Apple Macintosh IIx

Apple introduced the Macintosh IIx in September 1988, not 1986. It replaced the Macintosh II's 68020 with a 16 MHz Motorola 68030 and paired it with a 68882 floating-point unit.

The IIx has six NuBus expansion slots in its large desktop enclosure. Owners could use them for display, networking, storage-controller, and specialist professional cards.

It was the first Macintosh offered with Apple's 1.44 MB SuperDrive, then called the FDHD drive. Unlike earlier 800 KB Mac drives, it could read and write several common DOS-formatted disks with suitable software.

The IIx runs its 68030 at 16 MHz, while the 1990 IIfx uses a heavily optimized 40 MHz design. Both provide six NuBus slots, but the IIfx was Apple's far faster flagship and uses some unusual proprietary components.