The Apple Macintosh Book Second Edition 1985

Mac: The Apple Macintosh Book, Second Edition by Cary Lu, Microsoft Press, published 1984, second edition 1985, ISBN 0-914845-66-7, Library of Congress 85-21432. The scan is 422 pages.

This is not an Apple publication. It is a third-party book, and it is a secondary source: where it disagrees with Apple's own service documentation, the Apple document wins.

What it covers

A general reference rather than a repair book, but the second edition added a Technical Topics chapter that is genuinely useful: it carries wiring information for all ports, internal display adjustments, an annotated list of system error messages, and an explanation of why the Macintosh should not be operated above 15,000 feet and what to do about it. Other additions are a dot-matrix printer comparison with measured speed and resolution, how the LaserWriter and PostScript work, graphic arts and scanners, a comparison of the Macintosh design against the IBM PC-AT, communications, and networks and AppleTalk.

What it does not contain

• No parts lists, no component values and no schematics. The "internal display adjustments"

 section is user-level.

• Lu says in the preface that he "eliminated most material that can be found in Apple's manuals",

 so it is deliberately not a substitute for them.

• Nothing after 1985 — no SE, no Mac II.

Pages that cite this document

• Macintosh 128K, Macintosh 512K — the port wiring and the altitude limit
• Apple LaserWriter — the PostScript explanation
• The Apple Macintosh Book 3rd edition 1988 — the later edition

Download: The_Apple_Macintosh_Book_Second_Edition_1985.pdf (27.6 MB)