Macintosh Performa 630

My sister originally bought this computer back in 1995 and passed it on to me somewhere after the millennium shift, when she bought a new one. As it was the only computer in the house at first, I used it for school even earlier on, but looking back... computer's weren't that neccesary back then, even though we did have computer classes in school. I played quite a few games on the computer, and still do (well, it was a while since I wrote this page). A few favorites that have stuck with me through the times are Spectre Supreme, Bolo, Task Maker, Exile, Mortal Pongbat, Space Junkie, Space Gypsie, The Zone & Barracca. I'm probably forgetting a few...

Despite the lack of memory or graphical intensity, all of these games were surprisingly entertaining, and differed from modern games in that you could just play for a few minutes now and then without any extensive loading screens, intros or save points. Entertainment was easy. :) So were the programs made for computers back then, and as the concepts for most apps were new there was an amazing amount of creative simplicity floating around in small simple tools that helped out with all kinds of every day tasks. Snapping screen shots, recording audio, creating icons, cutting videos, emulating consoles, editing documents, it was during this age that all those tasks and so many many more were at the peak of evolution and spawned thousands if not millions of programs that have by now faded away in the past age of technological revolution.

The computer has survived very well and still today the only sign of its age is the yellow gradient on the computer frame. I seldomly use it, but when I do I use it to play games, or dig up some old nostalgia - schoolwork, poetry, etc - much still lying around on the drive unported to the PC. There are plenty of multiplayer games in which two players can play against each other on the same computer as well, a feature over 90% of all modern games created for PC today lack. I'm proud of this MAC. ;)

I started with MAC way before I moved on to PC, so you can say I was a bit of a Mac Fanatic, but of course I didn't pay for the system back then, and with time it's gained more symbolism than it deserves to have. It's thanks to the old, relatively cheap at the time (compared to other OS:s), and extremely durable systems such as this one that Apple has managed to reach as far as they have now. Their current products might look good, but they aren't any better than their competitors, not in quality, and definitely not in price.

Back in elementary the MAC computers worked flawlessly, moving on to middle and high school we started using PCs - and apart from infrequent crashes they worked fine as well. In collage we had Macs for video/graphical editing, and they sucked, they crashed more than the (in the past eight years it hasn't crashed a single time) below and the one above - together. Anyhow, modern Macs can't compare to the old ones, the box below is an artifact I will keep preserved for all eternity... or until it dies, but I hope that won't happen anytime soon.

Life - 1995 > Current

ROM - 1MB
RAM - 8MB (80 ns 72-pin SIMM)
VRAM - 1MB (60 ns)
Processor - 68LC040 (33MHz)
System - Macintosh 7
HD - 250MB (IDE)
Floppy/CD