Macintosh II: ROM Features Different From Mac Plus

Article Review/Updated: 1 September 1995


The Macintosh II ROM features were greatly extended from those found in the Macintosh Plus. A number of new managers were added to the ROM, and most existing managers were modified to support the new hardware capabilities of the Macintosh II.

The modifications most frequently introduced involved color support - QuickDraw, menus, dialog boxes, and TextEdit are among those items that were extended with color features. The Nubus slots were also a prime candidate for causing additions and changes. The Macintosh II introduced a Slot Manager, an Operating System Utilities Manager, and the Deferred Task Manager to support Apple's Nubus implementation.

Other managers were rewritten to remove previous limitations: the Macintosh II was an open machine, so the ROM designers made every effort to permit developers the freedom to design products for the Macintosh II without being concerned with ROM limitations.


The following managers are new to the Macintosh II ROM:

Color Manager
Color QuickDraw
Scrip Manager
Start Manager
Apple Desktop Bus Manager
Slot Manager
Sound Manager
Deferred Task Manager
Shutdown Manager
Operating System Utilities


These managers underwent significant changes from the Macintosh Plus
ROM:

Font Manager
Window Manager
Control Manager
Menu Manager
TextEdit
Dialog Manager
International Utilities Package
File Manager
Printer Manager
Device Manager
SCSI Manager
AppleTalk Manager
Vertical Retrace Manager

In all cases, previously defined calls, data types, and resources are recognized by the Macintosh II ROM, but extensions to those capabilities were added in the revised managers.
Published Date: Feb 18, 2012