The Macintosh Centris 650 has the distinction of being Apple’s Macintosh product with the shortest lifespan (along with the Centris 610). The Centris 650 and 610 were introduced on February 10, 1993, and discontinued on October 21, 1993—a lifespan of only 253 days. The short life resulted from a technicality when Apple made the decision in late 1993 to follow a new naming scheme for all their products: “Quadra” for business, “LC” for education, and “Performa” for home. As a result of the name change, the Macintosh Centris 650 became the Macintosh Quadra 650.
The Centris computers were introduced as Apple’s midrange offerings in 1993 as replacements to the Macintosh IIci and Quadra 700. The Centris 650 used a Motorola 25MHz 68040 or 68LC040 chip and could run System 7.1, up through and including Mac OS 8.1 (without a PowerPC upgrade).
The Centris 650 includes onboard video with VGA support via an adapter, 3 NuBus slots, two ADB ports, two serial ports, an external SCSI connector, and a 5.25-inch drive bay. This was one of the earliest Macintosh computers to be available with an internal CD-ROM drive (an AppleCD 300i model).
According to MacWorld in April 1993, five configurations were available:
- 25 MHz 68LC040, 4 MB RAM (on board), 512 KB VRAM, 80 MB HDD, no Ethernet
- 25 MHz 68040, 8 MB RAM (on board), 512 KB VRAM, 80 MB HDD, Ethernet
- 25 MHz 68040, 8 MB RAM (on board), 512 KB VRAM, 230 MB HDD, Ethernet
- 25 MHz 68040, 8 MB RAM (on board), 1 MB VRAM, 230 MB HDD, Ethernet, AppleCD 300i and microphone
- 25 MHz 68040, 24 MB RAM (including 8 MB on board), 1 MB VRAM, 500 MB HDD, Ethernet
Sources: Wikipedia, Low End Mac (naming, specs), MacWorld (via Internet Archive)
