posted
During a brief period in the mid-to-late 90s, Apple clones were available from a few excellent companies, the most notable of which were Umax and Motorola.
I bought an early production-line release of the StarMax 4000 with Mac OS 7.5. A year or so later, I bought a Umax SuperMac S900 series computer from a friend who had moved on to a G3. The SuperMac clone was great but I had a special fondness for that beautiful Motorola Mac.
There was also a small but dedicated army of Moto-Mac users, and plenty of great user groups in the Seattle area with weekly meetings and exchange of ideas. What made this so much fun was the fact that these Motorola Macs were easily altered, upgraded and experimented with. There was a great abundance of SGRAM cards, accelerators and other upgrades, and it seemed like somebody was always coming out with something new. There was even an online company dedicated to providing parts for these (Mac Zone).
When Apple slammed the lid on the licensing agreements that made all of this possible it obviously ended the life of these product lines. The StarMax and SuperMacs computers were dead in the water. And though this period of Mac clones was very brief, it was much fun, and residual benefits may still be found today.
I eventually converted my Umax clone to a linux box, which eventually ended up in the gargage (and later the storage shed). My Motorola Mac though, had become so dear to me that I continued to fire it up every once in awhile, and while inferior to my G3 Yosemite (and subsequent mac upgrades), it was still a creditable and excellent computer. I loved showing it off to guests and friends.
After years and years of occasional, wistful use, I finally boxed it up and put my Motorola Mac in deep storage. Gently placed it in the pile of old Amstrads, Tandys, Commodores and Amigas. I booted it up, created a couple of documents in Clarisworks for the last time and then pulled the plug. It was difficult to let this one go, and this is one vintage computer that will never end up on ebay.
[ March 19, 2009, 12:55 AM: Message edited by: Ben Del Amitri ]
-------------------- Respectfully,
Ben
Malory in Signature Posts: 5772 | Registered: Oct 2004
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