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From: jfr@locus.com (Jon Rosen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware,comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: A Classic Dead End?
Keywords: Classic,System 7.0
Message-ID: <24599@oolong.la.locus.com>
Date: 21 May 91 05:15:34 GMT
References: <24530@oolong.la.locus.com> <53050@apple.Apple.COM> <53113@apple.Apple.COM>
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Distribution: usa
Organization: Locus Computing Corp, Los Angeles
Lines: 38

In article <53113@apple.Apple.COM> bc@Apple.COM (bill coderre) writes:
>I made a typo:
>|The Classic does have room to grow for quite some time. With a fairly
>|inexpensive upgrade, you can put 5 megs in the machine, and run System
>|7 and two or three medium-large apps all at once, and still have room
>|for the Finder, DAs, and background printing.
>Classic, SE, and Plus are all upgradable to just 4M of memory.
>This does not change the jist of the argument. All will continue to be viable
>platforms for quite some time.

It is interesting (and a bit painfully humorous) to note that just 10
years ago, the concept of a personal computer with 4M of RAM was so
beyond comprehension that there were lots of jokes about why did IBM
need to come out with a machine that could hold 256K?  After all, 
"What Would Anyone Do With All That Memory?"  When the PC first came
out, IBM said it had a max of 256K (not the 640K that it finally was
able to use) simply because IBM only sold 64K boards and if you put in
3 boards of memory (plus the 64K on the motherboard), you still needed
one slot for your floppy board and one slot for your video which added
up to the five slots you had.  Thus, 256K max! Voila!... We quickly
realized this was a marketing limit, not a physical one, and added
a 256K single slot board from Tecmar and had 320K of Ram with no
problem.  Still, what were we going to do with all the memory? :-)
 
I also fondly recall my days in the early 70s of working with mainframes
that had 256K and were shared by 30 or 40 people at the same time.
Slow, no question, but it still worked.  
 
Will a 4M mac be viable for a while?  I am sure it will, as bill notes.
In fact, I expect that 512K Macs will be viable for a while.  I intend
to turn my original Mac 128->512->512e (yup, two upgrades plus a SCSI
port, fan and 10-meg scsi drive) over to my college bound son who will
presumably continue to be able to run Word 3 just fine on it, along
with Excel 1.5, Quicken (for his checkbook) and a variety of games.
This will happen, of course, only when I figure out whether to get 
an LC, an SI or wait one more round of announcements to see if
Apple has something new (and less expensive) up their sleeves.