The Macintosh Quadra 700 was 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 October 1991 to March 1993. It was introduced alongside the Quadra 900 as the first computers in the Quadra series using

Motorola 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 ...

processor, in order to compete with

IBM compatible IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM Personal Computer, IBM PC, IBM Personal Computer XT, XT, and IBM Personal Computer/AT, AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such ...

PCs powered by the Intel i486DX. The Quadra 700 is also the first computer from Apple to be housed in a

mini-tower In personal computing, a tower is a form of desktop computer whose case height is much greater than its width, thus having the appearance of an upstanding tower block, as opposed to a traditional desktop or "pizza box" computer whose width is gre ...

form factor, which in 1991 was becoming a popular alternative to standard desktop-on-monitor cases that were common through the 1980s. The Quadra 700 was considerably more popular than the Quadra 900 (succeeded after six months by the very similar

Quadra 950 The Macintosh Quadra 950 (also sold with additional software as the Workgroup Server 95) is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from March 1992 to October 1995. It replaced the Quadra 900 that was introduced se ...

) that it was sold alongside, due to the 900/950 being expensive and bulky with its full tower case.The Quadra 700 originally had a list price of US$5,700, but had dropped to under $4,700 for a base model by the time its replacement, the Macintosh Quadra 800, went on sale in early 1993. The

Centris 650 The Macintosh Quadra 650, originally sold as the Macintosh Centris 650, is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from February 1993 to September 1994. The Centris 650 was introduced alongside the smaller Centris ...

, also introduced around the same time, offered similar performance to the Quadra 700 but in a desktop-style case with more expansion options while its entry-level configuration had a price point closer to $3,000.

Hardware

Form factor: The Quadra 700 case is largely the same as the popular Macintosh IIcx and

Macintosh IIci The Macintosh IIci is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from September 1989 to February 1993. It is a more powerful version of the Macintosh IIcx, released earlier that year, and shares the same compa ...

models; this made it possible for users of those models to upgrade to the more powerful Quadra 700. Users sometimes placed the older case vertically in a mini-tower orientation and the Quadra 700 recognized this by having the Apple logo and model name printed in the vertical orientation. The IIcx and IIci were designed to allow their rubber feet to be moved to the side for vertical orientation as well. CPU:

@ 25 MHz. The clock oscillator runs at 50 MHz; replacing it with a faster oscillator (up to 74 MHz) results in a performance increase. Memory: The Quadra 700 could be upgraded to 68

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 of RAM, which with its 25 MHz processor made it a very useful computer for scientific or design work. Expansion: Two

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 and a Processor Direct Slot; processor upgrades from Apple and other manufacturers were sold for the 700 when the PowerPC 601 accelerator cards came along in 1994. Storage: 80 and 160 MB hard disks were available at launch. A faster 230 MB unit became available in mid-1992 when the

was introduced. Video: Like the IIci, the 700 has integrated graphics built into the system board but, unlike the earlier model, it uses dedicated VRAM for its video memory. The onboard video came with 512 kilobytes of VRAM soldered to the motherboard, and supported resolutions up to 1152x870. The video memory was expandable to 2 megabytes via six 256-kilobyte 100ns VRAM SIMMs in each of the VRAM SIMM expansion slots on the motherboard. Expanding the video memory to 2 megabytes allowed for 24-bit (Millions) color at resolutions up to 832x624. Sound: 8-bit stereo, 22 KHz. Ports: I/O was available with dual serial ports, two ADB ports, an AAUI ethernet port, mono audio in, stereo audio out, and a DB-25

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 ...

connector. The Quadra 700, along with the 900, are the first Macintosh models with built-in support for

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

networking. Operating system: System 7.0.1 was included as standard. This is the earliest Macintosh model to support Mac OS 8. The Quadra 700 uses tantalum capacitors on the logic board, rather than electrolytic capacitors which can leak fluid.

In popular culture

* The Quadra 700, alongside an

SGI Crimson The IRIS Crimson (code-named ''Diehard2'') is a Silicon Graphics (SGI) computer released in 1992. It is the world's first 64-bit workstation. Crimson is a member of Silicon Graphics's SGI IRIS 4D series of deskside systems; it is also known as th ...

running IRIX, was featured in the film ''

Jurassic Park ''Jurassic Park'', later also referred to as ''Jurassic World'', is an American science fiction media franchise created by Michael Crichton and centered on a disastrous attempt to create a theme park of cloned dinosaurs. It began in 1990 when ...

'' (1993).

Timeline

References

External links

{{Apple hardware before 1998 700

Quadra 700 The Macintosh Quadra 700 was a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from October 1991 to March 1993. It was introduced alongside the Macintosh Quadra 900, Quadra 900 as the first computers in the Macintosh Quadra, ...

Computer-related introductions in 1991