Personal computer
The original Macintosh: a 68000, a built-in monochrome display, and a Toolbox ROM holding the routines that drew the interface.
A Macintosh 128K in the Apple Museum in Prague, with the keyboard and mouse it was sold with.
The compact Macintosh shares its small pool of memory with the monochrome display, so the picture on screen and the program drawing it compete for the same chips. Its Toolbox ROM holds the interface routines and cannot be written to, which is why it is counted apart from working memory.
| Component | Role | Count | Clock | Capacity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Motorola 68000 | Main CPU | 1 | 7.8336 MHz Nominal clock | — |
| Macintosh video subsystem | GPU | 1 | not applicable Nominal clock | — shared |
| Macintosh 128K RAM Shared with the display subsystem. | System memory | 1 | — | 128 KiB shared |
| Macintosh 128K ROM Read-only Toolbox ROM. | System memory | 1 | — | 64 KiB |
provisional A figure marked provisional is recorded but not accepted: its evidence is unsettled. It may rely on one source, an unconfirmed announcement, or a digit read from a damaged scan. The reason appears under the figure. The catalog shows the figure but never uses it in a multiplier. How records are judged.
| Metric | Value | Evidence | Basis | Method | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clock frequency cpu | 7.8336 MHz | Confirmed | Vendor-rated | Nominal clock Stated by the vendor Apple's hardware guide states this system clock frequency for the original compact Macs. | |
| Memory capacity whole-system provisional | 131 072 B | Confirmed | Derived | Design capacity Computed here from figures the vendor stated Adds 1 memory-capacity figure obtained by design-capacity. Left out: 64 KiB of Toolbox ROM (read-only firmware, not memory the machine can write to). A total is only as trustworthy as the decision about what belongs in it, so both the terms and the exclusions are named records. | |
| Rated power consumption whole-system | 60 W | Confirmed | Vendor-rated | Rated power Stated by the vendor This is Apple's maximum-watts specification, not a measured operating draw. |
| Metric | Value | Evidence | Basis | Method | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clock frequency gpu provisional | not applicable | Not stated | Vendor-rated | Nominal clock Stated by the vendor The compact Macintosh has display timing logic, not a separate graphics processor. | |
| Memory bandwidth memory provisional | unknown No compatible memory-transfer rate is published for this shared-DRAM design. | Not stated | Vendor-rated | Theoretical peak Stated by the vendor The available sources describe shared DRAM and display fetches, but do not establish a transfer-rate figure compatible with this metric. |
| Metric | Value | Evidence | Basis | Method | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peak FP32 rate cpu provisional | not applicable The original Macintosh does not fit a 68881 floating-point coprocessor. | Not stated | Vendor-rated | Theoretical peak Stated by the vendor Provisional record for macintosh-128k-68000:peak-fp32-rate: the cited primary manual is registered, but its page-level transcription and independent review are still pending. |
| Metric | Value | Evidence | Basis | Method | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Memory capacity memory | 128 KiB | Confirmed | Vendor-rated | Design capacity Stated by the vendor Apple lists fixed logic-board memory for the Macintosh 128K. |
| Metric | Value | Evidence | Basis | Method | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Memory capacity memory | 64 KiB | Confirmed | Vendor-rated | Design capacity Stated by the vendor Apple states the ROM size in the software specifications table. |
131 072 B
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a + b + … sum v1 Adds 1 memory-capacity figure obtained by design-capacity. Left out: 64 KiB (read-only firmware, not memory the machine can write to). A total is only as trustworthy as the decision about what belongs in it, so both the terms and the exclusions are named records.
The Computer History Museum’s timeline for 1984 gives this machine two entries, one for the computer and one for the advertisement.
The computer entry records a price of $2,500, a Motorola 68000, and a package that included MacPaint, which existed to give the mouse something to do, and MacWrite, which demonstrated what the museum spells out as What You See Is What You Get word processing.
The advertisement gets the longer entry. Apple commissioned Ridley Scott to direct a one-minute commercial, which the museum says cost at least three hundred thousand dollars and which aired during Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984. It was built on George Orwell’s novel, with a man dictating to a crowd from a giant screen until a woman with a hammer destroys it, and the museum reads the Big Brother figure as a veiled reference to IBM. It was shown once. The museum’s assessment is that this was a turning point in how computers were marketed.