Episode 69: We're Fighting Back for the Mac!

[James]

James and John discuss some eBay finds: an original Apple II and a Daystar Digital Genesis. They also discuss Power Computing and the week's news.

[Classic Computing]

Great episode as always. I am going to dig my Motorola StarMax out and take some pictures, then I'll post them. It's a very interesting machine, and happens to be the last collectible I acquired. You would have thought that both IBM and Motorola would have released the first Mac clones at the time, as they were both part of the "team" which produced the PowerPC chip.

[James]

Excellent! Perhaps we can use them when we discuss the clones of Motorola.

[Classic Computing]

I will set it up tonight and take some pictures for you! Finally, I have purpose in my life!!!

[Classic Computing]

These pictures are dark, I can take some better ones tomorrow.

[Wholly Mindless]

Nice shots. The slots are all the wrong directions though.

[Derek]

Ah, the days when CHRP and BeOS were going to solve all our problems...

Radius made a clone for a while, too: http://www.everymac.com/systems/radius/index-radius-mac-clones.html

(two, apparently...)

Too bad that after almost a decade of building cool products, they dropped off the face of the earth after those two machines. :-(

[MacMan]

Strangely enough I installed BeOS 4 on my PowerMac 4400 the other day. The 4400 is effectively a Mac clone made by Apple because it just doesn't feel like a Mac at all. BeOS runs very nicely on it though and I'm hoping to find some time to have a good play with it soon. I've got the system set up so that it can dual boot into BeOS or OS 8 - the machine starts booting Mac OS then presents a screen that allows the user to select which OS they wish to use.

[Classic Computing]

You're right, the 4400 was Apple's way of making their own lower cost "clone." It was made of thin metal like the clones, and they put the floppy on the left vs. the right. Plus, it used the same Tanzania Motherboard that my Motorola StarMax has.

[Derek]

Yes, I remember servicing a couple of those at my second "real" job. I sliced my hand on the $%^#$^& cheap unfinished metal on the cramped insides of the case!

[Richard Tanner]

I'm loving the series about the clones. When I was at university, they had a large area with PCs down one side and Umax Mac clones down the other. Originally the Macs all ran Mac OS 7.6, but I did see one machine where they were experimenting with Mac OS 8. I did use the Umax machines a few times, but sadly, my course defined that I spend more time using the Windows NT machines on the other side of the room, and the Macs weren't very friendly due to the clunky networking software.

My Father's first Mac was a ComputerWarehouse Manhattan. ComputerWarehouse is probably a clone brand that is less familiar as they were UK based. All their machines had names after places, such as the Paris, Rome, Harvard and Hollywood. My Dad chose the CW Manhattan. Essentially it was an Apple 4400 motherboard with a 200Mhz 604e processor in a heavily built PC tower case. But what really drove his decision was that it came with a built-in CD-R drive - a feature not available in any Apple models at the time. Add to that, it was about £500 less than an Apple 7600 and it was a no-brainer to opt for the clone. This machine served him well for many years until eventually the power circuits broke and turning the machine on was almost impossible. He took it to a generic PC repair store, as CW had since stopped supporting the clones, and a power switch was bodged onto the back of the machine. It only worked like this for another few months before it gave out and he was forced to splash out on a second-hand beige PowerMac G3 Tower.

Looking forward to hearing about some of the other Mac clones!

[James]

I had never even heard of the ComputerWarehouse clones. Thanks for bringing those to our attention so we can mention them too.

[Richard Tanner]

I found the original brochure for the CW clones. You can even see where my Dad had noted his chosen model on the cover.
Apparently, the CD-R option was added later. It was a tray loading drive and the Manhattan was pre-installed with Toast. I think it was Toast 3.5.