintosh Server G3 was introduced.

Hardware

The 7300 uses the "

Outrigger An outrigger is a projecting structure on a boat, with specific meaning depending on types of vessel. Outriggers may also refer to legs on a wheeled vehicle that are folded out when it needs stabilization, for example on a crane that lifts ...

" case first introduced with the

Power Macintosh 7500 The Power Macintosh 7500 is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from August 1995 to May 1996. The 7500 was introduced alongside the Power Macintosh 7200 and 8500 at the 1995 MacWorld Expo in Boston. Apple re ...

, but features an enhanced

PowerPC 604e 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 ...

CPU. However, it no longer came with the video in capability the 7600 had, which possibly accounts for the fact that this is the only time that Apple used a lower model number for an upgraded model. Apart from that, the 7300 is more closely related to the 7600 than to the 7200, with features such as a processor daughtercard and interleaved RAM. The 7300/180 model was also available in a "PC compatible" configuration that included a 166 MHz

Pentium Pentium is a brand used for a series of x86 architecture-compatible microprocessors produced by Intel. The original Pentium processor from which the brand took its name was first released on March 22, 1993. After that, the Pentium II and Pe ...

processor with its own RAM (up to 64 MiB) on a PCI card which also provides a PC

game port The game port is a device port that was found on IBM PC compatible and other computer systems throughout the 1980s and 1990s. It was the traditional connector for joystick input, and occasionally MIDI devices, until made obsolete by USB in the ...

. This allowed the Mac to dual-boot

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

, which was not compatible with PowerPC hardware. The ''PC Compatible'' Macs were effectively two computers combined in to one. Like the Power Macintosh 7600, the 7300 series utilizes 168 pin DRAM DIMMS, allowing for a total of 8 to be added for 1024 MiB in total. It utilized VRAM SIMMS and allowed 4 units to be added for a total of 4 MiB, providing output at a resolution of up to 1152x870 at 24-bit and 1280x1024 at 16-bit. Additionally, it includes 3 PCI slots allowing the addition of third party cards, including graphics cards. A 2 GB SCSI hard drive was included as standard, on an internal 10 MiB/s SCSI bus, with an external 5 MiB/s SCSI port on the back panel.

Models

Introduced February 13, 1997: * Power Macintosh 7300/166: Sold in Europe and Asia. Introduced February 17, 1997: * Power Macintosh 7300/180 * Power Macintosh 7300/200 Introduced April 4, 1997: * Power Macintosh 7300/180 PC Compatible Introduced April 21, 1997: * Workgroup Server 7350/180

Timeline

References

External links

Power Macintosh 7300
at apple-history.com * Power Macintos

an

at EveryMac.com {{Apple hardware before 1998 7300 7300 Macintosh desktops Computer-related introductions in 1997