I still have most (all) of my correspondence with the makers of the Orion/Irwin in disk (text) files, which I carry around with me on a 64GB USB, along with most of my other correspondence and files going back to 1981. Unfortunately using a USB drive (and not having a Macintosh in Denmark) means the MacOS system files etc are not here, and even if they were on the USB they would be half missing because of the resource fork / data fork format (unless I copied them as .hqx or binaries ?)
Some corrections (errors and omissions excepted):
The Orion SE was sold by MacPeak Systems, 1201 Spyglass, Austin, Texas, and came out in the second half of 1987. I think the Mac SE came out in the first half of 1987. The original price of a Orion SE at 16MHz was $1195. By the time I bought one in early 1988 they were $795. There were various optional extras which originally could drive the price much higher than $1195.
Although the Orion SE came with a utilities disk, the utilities disk I received only had a desktop file on it, no other software. I wrote 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 times to someone called Simon Brown at MacPeak asking for a replacement utilities disk, but this request was always ignored, leading me now to suspect in retrospect that there never was any (working) utilities software for the Orion. The last I saw of my Orion utilities disk was when I posted it back to MacPeak with one those 3 4 5 or 6 written requests for a replacement. Perhaps MacPeak had gone out of business before they received my dud utilities disk.
The Irwin Xcelerator upgrade was sold by Workstation Inc. 3160 Bee Caves Road Austin, TX 78746 (presumably a phoenix-like resurrection of MacPeak Systems). Originally the upgrade of the Orion SE to the "Irwin Xcelerator" was $295, circa August 1989, in February 1990 when I received one the price was $275. After you received the upgrade you were obliged to post the old board back to Workstation.
I think the highest price Irwin Xcelerator ran at 25MHz, cost over $3000, and had a lot of RAM aboard as well. In this version it made the upgraded SE somewhat faster than a Macintosh II.
Some other options were 68881 mathematics coprocessor, about $250, and 68851 paged memory management unit $595, (which you needed if you wanted to use 32MB of RAM on the daughterboard).
The Irwin Xcelerator came with a utilities disk with software (that worked) to change settings as described in my earlier posting. N.B. With processor speed settings you could slow a 25MHz chip to lower speeds - down to 8MHZ, but with a 16MHz chip you could not ramp it up to 20 or 25 MHz.
There was a SIMM price war between Japan and the US at the time. The Japanese RAM manufacturers had initially succeeded in ruining US RAM manufacturers by dumping RAM on the US at below cost. Once the US firms stopped making RAM the Japanese / Koreans were able to monopolise the market and prices of SIMMs went way way up, for a while, something like a roller coaster.
I now see on ebay you can buy 1TB (sic) USB volumes for about $15. One Terrabyte is a million Megabytes, but the catch is that these are made in China, and they are rejects that may only store say 8 useful GB of data, the other 1022 GB of storage on a $15 1TB USB drive is WORN storage. (WORN is the acronym for Write Once Read Never, a Chinese proprietory standard).
I wonder what happened to Simon Brown, MacPeak Systems, Workstation Inc ?
You would never guess, but while all this was happening I was an Australian Volunteer Abroad (like Peace Corps) working at the Public Service Commission in Apia, Western Samoa. Western Samoa is known as the Cradle of Polynesia, but it could also be described as the Graveyard of Computers, due to a combination of the tropical climate and a problematic mains electricity grid.
The nearest Mac dealership was a place called Island Printing in Pago Pago, American Samoa, run by a fairly knowledgeable and helpful person: Bill Hyman.
Some corrections (errors and omissions excepted):
The Orion SE was sold by MacPeak Systems, 1201 Spyglass, Austin, Texas, and came out in the second half of 1987. I think the Mac SE came out in the first half of 1987. The original price of a Orion SE at 16MHz was $1195. By the time I bought one in early 1988 they were $795. There were various optional extras which originally could drive the price much higher than $1195.
Although the Orion SE came with a utilities disk, the utilities disk I received only had a desktop file on it, no other software. I wrote 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 times to someone called Simon Brown at MacPeak asking for a replacement utilities disk, but this request was always ignored, leading me now to suspect in retrospect that there never was any (working) utilities software for the Orion. The last I saw of my Orion utilities disk was when I posted it back to MacPeak with one those 3 4 5 or 6 written requests for a replacement. Perhaps MacPeak had gone out of business before they received my dud utilities disk.
The Irwin Xcelerator upgrade was sold by Workstation Inc. 3160 Bee Caves Road Austin, TX 78746 (presumably a phoenix-like resurrection of MacPeak Systems). Originally the upgrade of the Orion SE to the "Irwin Xcelerator" was $295, circa August 1989, in February 1990 when I received one the price was $275. After you received the upgrade you were obliged to post the old board back to Workstation.
I think the highest price Irwin Xcelerator ran at 25MHz, cost over $3000, and had a lot of RAM aboard as well. In this version it made the upgraded SE somewhat faster than a Macintosh II.
Some other options were 68881 mathematics coprocessor, about $250, and 68851 paged memory management unit $595, (which you needed if you wanted to use 32MB of RAM on the daughterboard).
The Irwin Xcelerator came with a utilities disk with software (that worked) to change settings as described in my earlier posting. N.B. With processor speed settings you could slow a 25MHz chip to lower speeds - down to 8MHZ, but with a 16MHz chip you could not ramp it up to 20 or 25 MHz.
There was a SIMM price war between Japan and the US at the time. The Japanese RAM manufacturers had initially succeeded in ruining US RAM manufacturers by dumping RAM on the US at below cost. Once the US firms stopped making RAM the Japanese / Koreans were able to monopolise the market and prices of SIMMs went way way up, for a while, something like a roller coaster.
I now see on ebay you can buy 1TB (sic) USB volumes for about $15. One Terrabyte is a million Megabytes, but the catch is that these are made in China, and they are rejects that may only store say 8 useful GB of data, the other 1022 GB of storage on a $15 1TB USB drive is WORN storage. (WORN is the acronym for Write Once Read Never, a Chinese proprietory standard).
I wonder what happened to Simon Brown, MacPeak Systems, Workstation Inc ?
You would never guess, but while all this was happening I was an Australian Volunteer Abroad (like Peace Corps) working at the Public Service Commission in Apia, Western Samoa. Western Samoa is known as the Cradle of Polynesia, but it could also be described as the Graveyard of Computers, due to a combination of the tropical climate and a problematic mains electricity grid.
The nearest Mac dealership was a place called Island Printing in Pago Pago, American Samoa, run by a fairly knowledgeable and helpful person: Bill Hyman.