Macintosh PowerBook 170

Introduced: October 1991
Terminated: October 1992

Description

Running a Motorola 68030 processor at speeds of 25MHz, the Macintosh PowerBook 170 was the fastest of the new PowerBook line.  It came with a 40 or 80MB hard drive and a 1.44MB internal floppy drive.  The 2MB of RAM could be expanded to 8MB. 

Unique to the Macintosh PowerBook 170 was the 10” active matrix LCD.  It was only black and white as opposed to the grayscale possible on the passive matrix screens, but it was much better to look at.  It had a resolution of 640 x 400. 

The Macintosh PowerBook 170 had built-in sound capabilities, a slot for a modem card and a NiCad battery.

History

Released as the high-end of the new PowerBook line, the Macintosh PowerBook 170 had all of the features that were possible at that time.  With a retail price of $4,600, features like the active matrix screen were not coming cheap.

Specifications

Processor: Motorola 68030
Processor Speed: 25 MHz
Coprocessor: Motorola 68882 FPU
Cache: 0.5k L1
System Bus: 25 MHz
Hard Drive: 40 or 80 MB
Media: 1.44 MB floppy
Weight and Dimensions (US): 6.8 lbs., 2.25” H x 11.25” W x 9.3” D
Weight and Dimensions (Metric): 3.1 kg, 5.7 cm H x 28.6 cm W x 23.6 cm D
Original Mac OS: System 7.0.1
Maximum Mac OS: Mac OS 7.6.1
Firmware: Macintosh ROM
Logicboard RAM: 2 MB
Maximum RAM: 8 MB
Type of RAM Slots: 1 - PowerBook 1xx (70-pin connector)
Minimum RAM Speed: 100 ns
Interleaving Support: No
Graphics Card: None
Graphics Memory: None
Built-in Display: 10” transreflective active matrix LCD
Resolutions: 640 x 400
Display Connection: None
Expansion Slots: Internal 20-pin connector for 2400-baud modem card
Expansion Bays:—
Hard Drive Bus: 30-pin SCSI
Backup Battery:—
Power Adapter:—
System Battery: 2.5 ampere-hour NiCad
Max Watts: 17 W
Ethernet: None
Infrared: None
Modem: Internal 2400-bps
ADB: 1
Serial: 2
SCSI: HDI-30
USB: None
FireWire: None
Audio In: 1 - 3.5-mm analog input jack, 1- Built-in microphone
Audio Out: 1 - 3.5-mm analog output jack, Built-in speaker

Timeline

The Macintosh PowerBook 170 was introduced in October of 1991 along with the rest of the new PowerBook line.  It was discontinued a year later to make way for new models.

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