I'm still using a Umax S900 logic board in a PC tower case as my main machine. I also have a complete S900 which I bought when they were clearing them out. I think they were $600 at MacWarehouse or something like that.
I was on the lowendmacs Supermacs list (well, still am, but there's little to no traffic) for years. It was a great list back in the day and Kennedy used to drop by and help us. He's a great guy.
I wrote the article on his site about converting an ATX power supply to use with the S900/J700/C600.
They were cool machines with some interesting innovations.
The E100 card, for example, which puts UW SCSI and 10/100 ethernet on one card, essentially turned on PCI slot into two. They had a little nub connector at the end of the regular PCI connector, which presumably provided the interrupt and IDSEL for the "second" slot.
Instead of installing two Bandit chips in the S900/J700, Umax used one Bandit chip and put a PCI-PCI Bridge chip in the third PCI slot. A PCI-PCI Bridge turns one PCI slot into two or more slots. This is written into the PCI specification. Unfortunately, Apple didn't implement the spec properly, so Umax's scheme, which should have worked fine, caused compatibility issues with some PCI cards.
The desktop case of the J700 and the tower case of the S900 are actually the same model of case from Palo Alto Products, the ATCX Convertible. The drive cage is unbolted and turned sideways, and a different bezel and left case side is provided.
I was on the lowendmacs Supermacs list (well, still am, but there's little to no traffic) for years. It was a great list back in the day and Kennedy used to drop by and help us. He's a great guy.
I wrote the article on his site about converting an ATX power supply to use with the S900/J700/C600.
They were cool machines with some interesting innovations.
The E100 card, for example, which puts UW SCSI and 10/100 ethernet on one card, essentially turned on PCI slot into two. They had a little nub connector at the end of the regular PCI connector, which presumably provided the interrupt and IDSEL for the "second" slot.
Instead of installing two Bandit chips in the S900/J700, Umax used one Bandit chip and put a PCI-PCI Bridge chip in the third PCI slot. A PCI-PCI Bridge turns one PCI slot into two or more slots. This is written into the PCI specification. Unfortunately, Apple didn't implement the spec properly, so Umax's scheme, which should have worked fine, caused compatibility issues with some PCI cards.
The desktop case of the J700 and the tower case of the S900 are actually the same model of case from Palo Alto Products, the ATCX Convertible. The drive cage is unbolted and turned sideways, and a different bezel and left case side is provided.