Thread

PPC Mac Clones

· Hardware · 28 posts · Jul 2, 2009 — Apr 25, 2010 View original thread ↗

#1 Thu, 2 Jul 2009 - 17:58

Hello. I wanted to see what others thing of the mac clones. Any particular favorites? Mine is my PowerTower Pro. Its a hilarious fusion of mac and beige PC. Its pretty cool, with an easy to work in case. What do you think?

//wthww

#2 Thu, 2 Jul 2009 - 19:52

Quad-CPU MaxxBoxx! Oh, I'd like to have one!

#3 Thu, 2 Jul 2009 - 19:52

I had a radius for a few weeks, hated it

power pc with nubus, cpu soldered to the logic board, and every single peice of it was rivited to the case so you could not change hard drives or cd's, and it never ran os 8

#4 Thu, 2 Jul 2009 - 20:09

I wonder how many on this forum actually ever had one? I know that I felt it was the best decision at the time, coming out of The Dark Times right before the second coming of Mr. Jobs, when Apple's offerings in my price range were just not as powerful, and my trusty PowerBook 170 just could not run the apps I really needed most. Of course I would have loved to have been able to afford a PowerBook 3400c/240 (which I have now only years later via eBay), instead I purchased a PowerCenter Pro 240 with a 17" Color Pivot monitor in Sept '97. Basic upgrading was easily done like most horizontal desktop boxes at that time. I was very pleased with it and used it without any problems whatsoever until Fall 2004 when I picked up my still-current desktop 20" G4 iMac gently used right after they were discontinued. It was a strange feeling, sitting there at what looked like a PC/Windows box, running the Mac OS. Ultimately, I donated the whole gigantic pile to a local community college primarily for running CAD and database software in their theater. And it helped one particular kid go on to greatness early in his career.

#5 Thu, 2 Jul 2009 - 20:34

My 200 MHz Motorola StarMax 4000 MT was great. Very clean design (even if it did look like a PC), something I've always liked in a case. Also, it was pretty well upgradeable, even if the 604e processor inside wasn't. Ran both Mac OS 9.1 and Debian Sarge like a champ. I also used a PS/2 mouse with it. I had to use Mouse2B to enable the second mouse button for something else, while Sarge just recognized it natively as a PS/2 mouse.

#6 Thu, 2 Jul 2009 - 21:15

I have an 81/110 Radius unit and it is built like a tank (and has a normal mac video connection unlike the 8100).

#7 Thu, 2 Jul 2009 - 22:04

ahaha, who in their right mind would turn down a maxxboxx?. I've always had a special place in my heart for one. If it ever gets filled, I guess we'll find out. If anyone here has pics of one, care to share?

//wthww

#8 Thu, 2 Jul 2009 - 22:22

ahaha, who in their right mind would turn down a maxxboxx?

People who have no use and don't like one I would guess. I turned down a free local Apple II+ because I had no use for it in my collection yet others realy liked that model.

#9 Fri, 3 Jul 2009 - 05:43

I have a PowerTower Pro 200 and a PowerCenter 150 (minitower model). I only got the PowerCenter recently (as in within the last few years) from 4seasonphoto. I overclocked the bus on that to 60MHz. Wow! Speedy sucker.

I picked up the PowerTower Pro in 1998. It eventually got configured with a dual 604e and ran as a FileMaker 4/ASIP server 24x7 during my college years. It was a very nice machine. It also ran YDL 2 very well. I picked up this machine from an internship I had at an Agfa plant in Massachusetts. They did design and production of electronic pre-press systems there. At the time, they were going through a round of recaps replacing a whole bunch of clones they have with newer G3 systems.

I've also got a pair of Freestyle tablets (re-cased PowerBook 5300c). They are interesting, but not particularly useful machines.

I've always wanted a Umax S900, but I've never seen one in real life. I've also wanted a C500/280 for a long time. In fact, I already have the 280 w/ CacheDoubler waiting for a host to show up someday...

And I'm seriously lusting after a 4way Daystar Millennium/Genesis machine. 933MHz of PowerPC 604e goodness! Yeah.

Peace,

Drew

#10 Fri, 3 Jul 2009 - 16:37

Oh yes! The Daystar Genesis is the Holy Grail of PPC Mac clones IMO. I'd likely kill for one of those... (OK, maybe just a few mosquitoes but nothing more...

)

#11 Fri, 3 Jul 2009 - 17:10

Skylab FTW

#12 Sat, 4 Jul 2009 - 00:35

Never used one.

Although I wouldn't mind a Genesis or MaxBoxx if it came my way.

I am in the process of slimming down my collection, so adding new machines would be counter productive to that goal.

I still wouldn't say 'no' to either one of those machines though.

#13 Sat, 4 Jul 2009 - 19:40

found an old advertisment for MaxxBoxx they looked great, like iMacs in colors

#14 Sun, 5 Jul 2009 - 04:31

"der PoewrMAClone in der Box" - I like that

#15 Mon, 6 Jul 2009 - 03:41

//wthww

#16 Mon, 6 Jul 2009 - 06:01

I want a red one, cuz red goes faster

#17 Tue, 7 Jul 2009 - 21:27

I'm sorry to say the orange goes faster. It also looks better.

//wthww

#18 Wed, 8 Jul 2009 - 04:47

butbutbut...the red one is even called "redline", which means it HAS to be fast - if you go past the redline, you blow the engine

#19 Wed, 8 Jul 2009 - 20:41

Contrary to popular opinion, going past the red line means you'll need a new gauge. psssh.

//wthww

#20 Thu, 9 Jul 2009 - 01:06

Either that, or depending on what gear you're in, you'll soon see a flashing set of red and blue lights in your rear vision mirror.

#21 Sun, 12 Jul 2009 - 00:16

I remember watching the video of Steve Jobs saying that they had to eliminate all the clones to get back to business.

But that hasn't stopped me :0

I Hackintoshed my MSI Wind.

#22 Sun, 12 Jul 2009 - 03:31

Apple is semi unique in the fact that they do control their own market (in a royal pita 1980's way) but I often wonder about "the man" and his choices

Imagine a world in which apple released OSX on the pc back in 2000, they actually would have had a very good chance of toppling Microsoft and become much larger than they have ever been

But at least someone beat some smarts into him and he "blessed" the pc world with ipod (about the only thing really floating apple there for a while)

#23 Fri, 24 Jul 2009 - 11:06

Id go for a PowerWave Stargate with Nubus/PCI. }

just because nubus is teh win

#24 Fri, 24 Jul 2009 - 14:48

And if this wasn't about PowerPCs, I'd mention the holy grail of clones - the Radius SkyLab :O

#25 Tue, 4 Aug 2009 - 00:45

Id go for a PowerWave Stargate with Nubus/PCI. }
just because nubus is teh win

According to a friend of mine who used to work in PCC support, the Stargate never worked right. It was their worst support call.

#26 Tue, 4 Aug 2009 - 00:54

My Mac clone days started with seven of the Outbound Laptop Model 125s which I found at CompuAdd's back dock sale. I fixed them up and sold four of them for enough money to cover my costs and allow me to keep one, give one to my girlfriend (now my partner, almost 20 years later) and sell one at half my regular price to my room mate at the time. I could write a whole article on how cool the Model 125 was...

My next clone was a Power Computing Power 120. I bought that on clearance or something for about $400 or was it $600? So many years... This was a PM8100 clone which ran at 120 MHz. I used that machine for years, until I switched to the...

SuperMac S900 which was being cleared out for $599, IIRC. In a way I'm still using the S900. I bought various parts and extra motherboards as the stock around the world was clearanced away. I have my original S900 mainly running an old Umax SCSI based scanner. My main machine is a large PC case with an S900 motherboard installed and a standard ATX power supply adapted to the S900. It has room for six optical drives...

But that case is versatile. For a couple of years I had a PCC PowerTower Pro motherboard in there instead.

I think the PowerTower Pro is a little better and more compatible because it has two Bandit chips instead of using a PCI-PCI Bridge to provide six PCI slots, but I think the S900 board is probably better constructed and more durable. I had to switch back to the S900 board because the PTP became flakey--I think from stress on the CPU socket. The case I'm using didn't provide support for the upper edge of the CPU card. This S900 board hasn't minded that for years.

I have a G4 MDD waitiing to become my main machine, but somehow I never make the time to switch. At this point my old S900 in frankentein case is like a coral reef. It's encrusted with all manner of growths which are going to be a pain to remove and sort out to a new machine...

Oh, and my current S900 motherboard has the PM9600 Kansas ROMs installed in place of the originals, which gives native support for speculative processing with G3 processors without any Open Firmware hacks.

#27 Tue, 4 Aug 2009 - 04:08

The Vertegri ImediaEngine V7, based on the Tanzania architecture / 240 MHz PowerPC 604e / 64 MB / 2.1 GB / in a heavy, metal portable case. / the first line of portables to ever use the PowerPC 604e processor. The result was a fast portable that weighs about 12-15 pounds and didn't come with a battery.

#28 Sun, 25 Apr 2010 - 10:10

Gah!

That laptop is super ugly.

However the Skylab sounds like it truly was the Holy Grail.

"As far as Mac Prototypes go, one of the most glorious I ever saw was the Radius 'SkyLab.' That was the development name for the project we were working on. Radius at that time was an early Mac peripheral manufacturer. We had made a Mac II accelerator called the Radius Rocket.

"The SkyLab was a server with 14 NuBus slots and a power supply so huge you could do arc welding on the side with it. It also had fifteen 3-1/2" drive bays, and four 5-1/4" drive bays (for CD ROMs or optical drives).

"The idea was for it to be a dedicated Image RIPer for graphic houses. It never happened.

"I was a Radius employee from 1988 to 1997. The SkyLab box was just as I described: power supply, drive bays and slots. The processors were the Radius Rocket Accelerators. Each Radius Rocket contained its own 68040 Processor and six 72-pin SIMM sockets. The concept was that it would operate as a distributed processor. A render farm. Your computer would have a plug-in that would break down your tasks and divide it amongst the Rocket Processors.

"At the Time of development, we didn't have an agreement with Apple. Only after showing SkyLab to Apple did they have us sign a Licensing agreement. (This was before the PowerPC clones.) An interesting result of the licensing agreement allowed us to use the actual Mac ROMs, but we were forbidden to include a boot floppy. Which was fine, since the whole thing ran from a console application anyway. So we had a Mac SE/30 as the console, but it would run with almost any '020 Mac.

"Another stipulation of the agreement was that we could not actually come out and say we were using the Mac ROMs. This was because at the time DayStar Digital and a few others were working on accelerators, and Apple didn't want to look as if they were playing favorites.

"From what I remember it was possible to boot the whole shebang from a floppy, but for fear of God and Apple it was not pursued or ever mentioned ever again. Using the SE/30 or a Mac IIcx, the whole thing was run like a headless server. The ROM issue was handled by us loading the ROM image into RAM. I forget why we did that, but just another aspect of the goofiness."

-by Anonymous Former Radius Engineer

Holy Grail indeed. }

Get that, an AWS and a MaxxBoxx and you should be all set for Unobtaniun dual wide Macs.