20th Anniversary Macintosh - Rare and beautiful

History

The Twentieth Anniversary Mac (abbreviated to TAM by its followers) was announced at MacWorld Expo, San Francisco on January 7, 1997, with a release date of 20th March 1997 and a retail price of US$7,499.

The TAM's design deviated vastly from essentially all other personal computers of its day. Codenamed Spartacus (as well as Pomona, and Smoke and Mirrors) the TAM featured metallic green/gold paint, and was one of the first desktop based computers to use an LCD display, in an enclosure only 2.5" deep. Although its logic board was one of the only unique internal components, the exterior was designed to represent a state-of-the-art futuristic vision of where personal computing could go.

Features:

The TAM features a 250 MHz PowerPC 603e processor and 12.1" active matrix LCD powered by an ATI 3D Rage II video chipset with 2MB of VRAM capable of displaying up to 16bit color at 800x600 or 640x480 pixels. It had vertically mounted 4x SCSI CD-ROM and Apple floppy Superdrives, a 2GB ATA hard drive, a TV/FM tuner, an S-Video card, and a custom-made Bose sound system including 2 "Jewel" speakers and a subwoofer built into the externally located power supply "base unit".

The TAM came with a unique 75 key ADB keyboard which featured leather palm-rests and a trackpad instead of a mouse. The trackpad could be detached from the keyboard if desired, with a small leather insert found underneath the keyboard ready to fill the gap. When not required, the keyboard could slide under the TAM's head unit, leaving the trackpad exposed for continued access. The TAM also came with a remote control (standard with the Apple TV/FM Tuner card), but also featured buttons on the front panel that could control sound levels, CD playback, brightness, contrast, and TV mode. The pre-installed operating system was a specialised version of Mac OS 7.6.1 (requiring the TAM's special CD for installation), but this could be upgraded as far as Mac OS 9.1.

Expandability is possible via a tight-fitting 7 inch PCI slot and Apple Communication slot II for the addition of Ethernet. Later G3 upgrade options offered by Sonnet and NewerTechnologies made use of the TAM's Level II Cache slot, which allow the computer to reach speeds of up to 500 MHz. All of these options come at the price of the TAM's slim profile. The back panel must be removed, and replaced with an (included) "hunchback" cover that adds several inches to the depth of the machine.

One last unique feature of the TAM is a special startup chime used only by the TAM, and which arguably also only sounds "right" when played by a TAM.

Production/Release

Apple manufactured 12,000 TAMs, with a release run of 11,601. The remaining 399 were kept by Apple for use as spare parts.

The TAM was only released in 5 countries: USA, Japan, France, Germany, and the UK.

Ten TAMs were sent to Apple Australia. At least two of these were given away as prizes to the public and one went on display in Apple's Sydney HQ; the remainder kept for use by Apple Australia executives.

Specifications: 

Questions from buyer and answers:

Q: Do you have all original boxes?

A: I have the original accessory box, but I just looked for the original shipping box and it is not where I thought it was. It is likely at the storage center. I'll have to get back to you in the next couple of days about the original shipping box.

Q: Are there any accessories missing?

A: No.

Q: Any scratches/scuffs/other imperfections?

A: Two barely noticeable wrinkles in fabric of the right-side speaker. As noted in the ad, a piece of shrink-tubing has been added onto the power cord. Some indentations on the leather on the keyboard wrist rest. See photos.

Q: Does this unit suffer from the crackling audio problem (predominately from the left speaker after warm-up)?

A: This unit does not suffer from the crackling audio problem.

Q: Any upgrades (memory, processor, Ethernet, USB etc)?

A: None. Unit is as originally obtained from Apple.

Q: What software is installed?

A: As original from Apple.

Q: Any problems with the CD drive?

A: CD drive has no problems.

Q: Please confirm that everything is in good working order.

A: Confirmed

For those who are wondering about the original packaging: I will go to storage later this afternoon and will update the listing with the information about what original boxes I have and add photo's.

NOTE: Unfortunately the original shipping box has been lost. I do still have the original accessory box as shown in the photo's.