12/11/06

Why the IIcx:

I figure I'll get e-mail about my selection from people that generally fall into two groups. The first group is either too young or hasn't been around the Mac long enough to even know what a IIcx is. They'll be the ones asking me why I didn't select an 8500 or some early beige G3. The other group is well aware of the IIcx, and will wonder what madness made me choose how I did. It's not a stretch to say the IIcx wasn't the favorite of the Mac II line. In fact, I can hear the IIci people sharpening their knives as I type this!

The reality is that it was a choice born from nostalgia. I was raised in a household that first had a Mac 128K, then a Plus, and then a IIcx. I've considered a lot of different Macs for this challenge, and although there were certainly better choices than the IIcx, my heart won out and here we are. Why not the Plus? Certainly just about anything I'm about to do on the IIcx can be done on the Plus, albeit a little slower. That pretty much came down to my desire to have the ADB keyboard and mouse, as I preferred the feel of the Apple Extended Keyboards. The IIcx seemed to fit the bill nicely, and I purchased one from a professor at a University in Indiana.

About the IIcx:

For those of you unfortunate enough to not know much about the IIcx, it was released in the middle of 1989 as a smaller and less expensive alternative to the IIx. It was essentially a IIx in a smaller case, with three Nubus slots instead of six. Otherwise, like the IIx, it had a 16MHz 68030 and a 16MHz 68882 FPU. For more information on the IIcx, LowEndMac has a lot of good information if you're interested.

My particular IIcx has 8MB of RAM and a 40MB hard drive. It's actually a pretty ideal configuration, as System 6 will not recognize more than 8MB of RAM anyway (without 3rd party help, at least), and 40MB is plenty of hard drive space for my purposes. The case is quite yellowed, but I'm happy because my IIcx is one of the early ones with the socketed 68030 processors, which is what I had while growing up. It also has the graphics card that most IIcx's shipped with - the 8-bit Apple High Resolution "Toby" card. It'll give me up to 256 colors at a 640x480 resolution. The IIcx will accept any 24-bit card, but the reality is that the 16MHz '030 is not well suited to 24-bit graphics to begin with, so the Toby card is fine by me. In fact, for speed reasons, I imagine that I'll run the IIcx in 4-bit (16 color) mode most of the time anyway.

Otherwise, my IIcx is pretty much as you'd see it in 1989. An Apple external 800KB floppy drive sits to the side, and a Sony 15" color monitor sits on top. At the moment, I have an Apple Extended Keyboard II attached to it, and interestingly, a black Mac TV mouse. I intend on changing those out with the original Extended Keyboard, and the older boxy ADB mouse. Also on the way is in Apple Ethernet card, which will make it easier to load programs without having to use the floppy drive, as well as allow me to access the internet. As far as I can tell, everything works just fine, and both floppies eject without a fuss.

Why System 6:

The IIcx is capable of running System 6.0.3 through 7.5.5. It has a processor that straddles the line between being a slower System 7 box or a pretty quick System 6 machine. I chose to forgo System 7 features in favor of the speed of System 6. There's also something to be said about running the IIcx with the OS that it shipped with (or as close to it as possible) to preserve the computing experience. At the moment I'm running 6.0.8 on the IIcx, mainly because it's easily available and there's far less difference between 6.0.3 and 6.0.8 and that of 6.0.8 and System 7.

If you want to learn more about System 6, the System 6 Heaven has a lot of good information.