Technical
Internally, the iMac was a combination of the MacNC project and Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP). Although the promise of CHRP has never been fully realized, the work that Apple had done on CHRP significantly helped in the designing of the iMac.
The original iMac had a 233 MHz PowerPC G3 (PowerPC 750) chip, with 512 KB L2 cache running at 116.6 MHz, which also ran in Apple's high-end Power Macintosh line at the time, though at higher speeds, with more expensive models shipping with 1 MB L2 cache. It sold for US$1,299, and had a 4 GB hard drive, 32 MB RAM, 2 MB video RAM, and shipped with Mac OS 8.1, which was soon upgraded to Mac OS 8.5.
Parts such as the front-mounted IrDA port and the tray-loading CD-ROM drive were borrowed from the Apple laptops. Although the iMac did not officially have an expansion slot, the first versions had a slot dubbed the "mezzanine slot". It was only for internal use by Apple, although a few third-party expansion cards were released for it, such as a Voodoo II video card upgrade from 3dfx and SCSI/SCSI-TV tuner cards (iProRAID and iProRAID TV) from the German company Formac.
The mezzanine slot was removed from later iMacs, though according to an article in the German computer magazine c't, the socket can be retrofitted on revision C iMacs. The hard drive in the iMac G3 was a Quantum Fireball.
Read more about this topic: IMac G3
Famous quotes containing the word technical:
“The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus, “the whole is greater than its part;” “reaction is equal to action;” “the smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time;” and many the like propositions, which have an ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A technical objection is the first refuge of a scoundrel.”
—Heywood Broun (1888–1939)
“The best work of artists in any age is the work of innocence liberated by technical knowledge. The laboratory experiments that led to the theory of pure color equipped the impressionists to paint nature as if it had only just been created.”
—Nancy Hale (b. 1908)