In this issue of “Retro Mac” we will be looking at the first Mac to break the 100MHz barrier. The Power Macintosh 8100. Introduced Nov.3, 1994, the 8100 did not have the most inspired design. It was practical and powerful but Apple had yet to start it’s campaign for making computers that looked as good as they worked.

The 8100 sported a 1.44MB floppy drive as well as a 2x CD-ROM drive, clearly more the enough to handle all of your data needs.

Although it came standard with a mere 16MB of SIMM memory, the machine itself could handle a total of 264MB! This was made possible due the 8 RAM slots. I personally am very impressed to see a 15 year old computer flaunting 8 RAM slots.

The GPU sported 2 MBs of VRAM which where more then enough at the current time, however, if you were looking for a little more power you could utilize the four empty SIMM slots on the graphics card to double your VRAM from 2 to 4MB.

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