6 Jun
2014
6 Jun
'14
9:18 a.m.
On 6/6/14 8:54 AM, Sean Caron wrote:
"TNT" (The code name for the first PCI Mac) stood for "The New
Tessaract"
Tessaract was the machine with "BLT" (Bus-like thing) which was a crossbar
switch for expansion. Someone had a prototype in there garage, and I have it
here now at the museum. Some of the I/O blocks from "Grand Central" the I/O
controller ASIC made it into TNT.
Tessaract was the PPC version of Hurricane, which was the 88110 Mac. Hurricane
was contemporary with Cyclone (the 840AV).
PCI only
happened because a senior director said it had to. The follow-on
to the Nubus PPC machines
were going to have a proprietary bus, which made no sense to third-party
card suppliers...
Wow, that is just incredible news to me. I don't recall any hint of that
ever being leaked to the "outside" back then. Of course, the Mac clones were not far away at this
point... Was there a
change in CEO here somewhere, Sculley to Amelio?
You forgot Spindler. That's when the market expansion strategy happened. Apple
wanted to get out of the low-end low-profit Mac business, so they licensed clone
makers who proceeded to make high-end machines instead.
Apple did sell one machine based on the Tanzania motherboard that was licensed, the 4400
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac/specs/powermac_4400_200.html
which very few people have ever heard of. That is pretty much identical to the
Motorola StarMax product. Companies like Power Computing and Supermac had their
own ASIC designers. Power Computing's team was mostly ex first-generation PPC
engineers.