Macintosh Quadra 660AV


The Macintosh Quadra 660AV, originally sold as the Macintosh Centris 660AV, is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from July 1993 to September 1994. It was introduced alongside the Quadra 840AV; the "AV" after both model numbers signifies video input and output capabilities and enhanced audio. It was rebranded from Centris to Quadra in September 1993 without any actual internal changes.
The 660AV was discontinued a few months after the introduction of the Power Macintosh 6100/60AV. Apple sold a Power Macintosh Upgrade Card that upgrades the 660AV to match the 6100/60AV's specifications for. This and the Quadra 630 were positioned for users who were not ready to move to PowerPC.

Hardware

The 660AV uses the pizza box form factor of the earlier Centris 610. The 660AV has a full Motorola 68040 instead of the 610's FPU-less 68LC040. Thanks to the SCSI direct-memory access chip and the SCSI Manager software, the 660AV outperformed the discontinued Quadra 700 and managed to match the Quadra 950 in a few tests.
Like the 840AV, the 660AV features video input/output capability and an onboard AT&T 3210 digital signal processor to make the video handling less of a burden on the CPU.
The 660AV is the first Macintosh to include GeoPort; an optional GeoPort Telecom Adapter enables fax and modem capabilities.
Some of the earliest Centris 660AVs have the older auto-inject floppy drive opening similar to the 610, but most of the Centris models and all of the Quadra models have a drive similar to the Power Macintosh 6100, lacking the auto-inject feature. These models have a deep round indentation at the center of the floppy drive slot to make it possible to fully insert the disk.
The Quadra AV Macs introduced a new universal ROM that would later be used in all PowerPC systems. It includes SCSI Manager 4.3 and Sound Manager 3.0. It also is "vectorized", making it easier to patch.

Models

Introduced July 29, 1993:
  • Macintosh Centris 660AV
Introduced October 21, 1993:
  • '''Macintosh Quadra 660AV'''

    Reception

Jonathan Chevreau of the National Post said on August 7, 1993, that the Quadra 840AV and Centris 660AV were the next most interesting multimedia computers behind the new SGI Indy, putting Apple among the forefront of the birth of the major industry of desktop multimedia. Byte magazine said in September 1993 that Apple and Silicon Graphics were trailblazers by setting audio and video input as default features of these two Macintosh and of the Indy desktop PCs, which "could change the way businesspeople communicate".