Mac pre-OS X versions and hardware support (was Re: Sun E450 server officially vintage)

[Ethan Dicks]

On 1/3/07, Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com> wrote:
> > > I just what to know if the MAC is vintage if contains a 68000?
> >
> > Consider this, it's been nearly 10 years since a Mac containing a 68000 CPU
> > was even able to run the current version of the operating system.  I forget
> > if support was dropped with System 7.6, or Mac OS 8.0.
>
> 8.5. 8.0 dropped the '030 and prior, but an '040 could still run 8.0 and 8.1
> officially, and an '030 could run them with some hacking.

Was that due to instruction set differences?  Stack frame differences?
 MMU differences?

-ethan