Upgrading a
Macintosh IIfx

The IIfx was the final variation on this form factor from Apple. Preceeding it were the Macintosh II and Macintosh IIx which shared the case but used motherboards with different processors. The Macintosh II used a 16 MHZ 68020 cpu and also included the 68881 floating point unit while the Macintosh IIx shipped with a 16 MHZ 68030 cpu and 68882 floating point unit.

The computer in the photograph is a IIfx motherboard mounted in a Mac II case. This computer used a 40 MHZ 68030 cpu and a 68882 floating point unit. This Macintosh also used special 64 pin simms which were never used in any other Macs and were different from the 30 pin simms found in the older Mac II and IIx.

On all Macintosh II computers the hard drives were SCSI and mounted on special trays. Most of the Macintosh II's I owned had 5 1/4" hard drives with a whopping 40 MB capacity!

Here is a Quantum 40 MB hard drive mounted in my Macintosh IIx.

All of the Macintosh II computers had six nubus card slots. One slot must be used for a video card since there was no on board video. Another slot was usually taken up by an ethernet card that supported coax or 10T. The third card in this photo is a 4 port Hurdler card which was used by many of us for multiple line BBSes. In this case I ran a FirstClass based BBS here in Toronto called NewsRoom. Which originally started out on a Macintosh Classic!

At the time there was quite a variety of video cards from Apple, SuperMac and Radius. Pictured is a high end SuperMAC accelerated video card and below it is an Apple card with lower resolution.

At one end of the case was a massive Sony power supply the same part was used in the Macintosh II and IIx so you

Compared to todays Macs there weren't a lot of ports on the rear of these computers. For the time though this was a common layout, which was speaker plug, dual ADB ports, a modem and a printer port plus any nubus cards.

The primary method of inputing data to Macs of this vintage was a floppy disk. All of the Macintosh II cases and motherboards had provision for dual floppy drives though most shipped with only the one in the right bay. On the IIfx a 1.4 MB floppy drive was used.

If you wanted to free up desk space or stash your Mac II on the floor you could opt for these Apple computer stands which allowed the Macintosh II to be placed vertically.

For reference I'm including a photo of my Macintosh II. Note that this has a single floppy drive with the second slot covered by a plastic plug.

Above is a photo of my Macintosh II's motherboard of note are the dual 1/2 AA pram batteries. Incredibly these two batteries still had a bit of a charge in them after almost 20 years! I would highly recommend removing these batteries however as I have had one leak in an SE/30 with the electrolyte destroying the motherboard. This particular motherboard has had the battery holders retrofitted on a daughtercard. On my Macintosh II the two pram batteries have pigtails which are soldiered directly to the motherboard.

These Macs represented a significant step up in Macintosh evolution since the previous versions were compact Macs which had the built in 9" screen and limited expandability.

Comments? Feel free to e-mail me at kevino@newsroom.net.