The first generation of Power Macintoshes includes those machines which used some combination of Texas Instruments' NuBus and Apple's PDS (both in LC and non-LC varieties) slots to provide upgrades, rather than the industry standard PCI slots. This encompasses every Power Macintosh introduced from March of 1994 until May of 1995, as well as certain models introduced up until November of 1996 for desktops, and October of 1997 for laptops.
These first generation machines were supplanted by the second generation Power Macintoshes, which replaced the proprietary expansion buses with PCI, and which also saw the move from the use of a special Apple boot PROM to another industry standard: Open Firmware.
A chronological listing of first generation Power Macintoshes, along with year of introduction and processor type, is as follows:
- Power Macintosh 6100 (1994, PowerPC 601) (Also released as the Performa 6110CD, 6112CD, 6115CD, 6117CD, and 6118CD)
- Power Macintosh 7100 (1994, PowerPC 601)
- Power Macintosh 8100 (1994, PowerPC 601)
- Workgroup Server 6150 (1994, PowerPC 601)
- Workgroup Server 7150 (1994, PowerPC 601)
- Workgroup Server 8150 (1994, PowerPC 601)
- Power Macintosh 5200 LC (1995, PowerPC 603) (Also released as the Performa 5200CD, 5210CD, 5215CD, and 5220CD)
- Power Macintosh 6200 (1995, PowerPC 603) (Also released as the Performa Macintosh Performa 6200CD, 6205CD, 6210CD, 6214CD, 6216CD, 6218CD, 6220CD, 6230CD, 6260CD, 6290CD, 6300CD, 6310CD, 6320CD, and Power Macintosh 6300. The latter six machines utilised a PowerPC 603e CPU)
- Power Macintosh 5300 LC (1995, PowerPC 603e) (Also released as the Performa 5300CD and 5320CD)
- PowerBook 5300 (1995, PowerPC 603e) (Also released as the PowerBook 5300cs, 5300c, and 5000ce)
- PowerBook Duo 2300c (1995, PowerPC 603e)
- Power Macintosh 5260 (1996, PowerPC 603e) (Also released as the Performa 5260, 5260CD, 5270CD, and 5280)
- PowerBook 1400cs (1996, PowerPC 603e) (Also released as the PowerBook 1400c)
Three PowerPC-era clones can be considered to be members of the first generation of PowerMacs: Radius' System 100 and System 81 machines, and PowerComputing's original Power machine, all of which use the same ColdFusion motherboard as found in the Power Macintosh 8100.
Index: Power Macintosh
Next: Second generation Power Macintosh
Sources:
- http://www.apple-history.com
- http://www.info.apple.com/support/applespec.legacy/
- http://netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/models.html
- http://www.lowendmac.com/clones/index.shtml
- My own experience fiddling with these things
Thanks to Transitional Man for pointing out to me that Radius made 8100 clones.