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CED in the History of Media Technology

Apple introduced the Color Classic in February 1993, the first Macintosh with a built-in color display, and the last of the classic line (in the U.S.) that began with the 128K in 1984. This model used a 16 MHz 68030 processor and a maximum of 10 MB RAM. This was somewhat underpowered at introduction and became even more so with the World Wide Web catching on at about the same time. Apple discontinued the machine in May 1994, and the 33 MHz Color Classic II (released only in Japan) was discontinued not long after that.

But a funny thing happened after the Color Classic was discontinued. A hobby sprang up called the Club for Creating the Strongest Color Classic where the goal is to cram as much computing power as possible into a Color Classic case. In this respect this machine became the "custom hotrod" of the computer industry. At first this was done with the early PowerPC processors, but as time went on ways to upgrade the machine to G3 and even G4 processors were developed. When Apple introduced the G4 Cube on July 19, 2000, some CCSCC members got the compact cube just to try and stuff its guts into the Color Classic case.