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:

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.

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