Macintosh Quadra 840AV

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The Macintosh Quadra 840AV is a

The Quadra 840AV was discontinued shortly after the introduction of the PowerPC-based Power Macintosh. The Power Macintosh 8100/80AV provides the same functionality in the same form factor, and had a significantly higher price point. The 7100/66AV was priced comparably to the 840AV but in a IIvx-style desktop case.

Hardware

At launch, Quadra 840AV's 40 MHz

The 840AV and its relative, the Centris/Quadra 660AV, marked a number of firsts for the Macintosh family. They are the first Macintoshes to include on-board 16-bit 48 kHz stereo audio playback and recording capability, and S-Video and composite video input and output. To improve video playback, two separate frame buffers are used: one for standard graphics, and one specifically for video. This enables the live video input to be displayed as a scalable "window" within the Macintosh user interface. They are also the first personal computers that supported speech recognition (PlainTalk) out-of-the-box. The Apple GeoPort Telecom Adapter Kit introduced with the AV Macs add many DSP-based telecommunication functions, such as modem, fax, and telephony.

The Quadra 840AV has a similar case to the earlier Macintosh Quadra 800; the housing, chassis, power supply, and internal storage assemblies are the same, but the front and rear panels changed, with the power button being moved to the front.^[1]

Internally, the 840AV is significantly different. Apart from the faster processor, the logic board lacks the 800's Processor Direct Slot and second ADB port, but has a DAV slot (in line with NuBus slot A) and the new GeoPort. Also, unlike the 800's 8 MB of fixed RAM, all of the 840AV's memory is in SIMMs (this is the reason why the maximum amount of memory is lower).

The way in which the 840AV deals with its memory (DRAM) differs from the other machines of its generation (Quadra 700, 800, 950) in that 4, 8, 16, or 32 MB 72-pin 60ns SIMMs may be installed up to 128 MB and sizes can be mixed. However, the Quadra 840AV does not support 1 MB, 2 MB, or 64 MB SIMMs. The 840AV and 660AV are the first Macintosh computers to operate in 32-bit mode at all times, and cannot be toggled back to 24-bit mode, which may be useful for using early Nubus cards that conform to the 24-bit addressing.^[2]

Notable uses

The Quadra 840AV was part of a hardware package that was offered with the initial release of Media 100.

Reception

Jonathan Chevreau of the

Ben Thompson of

Pink or Copland. He tested the wealth of AV features such as telecommunications, print-to-fax, speech recognition, and video capture, and appreciated their productivity gains with surprisingly no compatibility problems.^[5]

Timeline

Timeline of Macintosh Centris, LC, Performa, and Quadra models, colored by CPU type v t e
See also: List of Mac models

References

1. ^ "Apple Service Source - Macintosh Quadra 840AV" (PDF). Apple.
2. ^ "Apple Memory Guide, November 2000, page 5" (PDF).
3. Newspapers.com
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4. ProQuest 217797442. Retrieved March 5, 2021 – via ProQuest
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5. ^ Thompson, Tom (January 1994). "The Mac Quadra 840AV packages more speed with new video and voice technologies". Byte. Archived from the original on June 19, 2008. Retrieved March 6, 2021.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Macintosh Quadra.

• Macintosh Quadra 840AV: Technical Specifications at Apple Support
• Quadra 840AV at apple-history.com
• Quadra 840AV profile at Low End Mac
• Quadra 840AV at EveryMac.com