Apple Macintosh Quadra 700 (1991) Full Tour and Disassembly

Welcome to Jason's Macintosh Museum!
From Jason's Macintosh Museum, we have an Apple Macintosh Quadra 700 from 1991 on display. This video will show the exterior of the Macintosh Quadra 700, along with a discussion of the features and specifications.
The Macintosh Quadra 700 will also be disassembled, to show the various components in more detail.
Apple Macintosh Quadra 700
Introduced : October 1991
Discontinued : March 1993
CPU : Motorola 68040 running at 25 MHz
CPU Data Bus : 32-bit
FPU : Built-in (68040)
RAM : 4 MB RAM (expandable up to 68 MB)
Disks : Internal 1.4 MB SuperDrive, 80/160/400 MB SCSI hard disk
Video : 512KB VRAM onboard, expandable up to 2MB.
Expansion slots : 2 x NuBus slots, 1 x 68040 PDS slot
Supported Macintosh System (MacOS): 7.0.1 to 8.1

[@onkelebert787]

The most beautiful Macintosh ever made.

[@colorupro]

Always loved your videos, Jason!

Quadra was a genially designed computer man used for most graphic applications as Photoshop, Quark Express, Adobe Illustrator.. A real profs machine at that time, mid 1990s. I had a horizontal model of Quadra 700 with an external graphic card.. Thanks for the quite nostalgic video

[@GuitarAudiologist]

I just traded some bullets for one of these from a guy at work. Yeah, strange trade but I'm happy. He used it in the early '90s for creating designs for t-shirts, so it has some of the first adobe software on it, and even has a early Wacom tablet. At first it wouldn't boot. I replaced the RAM and battery. Got it into the OS twice, and now it's giving me the sad chime. I wonder what SD-to-SCSI options are available these days. Seems like a fun project, and being a PC guy, this is new territory for me. So, thanks for the info!

[@1912RamblerFan01]

The Quadra 700 is my favorite vintage Mac.

[@t.r.2256]

Hi, really thank you for all the details ! I was wondering how to remove the power supply unit without damaging the rack containing the hard drive and your video was just perfect to explain it easily! Tks a lot you're amazing :o)

[@parryplatypus8630]

Hey There! If you have a quadra 700 would you be interested in selling it?

[@_____7704]

All your videos are class mate, you're a legend. Keep up the good work!

[@80486DX2]

nice video here. I also have this one. got My Quadra 700 from a local mac collector near where I work for lots lower price than ebay (tho still expensive for me, but totally worth it!), in working condition, and a nonworking LC475 as an addition. It come with 20mb ram, no hard drive, working floppy drive that can't eject, keyboard/mouse, cache card, Spectrum/8*24 PDQ videocard and SyQuest external removable hard drive with 88mb bootdisk. Currently I have upgraded my Quadra 700 to 68mb ram, replaced the floppy drive, add 1gb hard drive and install System 7.1 Thai edition on it. This will use for vintage mac programming and doing err... some stuff =P I also plan to do more upgrade like CD-ROM, AAUI adapter, better video card (maybe add onboard vram) and maybe an ADB Tablet, for more complete 1991 highend system! XD tho I still research about the possibility of videocard upgrade, since there not much benchmark information of cards on ebay on the internet. :/

[@NisbetMedia]

Excellent video - extraordinary to think that these Macs were $6000 when they came out in 1991 without a graphics card. I love their simplicity - reminiscent, dare I say it, of the Apple ][ design. Mine has been put away for 20 os so years. I got it out plugged it in and it started first time. All I've had to do is change the battery. It's a shame the fan in the power supply is so noisy - I guess we're just used to silent computers now.

[@drzeissler]

one of the finest machines I own.

[@be236]

Yeah, I got a Mac Quadra 700 too! I sold most of my older Macs a long time ago and wish I had kept them... Oh well.

[@TechnologySpotlight]

Congrats on getting 1,000 subs Jason :)

[@NotHAL9000]

I've noticed that the intro at the beginning does not include the power pc performa chime nor the quadra 840av chime.

[@8bitwidgets]

Hi there, I have a quadra 650 that I just got.. anyone here know how i can get to the battery? it's in an awkward place and i'm obviously not wanting to force it open or anything like that.. there is this long metal frame that goes all the way to the back.. maybe i have to remove the back plate plastic? just trying to get to it with the least amount of risk of damage / wear on the body.

[@amonster8mymother]

I wonder if it runs any music software.

[@davidcantrell7192]

Nice background and teardown of a Q700. I've got a working one here (again). Well mostly. I'm trying to use the Belkin VGA adapter to connect it to an old NEC LCD display, but absolutely cannot get a signal out of the Q700. I've got a fresh battery in it, I've tried a PRAM zap, I've tried booting with extensions off...nothing. The system does boot and you can hear it booting up off the disk. I just never get anything on the display.

[@aa-au]

If your Belkin VGA adapter is autosensing or autoswitching, then that may be the problem. If you have a HD15->VGA adapter with dip switches, then set it to a fixed 640x480 or 1024x768 (simulating an old CRT display) and you may get a display. If you don't get a display after this trick, then it is your old NEC LCD display causing an issue. Let us know if this helped you.

[@davidcantrell7192]

@@aa-au Thanks for the feedback. A while after posting this comment, I got another adapter off eBay for comparison. It works fine even with the old NEC monitor. No issues at all on the Q700. Looking at my previous Belkin adapter, it looks like the previous owner did some surgery on it so I am just assuming it's broken now.

[@aa-au]

@@davidcantrell7192 At least you got it fixed :)

[@Halterung01]

There are many macs in my collection and I know every single case design apple ever made on these beige boxes, but the Quadra 700 ist definitely the one I like the most. Also I've read somewhere that it is possible to replace this model's motherboard with a PowerMac's. Is that true?

[@sarym]

Very cool!

[@livesimplyandhumbly]

Are you sure about needing a PowerPC for 8.5 and above? I thought I had upgraded my Quadra 700 to a 9 before I stopped using it.

[@Dan-TechAndMusic]

Yes, 8.5 was the first version that required a PowerPC. If your 700 ran it, it had a PowerPC upgrade card.

[@krecikowi]

It is 66Mhz crystal since basically any 040 could run from on 50 Mhz to up to 80Mhz crystals :)

[@emeryclarkscarsanimatronic6999]

Please do a review of the iMac G3 from 1998

[@RaumfuerSpiele]

How can I install os8.5 or 9? My system says I cant install. But it should. Dont know much about macs.

[@fearless2782]

Quadra 700 is 68k Mac Anything higher then os 8 won’t install If u like to use os 9 u need a power pc mac

[@hackerinsidetm4271]

While Apple was going out of business, they really had the *cheap* design in their computers. All of their laptops were plastic supported by a metal frame, and their desktops had plastic holders & switches, etc.

[@theshadowsflyacrossthemoon4185]

TOPPPPPPP...........BOM TRABALHO BROTHER ONE GOOOD JOB´S......

[@bloodcolony6561]

Hey when you find out that a quadra was in Jurassic park,I now think of that scene with Samuel L. Jackson where he turns it on and it says uh uh you didn't say the magic word. That is what I think of hen I saw that the computer used was a quadra

[@TCFan30]

"Hold onto your butts".

[@The_Laser_Channel]

Rather interesting how Apple went from a almost tooless case to so closed down you can't even swap out batteries in their laptops (well, you COULD, but it's not as easy as it should be)

[@amonster8mymother]

❤

[@justinhannah1023]

And now to build a huge phonenet network for appletalk and see if you can over saturate the RS422 links 🔥🔥🔥🔥😜

[@JaredConnell]

I still find it funny that apple eventually switched to intel after years of boasting how much faster macs were than intel based systems

[@munxcorp]

In truth they were never that much faster. There is a reason there are so few direct comparisons between 68K vs X86 and PPC vs X86. I have yet to see any direct Quake benchmarks between PPC Mac and a Pentium2 lol

[@elenchus]

The G3 and G4 were very competitive, and in some ways better, but the G5 was a let down and there wasn't much of a future in proprietary chip design at the moment. The AIM alliance was costing too much and producing too little, so they went with the chip maker they knew would be the most reliable, which was Intel. Now the situation has basically reverted to the way it was under PowerPC. Apple is locked into an inferior chip manufacturer (Intel) while the PC world rapidly moves to AMD. Apple is consistently screwed by their decision to only use a single chip supplier for Mac.

[@DerComputerist]

elenchus I don’t think the future of Apple is with AMD, but on using their very own ARM chips (the A series chips used on iOS devices) on the Mac.

[@elenchus]

@@DerComputerist I'd say it's the present. Most new Macs are already using the ARM-based T2 chip running BridgeOS. So it's not a question of if, but to what degree, ARM will continue to be integrated alongside antiquated Intel CPUs. Without knowing the specifics of their deal with the devil (i.e. does it specify that all Macs made through 2030 will have an Intel CPU or something to that effect) we can't really say for sure. It's amusing to imagine that we could conceivably reach a point where Apple just buys the cheapest possible Intel CPUs and glues them to the inside of the case in order to satisfy their exclusivity agreement while letting an internally designed ARM chip run the computer.

[@brokenscart7989]

Very tidy and neat assembly. I think these machines are ugly as fuck but that internal arrangement is tidy

[@ElysiumNZ]

Always thought Apple had the best case designs. Bugger all screws to worry about.

[@JaredConnell]

They went from hard to work on needing special torx drivers to screwless cases to nearly impossible to work on now lol