Performa Month: The First Updates

Last time, we took a look at the very first Performa models that rolled off the line. Those machines shipped in the fall of 1992. By 1993, Apple was ready to revise the lineup:

Performa 250

The Performa 200 had been a rebadged Macintosh Classic II, so for the 250, Apple rebadged the Macintosh Color Classic.

The Color Classic would prove to be the last major update to the compact Mac line, and to mark the beginning of the end, Apple got weird.

Internally, the Color Classic was basically an LC II, complete with a Motorola 68030, with the machine built around a color 10-inch CRT, running at 512 x 384 resolution, slightly different from the 512 x 342 resolution previous compact Macs supported.¹

However, the display’s weird resolution had a trick up its sleeve: it could be switched into a secondary mode that let it run at 560 x 384. In conjunction with its LC-style PDS card slot, this meant that the Color Classic supported the Apple IIe card. You can see this card in action in this 8-Bit Guy video:

All of this came to the Performa line with the 250. The Color Classic was sold worldwide, but the 250 was seemingly limited to the UK and Australia. Both featured a 16 MHz 68030 processor (on a slower 16-bit data bus like previous machines), 4 MB of RAM, and either a 40 MB, an 80 MB, or a 160 MB hard drive.

Performa 405/410/430

The mid-range Performa wasn’t as big of an update, with Apple replacing the old 400 with three models: the 405, 410, and 430.

These three machines shared the same core specs as the 400 before them:

• 16 MHz Motorola 68030 microprocessor
• 16-bit data bus
• 4 MB RAM standard
• 10 MB support (read more about RAM upgrades in these machines here)
• No FPU
• LC-style PDS slot
• Apple SuperDrive 1.4 MB Floppy Disk Drive

So, what do all of those different model names refer to? Slightly different hard drive specs, with prices that don’t make total sense in hindsight:

Model:	HDD Size:	Price:
405	80 MB	$1,300
410	80 MB	$1,050
430	120 MB	$1,500

If you were annoyed that the black MacBook’s only tech upgrade was the size of its hard drive, be comforted knowing that you weren’t the first to feel that way.

To clarify that chart a little, I should point out that the Performa 410 replaced the Performa 405 in the fall of 1993. It seems that the only difference between the two models was that the 410 came with 512 KB of VRAM, while the 405 came with 256 KB, but that detail isn’t consistent across the sources I have come across detailing these machines.

(The higher VRAM amount meant a machine could support 256 colors, up from the standard 16.)

Performa 450

Image via oldcrap.org

Rounding out the February 1993 updates was the Performa 450. Unlike its siblings, the 450 ran at a faster 25 MHz, up from the 16 MHz Motorola 68030 found in the Performas 400, 405, 410, and 430.

There was more to this $1,800 machine than the faster CPU, as this computer was based on the LC III. Russell Ito covered the LC III in the April 1993 edition of MacUser, writing:

When Apple introduced the LC II, it made only one basic change to the original LC: It swapped a 68030 processor for the original’s 68020. The result was – well, an LC with a 68030 processor. The swap made no difference in performance, and except for the option of running virtual memory, there really wasn’t much to be gained from upgrading to the new machine.

With the LC III, however, the story is a little different. Apple has again made a simple chip swap, but it’ s also made another significant change: In addition to having a faster processor, the LC III is the first low-end machine since the SE/30 to sport a 32-bit wide data bus. The result is significantly better performance.

Weirdly, the LC III and Color Classic came out at the same time, so that article covers both machines that would become the Performas that we’re discussing now. I love the artwork that ran with the article:

This upgrade also brought a higher RAM ceiling of 36 MB, a standard 512K of VRAM, and an updated LC PDS slot. In practice, the LC III/Performa 450 was twice as fast as the LC II and its related Performa siblings.

That performance came with a cost, as the Performa 450 cost $1,800 at launch.

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