mac ibm info version send follow ups to comp sys mac advocacy sorry about the header but the pnews here does not let one easily change the headers and i gave up after a year of trying this sheet is also available by ftp on sumex aim stanford edu in the info mac report as mac ibm compare txt mac ibm info version the reason for this general data sheet is to consolidate and condense the information out there so that people in both camps can be clear and accurate about what they are saying about their machines since computer technology is always changing there are always going to be points in which the sheet will be lacking or incorrect on information so please just don t say the sheet is incomplete or incorrect but also give me clear and concise information to make the needed corrections all prices are in us dollars to keep this data sheet organized please provide if possible article citations for the information provided or corrected and keep the opinions to a minimum as this is a general data sheet keep the info provided simple so i can understand what is being talked about and can explain it to others finally keep the information relevant to the section corrected for example os code in rom is software contained in hardware so no more of the but it is supported in os disk software data for the hardware section please thank you note for proper reading off line this document should be in point monaco special thanks to andrew aardvark ucs uoknor edu chihuahua charlie andrew frip wv tek com andrew klossner bell peter yale edu peter bell bcoleman hayes com bill coleman cj andrew cmu edu carl b jabido d jwa nada kth se jon wtte ephraim think com ephraim vishniac fj andrew cmu edu faisal nameer jawdat gsidler cafe eecs nwu edu gabriel sidler julian deepthnk kiwi gen nz julian harris erick krueger um cc umich edu krueger engin umich edu matt wardsgi med yale edu matt healy mark bilpin co uk mark allerton jokim jarthur claremont edu john h kim mem jhufos pha jhu edu mel martinez nan matt ksu ksu edu nan zou pwagner us oracle com s fuller iastate edu strobl gmd de wolfgang strobl jkirvin pafosu hq af mil phill ichips intel com shaikha duvm ocs drexel edu sxjcb orca alaska edu jay c beavers lewis kawecki novell com lamont catfish rtsg mot com bradley lamont cerro mbcl rutgers edu cerro joseph a mpark utmem utmem edu mel park logullo applelink apple com jeff logullo zrai hou amoco com robert irlbeck and mikew apple com for providing some of the information that made this list possible contents cpus hardware monitor support expansion operating system os number crunching networking printing the cpus note i am only showing motorola intel cpus used in mac and most ibm pc clone machines for example since apple never used the motorola and in the mac these chips are not listed years only appear with dead cpus and indicate first to last year used as a cpu cache note both ibm and mac use caches external to the cpus these external caches increase the speed of the cpu but are not a part of it in most of the present macs there are external caches built in while with ibm they are optional though machines are generally sold with them installed since there are many different external caches cpu mac and ibm scsi video disk and static ram mac each having a different effect on cpu performance and they are machine kb static ram cache in iici iifx and iivx seller cache card installed in some iicis or expansion iici cache cards go up to kb dependent i have decided to leave them out of the list note alu is industry s de facto standard for cpu bit classification ibm alu registers external cpu features cpu bus address cache notes none none segmenting none protected mode none mmu bit protected mode sx one k fpu one k fpu dx one k doubled internal clock rate dx being demoed mhz mhz and mhz planned pentium k code cisc chip with risc like k data features issue superscalar p write back bit fpu path pipelining speed specint specfp sx chip with bit internal bit external architecture and sx chips can address to mb maximum ram sl low power v sx with built in power management used mainly on laptops slc ibm v sx with a k on chip cache added john h kim as far as john h kim knows it is only used on ibm models slc neither of two chips that have this name have a fpu cyrix basically sx in sx socket with k cache and improved integer math speed ibm equivalent to the sx except it has a k on chip cache ex for dx chip runs mhz rest of machine runs at mhz pc week pc mag the latest in a line of cisc chips pc mag samples released march but machines will not be announced until at least may pc week a cpu systems and up pc mag mac alu registers external cpu features cpu bus address cache notes none mb limit code parallel processing two mmu k burst mode lc two k fpu two k mmu fpu pipelining doubled internal clock rate development discontinued in favor of branch a better fpu target superscaler pipelining cache line bursts equivalent capabilities speeds to pentium includes data and instruction code caches the lc have built in caches for both mac designs created a mb limit the has clocks an internal processor clock pclk that is x freq of external bus clock bclk which is the one used to rate the chips bradley lamont motorola data book some compilers produce programs sensitive to the pclk and so they act as if the was a clock doubler chip but this very compiler and program dependent compliers maybe written to allow programs to take consitant advantage of the s pclk in the future as it is now studies such as one in a byte article which showed and roughly dx are very dependent on the machine os and programs tested and as such are not representative of general performance motorola claims pc week as the powerpcs are to be in both ibm and mac machines i have listed them separately to eliminate redundancy they are motorola cpu risc chips powerpc alu registers external cpu features cpu bus address cache notes mc int k speed specint fp combined specfp i d mc low power mc for desktop portable systems out by end of mc high performance mc for high end machines out by st q mc int k out by mid fp combined i d pc week pc mag select venders were sent sample mc chips by motorola pc week and some nubus boards containing early samples of powerpc have been given to apple s a list developers pc week macweek mc mhz mc mhz pc week systems with versions out by mid pc week cpus comparison list as a general rule of thumb motorola chips are faster than intel chips at the same frequency dx but intel has chips at higher frequencies than motorola so this evens out the macintosh bible th ed supports the comparisons between intel and motorola chips for the and above bit vs bit chip data path address lines data address registers the mb limit on the macs brings it down to the and lower chips otherwise it would compare to the hardware segmenting vs s bit alu and these chips come have no usable built in mmu unlike their successors the hardware segmenting s protected mode is used by os and windows x the use of the hardware segmenting and their bit nature put the between the and in features and the lc s bit data path strenghthens the comparison two bit chips with mmus and protected memory a ux is at present the only mac os to use the s protected memory feature for apps system x uses this feature to protect a ram disk created by the memory control panel but this is supported only on powerbooks and quadras the color classic and lcii bit hardware data paths makes the s in them comparative to sxs sx lc same as and without the fpu used as a low cost solution for people who do not need the fpu only with programs sensitive to pclk pipelining does the lc behave like dx fpu or a dx sx two bit microprocessors with built in fpu mmu k internal cache which is implemented as two k caches in the and one in the only with programs sensitive to pclk pipelining does the behave like a dx pentium both are planned to be superscalar but both have heat problems these chips may flounder against the cheaper pc week pc mag earlier released pc week macweek pc week less leat producing degrees f for pentium pc mag and partly ported to powerpc chips powerpc powerpc this cpu line is planned to run programs from dos windows x os and mac os on top of poweropen a ux unix and later pink taligent os by using emulators or if necessary the oses themselves in a shell a k how softpc or os does dos hardware in an effort to remove the reconfiguring the system almost every time you add something requirement for add in cards drivers video and operating systems in the ibm world intel microsoft and other hardware and software developers are working out plug and play standards pc week color support display mac mhz pixel clock standard all present macs support the use of bit color through bit color quickdraw in rom bit color quickdraw allows an almost transparent capability to display and edit x bit images in y bit color and retain all the colors of y bit color where x and y independently are or regardless of monitor resolution dpi color to dpi palettebook or monitor type including autosynchronous vga mcga and svga monitors with ranges including hz vertically and khz horizontally and only a hardware video adaptor macuser aug older machines that supported color se ii iix and iicx had only bit color in rom and needed a software patch to use bit color macuser special to keep costs down and speed up most macs have only or bit display capability built in but most of those can be expanded to display bit color presently quickdraw is optimized for dpi display quickdraw qx will change this in addition quickdraw allows in macs with a nubus slot more then one monitor to be used in any combination from two monitors showing the same thing to multiple monitors acting as one large large monitor with any degree of overlap of the pictures vram video ram standard for present non powerbook mac s handling of built in video from a bit color palette vram provided runs a bit color x display expandable to bit color or a bit x display sound output standard in all macs since the k stereo sound became standard with the se ibm even though pcs have rom bios definitions of how the operating system interacts with the video hardware nan zou the use of drivers bypassing bios video hareware inconsitancies see super vga below and nonstanderzation of clone bios have left resolution of video display hardware os and program interaction up to the os and video hardware in question faisal nameer jawdat in addition ibm and clone makers never bothered to provide a standard hardware mechanism for software to determine what display mode is actually present matt healy nor a standardized screen drawing toolbox like mac s qd as a result the os must be very well written to detect some modes especially with some third party cards or to use them consitantly at present things are so dependent on the interaction of the program os print driver and monitor card that editing bit pictures regardless of color mode os and monitor type card combination as one can do on the mac is impossible with an ibm for example one cannot edit a bit color picture done on a os with a svga monitor on a with vga bit color palette and dos and still have all the colors one started out with later ibm machines will have integrated graphics accelerators faster processors and modular upgradeability and may have built in sound cards cd rom and ethernet pc week mda monocrome display adapter original character mapped video mode no graphics x text cga color graphics array x colors or x b w color palette bad for the eyes ega enhanced graphics array x colors from color palette and some lower res some versions could run at colors bearable on the eyes vga video graphics array x at colors x at colors and some others these two are the most commonly used all modes have a k clut from a to bit ibm or a bit mac color palette mhz pixel clock mel martinez monitors use analog input incompatible with ttl signals from ega cga etc mcga multi color graphics array subset of vga that provides all the features of mda cga but lacks some ega and vga modes like vga x x dictionary of computer terms dct common on the initial ps implementation from ibm and some ps models svga super vga this is not a standard in the way the others were but instead was a catch all category for a group of video cards as such with each manufacturer using their own implementation scheme svga was chaos with people debating as to what is svga and what is not in an effort to make svga more of a standard vesa was established and is used in the newer units but things are still a mess video is either k or m today resolution of x and x at and colors are common newer ones since have the sierra hicolor ramdac giving bit colors at x some of the very newer ones can do bits per pixel usually at x speedwise too much variation some very slow western digital paradise based for example some very fast s c based for example some are so so like tseng et a very popular chipset some limiting factors overcome by mhz vl bus s linear address mapping were mhz isa bus at architecture where the cpu looks at the card through a k window etc other non svga standards a ibm s own standard interlacing graphics accelerator with graphics functions like linedraw polygon fill etc in hardware some clone implementations from ati are the fastest video available today though some clone models do not have interlacing tms high end graphics co processors usually some do bit speeds up vector oriented graphics like cad xga extended graphics array newer and faster than a only available for mca bus based ps s clones are coming out soon emulates vga ega and cga dct max resolution at x x b same as a also some bpp modes xga accelerates graphics functions up to times faster than standard vga in windows and os including line draws bit and pixel block transfers area fills masking and x y addressing has an intelligent way to detect and co exist with other xga cards so multiple desktops like on the mac may not be far away since this is an architecture its resolution and color depth isn t fixed ibm implements only bit color while other companies can have bit color through ibm technical licenses refresh rates up to hz ensures flicker free rock solid images to reduce visual discomfort and is vga compatible up to x on os some monitor types usable by mac see mac section above for specific details expansion both mac ibm scsi only external device expansion interface common to both mac and ibm allows the use of any device hard drive printer scanner nubus card expansion mac plus only some monitors and cd rom main problem there are a lot of external devices which are internal terminated which causes problems for more then two devises off the scsi port a scsi chain is supposed to be terminated only at the begining and at the end any other set up causes problems for either mac or ibm scsi devices per scsi controller bit asynchronous mb s ave and synchronous mb s max transfers difference is due to scsi software drivers fast scsi is a misname for bit scsi in scsi mode see scsi for details scsi devices per scsi controller in scsi mode scsi is fully scsi compliant and bit scsi tends to be implemented as a very fast scsi since it does not require the different controller interfaces in hardware and software that and bit scsi do transfer speeds are mb s with mb s burst bit mb s with mb s burst bit and mb s with mb s burst bit wide and fast since bit scsi can use scsi software drivers and hardware at bit scsi speeds and as such is limited to devices sometimes it is mistakenly called fast scsi bit fast scsi requires a scsi software driver and scsi electronics but can still use the scsi ports wide bit and bit scsi require a different scsi port electronics and software driver from scsi which makes them more expensive than other scsi interfaces mac scsi asynchronous scsi built in standard since the plus even though apple developed some specifications for scsi controlers the os scsi manager needs to be rewritten to take full advantage of the features of both scsi interfaces as a result present scsi macs use bit scsi as a fast asynchronous scsi presently quadras are the only macs with a scsi controller chip built in digital review oct v n p though they lack some other parts of the hardware like the wide scsi port interface since other macs require a nubus card to use scsi older nubus macs had a bottleneck due to the speed of the nubus and cpu rumor some cyclone macs june will come with a wide fast scsi port standard and have a rewritten os scsi manager ibm scsi scsi is not too wide spread yet generally not bundled with systems except as add on eisa and vesa local bus adapters avalable like the mac bit scsi is used as a very fast scsi by most controllers out there unlike the mac ibm has no exact scsi controller specifications which results in added incompatibilities for scsi mac memory expansion with a few exceptions the mac has used non parity pin bit simm memory expansion since the plus while pin bit parity simms could be used in these macs only special iicis could make use of the parity feature by convension both simm types are called pin simms the iifx used pin parity simms the lc iii c and q all use a new pin simm that is accessable by bits at a time and is used in ibms the mac does a complete memory check at startup by writing reading every memory location if something is seriously wrong with a simm the mac will not boot and give a sound chord indicating what the problem is since macs made before feb managed memory baced on data path simms had to be installed in pairs bit or in sets of bit the centris and quadra eliminate this with a new memory management setup that allows memory to be upgraded one simm at a time if the simms are the same size are used then the memory is interleaved across the two simms resulting in a performance boost on ram access macworld apr printers adbs and modems built in interfaces standard monitor interface and sound input built in on most present macs pds available in se all present non powerbook macs bit se portable lc lc ii classic line and bit operates at cpu s mhz maximum through put data path in bytes cpu s mhz q c mhz mb s q q mhz mb s standardized with the lc and bus designs with an adapter one nubus card can be used in iisi and c problem some cards have timing dependency which slows through put down nubus mac ii bit mhz bus clock to transaction bus cycle ratio and contiguous hand shake transactions at mb s theoretical peak mb s built in on all modular macs except the lc series c and performa the se could be adapted to use this and there was even a mac plus scsi nubus supports every possible expansion from cpu to ethernet to dma nubus nubus mac ii back compatable mhz bus clock avg throughput mb s burst mode mb s future card designs will be instead of the old quickring a peer to peer bus used in parallel with nubus apple s vlbus architecture is identical to that of vlbus byte burst mode mb s byte in development cpu expansion handled either through the pds or the nubus unlike pds nubus cpu cards example radius rocket allow use of multiple processors at the same time this is like having two or more macs in the same box able to dual task or joinly process depending on the card or software involved each nubus card needs its own memory but most nubus cards of this type come with mb ram simms on the card standard ibm memory expansion parity simms non parity simms some newer models do a mac like simm memory check or a dozen or so different types of memory boards hd interfaces limited to hard drives by design or lack of development mfm modified frequency modulation rll run length limited only used with smaller mb hard drives ide integrated device electronics asynchronous mb s max and synchronous mb s max transfer currently the most common standard and is mainly used for medium sized drives can have more than one hard drive esdi enhanced small device interface mb s throughput generally considered better interface than scsi in many ways but not common enough for practical consideration outside of hard drives device choices are very limited compared to scsi bus interfaces new plug and play isa and eisa compatable cards may have problems working with old cards infoworld pc week vaporware isa bit interfaces common has bit data path limit which produces a mb limit for which there are software workarounds pc mag mb s byte uses edge triggered interrupts can t share them hence comes the irq conflict limited busmastering capabilities some cards aren t bandwidth limited com ports lpt ports game ports midi card etc while others are video and disk controllers dominant factor but it s showing its age most isa motherboard designs are bit pc world feb mca micro channel ibm s and bit bus allows use of more than one cpu in a computer dct and anything can talk to anything as fast as the two components involved can handle it never took off because it was incompatible with isa and eisa planned to be bus interface of ibm powerpc carl jabido eisa nubus mac ii is closest mac equivalent bit mhz burst mode mb s it also has the ability to self configure cards like mca and allows multiple bus masters sharable interrupt and dma channels and multiple cpu use vesa local bus vlb sometimes mistakenly refereed to as pds local bus standard runs at cpu clock rate burst modes mb s bit mb s bit byte limited to three slots but allows bus mastering and will coexist with either isa or eisa consitered ideal for video and disk i o dell has filled a claim that this violates one of their patents mel martinez quickring apple s faster mb s burst version of vlb architecture byte might show up in some ibm and powerpc machines byte in development pci intel s version of local bus that is intended to totally replace isa eisa mca in development oses assumes full installation print drivers fonts multifinder etc and multiple application use mac k to mb of os and hardware commands have been put into rom this allows apple to control its machine by putting key hooks for the mac os quickdraw menu commands print mouse scsi sound drivers etc in rom which require clone makers to use the rom chip or read rom on to disks which requires access to the proper mac since different macs have slightly different rom chips plus vs classic for example with key hooks for the os support interface in rom programers do not have to worry as much whether the disk os has the necessary hardware commands or that those commands are consitant and therefore can write smaller programs this also allows apple greater control over hardware software standards and that the disk os can be smaller and with some of the tookbox command code in rom with lower ram requirements then a totally disk based os macs use masked rom which is as fast as dram jon wtte single program usage base requirements mb and dd floppy cooperatively multitasking base requirements mb and hd floppy features a gui cooperative multitasker multifinder standard program interface standard stereo sound support snd network receiving part of appleshare software is bundled with the os has a mb ram barrier and is a bit os some third party products allow mb of virtual memory as long as real ram is below mb with print drivers l system for some macs that require system x x base requirements mb mb hard drive and de facto standard to run all features well mb mb hard drive and lowest present non portable mac configuration using up to mb this is everything on system disks of hard disk space this has features plus program linking within and between computers iac built in server capabilities filesharing can be used by older oses using appleshare client software and can be accessed by macs max is more speed practical iac requires x virtual memory in machines with mmu times real ram for least noticeable iisi speed degradation drag and drop quicktime built in truetype support supports sound input aiff and snd formats for most present machines can access up to gb of true ram and gb of virtual memory and is both a and bit os to use real ram beyond mb it must be in bit mode and on older machines requires the mode extension apple s last free os with worldscript support speedier and less ram usage than dot macweek pc week to run in bit mode on older machines it requires the mode or bit enabler extension marks the start of apple saling its mac os instead of allowing free upgrades bundled with new machines for x upgrades otherwise the installer has a bug that when upgrading it may keep some old system fonts from the previous system inside the system file this can eat up any ram benefits and cause other problems apple itself recommends removing all fonts from the system file a ux unix needs mb ram mb suggested mb hard drive and a or equivalent to run this bit preemptive multitasking os is large due to being unix and needing translators between it and the mac roms price note sound output was supported in oses to by many formats including the following snd wave asnd fssd qssn smsd soun dc d and dcfl in the sound manager was optimized for the sound standards snd and aiff which causes some playback problems for the old formats though most still play ibm machiness have little gui code data and hooks present in hardware for programmers to work with so most of the coding must be provided in the os since hard disks were slow the disk os code is read into ram in addition what little rom code there is also read into ram a process called shadow rom this results in faster implementation since ram is faster then proms or eproms having most of the os code on disk has the advantage of being able to better optimize the code given a certain piece or collection of hardware which is harder with a rom based system due to the patches needed in addition it reduces the need for and size of patches if a major revision of the hardware support is needed side note the ftc charged that microsoft formed a os trust by not providing all feature documentation for its oses to developers outside ms and designing its windows and dos apps to fail under os undocumented windows and there is deliberate code in windows nt beta which causes the install to abort if os boot manager is present gregory hicks info ibmpc digest v due to a conflict of intrest by one member the vote of the ftc judicial council for action against microsoft was a tie which resulted in no action rumors the ftc will presue the matter likely to the point of choosing a new member or whole new council in addition the government has turned down microsoft s copyright of windows which would allow it to charge a fee for developers using their hooks pc week microsoft oses dos has a k barrier with its own memory manager a mb barrier with third party memory managers this bit os requires that each program must provide its own print drivers and be bit programs need to be dos protected mode interface dpmi compliant and running on a dx bit protected mode to break these barriers contains the gui shell present in dos dos dos with the added features of a built in file compresion disk defragmenter debugger for the config sys file it needs a module for networking cost through after that byte april dos bit dos in development pc week window runs on top of dos breaks k and m barriers but still has to deal with dos file structure base requirements mb floppy and to run well mb hard drive sx and fast display adapter bit has the equivalent of mac s qd called windows gdi graphics device interface this does not have a consistent application interface like early mac programs nor a very large program base compared to dos and still tends to slow the machine down info ibmpc digest v with speed is more dependent on the display adapter then on the cpu bill coleman window programs tend to be disk and memory hogs compared to their dos counterparts byte april window a faster version of window with better memory managment base requirements mb hard drive and a to run well mb hard drive sx apple plans to release its print drivers for this pc week windows for workgroups to run well mb ram and dx pc world feb intermediary between win and windows nt it is basically windows with built in peer to peer networking support windows nt beta release takes about mb of disk space including the swap file and mb ram betas are notorious for ram usage especially in the interaction between debuging code and program compliers hence the reports of mb requirements released version supposed to need mb ram but gates himself now recommends mb ram pc week this bit os has protected mode multitasking multithreading symmetric multiprocessing a recoverable file system and bit gdi has built in networking that is osf dce compliant and can handle up to gb of ram even though some people see a july release date infoworld nov rumor is that the final version will not be available before oct infoworld may july vaporware or th quarter pc week windows upgrades will be otherwise pc week other oses pc dos ibm s version of dos it runs windows much faster then dos due to faster file i o and video handling infoworld feb dr dos same as dos with some extras like built in data compression and memory management enhancements still has k mb barrier a later version novell dos of this may use a version of the mac finder and apple file management system pc week infoworld dec os unix like features and unix like requirements mb ram mb uses mb hard drive and dx cpu this bit multithreaded multitasking os can address up to gb of ram but has to use a fast swap file to use more than mb ram on isa systems using dma direct memory access ibm plans to use taligent s oops in future versions of this infoworld oct aix ibm s unix system planned to be a subset of poweropen and taligent os nextstep gui unix to provide next features on ibm machines beta out final version to be out by may solaris os for x a sunsoft port a bit os with symmetric multiprocessing and multithreading built in networking capabilities with tools to allow remote configuring and adminstration features and communication package client users server s users server developer kits software hardware mac working name star trek apple had system running off intel chips and is looking at making a version available for ibm computerworld nov macweek at present this is planned to run on top of novell s dr dos require a or equivalent to run and that apps will need to be recompiled macweek viewed as novell s answer to windows nt the complexity of pc hardware set ups is one reason for slow progress this seems to apple ibm s way of leading to the powerpc line out in late early and pink os in late early powerpc rumor ibm will build its powerpc by late infoworld june macweek pc week it will have microchannel bus and xga video carl b jabido and will run native version aix and mac apps pc week there have been no comments on compatablity of dos or windows apps apple s powerpc machine tesseract is planned to be out jan and to have mc mhz mb ram a mbyte floppy drive and expected to sale near lc line prices down from projections of macuser macweek poweropen a ux a bit preemtive multitasking os planned to run on powerpcs and macs macweek intel compatibility uncertain see mac above planned base requirements mb ram mb hard drive macweek rumor ahead of schedule could be out by mid rumor this could be the os for ibm s powerpc which is due by late pink taligent os expecting delivery in wall street journal and may have some parts shipping in os and aix in and mac os and poweropen with the powerpcs macweek windows nt possible port macweek see ibm os section for details solaris os version of this sun microsystems inc unix os to run on the power pcs in macweek one of the few oses to directly state that it will run windows dos programs ibm os section for details nextstep possible port see ibm os section for details os number crunching mel park mac arithmetic is done in a consistent numerical environment sane or standard apple numerics environment floating point numbers are bits long when an fpu is present and bits otherwise exceptions such as dividing by zero or taking the square root of a negative number do not cause an abort but are handled in a logically consistent manner produces the internal representation for infinity inf produces zero the above treatment of occurs in an fpu equipped machine even when sane is bypassed and the fpu programmed directly ibm floating point numbers are bits with a hardware fpu bits when emulated the way they are handled is dependent on the coding of whatever compiler or assembler was used for a program on older dos complilers exceptions could cause program aborts and would abort to the dos prompt at the point where they occured most present compilers handle this better result there is little consistent handling of numbers between dos windows and os programs nor between programs for just one os networking includes printing wysiwyg printing can be a problem with either mac of ibm machines especially if one sends truetype fonts to a older style postscript printer mac hardware built in localtalk network port and a built in printer port localtalk has moderate speeds kb s requires special connectors for each machine and up and can be run off of either the printer port to include very old macs or the network port standard today built in ethernet is becoming common but many older macs require a pds or nubus card at about for each machine these cards provide three connectors and transceivers thick thin and baset for ethernet the macintosh quadra family and some centris models includes ethernet interface on motherboard with transceivers available tokenring has been a network option since software appletalk the suite of protocols standard with mac os which can use variety of media types appleshare client software included with the os as well and can connect to file servers such as novell netware com open banyan vines dec pathworks apple s appleshare servers system file sharing machines and afp servers running on variety of unix hosts mactcp allows typical tcp ip communications telnet ftp nfs rlogin a later version will have unix x open transport interface xti built in by the end of macweek third party software to connect to nfs servers dec pathworks provides decnet support peer to peer file sharing software built in to system see os section full server software is extra printing requires connection of the printer and the printer being selected in the chooser changing printers is by selecting a different name in the chooser the same is true of connecting to servers printing bugs monaco truetype font is different then the screen bitmap font quickdraw qx is suppossed to fix this and similar problems ibm hardware localtalk not widely used ethernet and tokenring software novell netware banyan vines decnet windows work groups appletalk protocols and appleshare subset of appletalk each of the ms dos networking schemes are in general totally incompatible with the others once you have chosen one you are pretty much locked in to that product line from then on windows work groups is a little more forgiving and removes some of this problem novell netware is the biggest percent of the corporate market and in general is more powerful and offers better control management security than appleshare but it s also more complex to set up and manage this will change due to the use of the mac finder and file management system by novell pc week infoworld dec macweek printing very os dependent dos if it s a single user then you plug the printer into the parallel port and don t worry about it tweeking may be needed with poorly written software network printing is not controlled by the system but is mostly implemented by the actual program therefore performance varies from one software program to the next windows x supports standard drivers and can do a good job of showing jobs in the print queue but it always lists printers as active even if they are not this becomes a problem if there are several incompatible printers on the same net because there s no way for software to reliably determine which printer is active right now windows for workgroups is more mac like and intelligent about this os mac like the os deals with printers with apps making calls to the os printing bugs due to poor programing some programs for all the above oses do not have wysiwyg printing this is the fault of the programs in question and not that of the os involved price issue this is very dynamic with mac providing more build in features than ibm and ibm being more get only what you need then mac and price wars by both worlds the ibm machines modualar nature prevents any kind of true hardware standarization which in turn requires oses and programs to be very complex to handle all the variation in hardware when one adds all the standard mac hardware features to an ibm built in input output sound support scsi pds built in monitor support built in networking standard mouse interface and nubus in higher machines the mac tends to be cheaper then an equivalent equipted ibm machine especially since some ibm monitors can be used with macs which cuts some more of the mac s cost macuser aug some prices using some of the info in this sheet and macuser april all macs below come with a pds slot vram and scsi built in except where noted monitor is extra and a built in monitor interface is provided no card needed except for bit color display ibm planned a slc mhz model with a mb hard drive and color vga monitor vram macweek sounds like a color classic without scsi sound support built in network support fpu socket built in expansion to bit color etc color classic mhz with bit data bus sx mhz equivalent fpu socket and built in monitor lciii mhz dx mhz equivalent and centris lc mhz depending on the program sx or dx sx mhz equivalent built in ethernet i cd rom a pds nubus slot and vram for bit color centris mhz depending on the program dx mhz or dx mhz equivalent with a pds and nubus slots ethernet ethernet ethernet cd rom vram for bit color bibliography notes vaporware is available in the digest vapor directory by ftp on sumex aim stanford edu and was by murphy sewall last issue april info ibmpc digest back issues are available from wsmr simtel army mil in directory pd archives ibmpc dictionary of computer terms rd ed isbm these are the facts as they were known to me on and may be changed by new developments announcements or corrections corrections to the information are welcome please email corrections to compuserve id aol bruceg internet bgrubb dante nmsu edu final note since there is no comp sys ibm pc advocacy group this has been posted to the closest relevent groups comp os ms windows advocacy comp os os advocacy and comp sys ibm pc misc also since some mac vs ibm articles have been showing up in comp sys mac hardware i have included that newsgroup in the posting don t site the comp sys mac faq as a reason not to post to comp sys mac hardware since the faq itself does not follow internet guidelines especially the de facto all the faqs for a newgroup hierarchy should be posted to all newsgroups in the hierarchy standard eliminate the impossible and what ever remains no matter how improbable is the truth sir arthur conan doyle through sherlock holmes in the adventure of the beryl coronet the adventure of the blanched soldier sign of four and the adventure of the bruce partington plans the computer is your friend parinoia rpg
