Revenge of the Clones

[128keaton]

So ever since moving out for college, I've kinda abandoned my collection. Which is a shame since I had some good stuff that I'd been wanting to play with--like some IIfxs and a big ol II. Anyway, I got lucky and got ahold of a PowerTower 200 and 225, along with a 6500. I need some HDDs first, but I'd love to load up the 225 with a g3 or a g4 upgrade.

Any more information on these would be great!

 

[luckybob]

I have a few clones and they are nice systems.  I honestly prefer them to the apple offerings of the time.  That said, they do have some quirks.  IIRC they have a fast frontside bus, but only have half the memory slots. So it ends up being a wash.  

"normal" scsi hard drives should work fine if you use a hacked hard drive format tool.  Apple really dropped the ball when they let steve gut the clone program.

 

[128keaton]

I have a few clones and they are nice systems.  I honestly prefer them to the apple offerings of the time.  That said, they do have some quirks.  IIRC they have a fast frontside bus, but only have half the memory slots. So it ends up being a wash.  

"normal" scsi hard drives should work fine if you use a hacked hard drive format tool.  Apple really dropped the ball when they let steve gut the clone program.

I agree. The plastics on these are way more durable and the insides, while not 'revolutionary' are straightforward as they can get. Kinda similar to our Steve-less world of today. I'd really love to hot rod one of these, maybe gut my busted 8500 for its drives, though that would be a shame since its also pretty cool itself (dual boots Debian and OS 9--Debian has a gigabit NIC interfaced to it). Oh well--maybe when I can afford some drives off of eBay we'll see if we get anywhere.

https://imgur.com/a/SA6FN <- More pics

 

[chickenplucker]

Not sure if any are left or if this would be an easier route to take for new drives, but defor had some bootable SATA PCI cards for sale in the classifieds that may be worth a look.

 

[CC_333]

Yeah, the clones are built very similarly to contemporary Windows PCs. Lots of industry standard parts.

They are very nice, though, and they are better than many of Apple's offerings (although, the 8600 and 9600, from what I can tell, were pretty nice, but those came toward the end of the clone era).

c

 

[Cory5412]

These are nice systems and are basically Power Macintosh 9500s in cases that are easier to use. I believe the motherboard has been re-shaped slightly and is either EATX or something like it, so these systems' boards are good for dropping into different cases.

Otherwise, they are still Macs. They need Mac specific video cards, storage cards, the types of RAM Macs used, SCSI disks, Apple floppy drives, ADB keyboards and mice, etc.

If you get a G3/G4 upgrade, I personally recommend putting it in the PTP 200 and keeping the faster 604 CPU in use, although these CPUs are highly interchangeable, so you could put a G4 in the system with the 225 chip and the 225 chip in the 200 system.

Apple really dropped the ball when they let steve gut the clone program.

Apple would have died, and with it, so would have the Macintosh. NeXT would have gone the way of Be.

 

[IIfx]

Apple would have died, and with it, so would have the Macintosh.

The clones were indeed slowly killing Apple. Instead of taking the low end the clone machines were killing the margins Apple had on the high end.  

Letting clone manufacturers build machines nearly exactly the same as the top end Macintosh lineup was foolish. There was little differentiating the clones and the Apple originals. Often the clones had better cases than the awful brittle plastic ones Apple used at the time. 

Steve did the right thing. It hurt the clone partners but it had to be done.

 

[Cory5412]

Mac plastic would generally not have been brittle in the '90s, but I would be 100% unsurprised to find out the 8500/9500 already had a reputation for drawing blood.

It's a bit of a shame because at the low end, the clone vendors were doing good work with the Gazelle architecture and low cost versions of the Performas, but as it stands, it took long enough to clear the backlog of systems (all Mac builders, including Apple) built in 1996-1997 out of the sales channel. New-old-stock S900/910s were available from catalog resellers for at least a year or two after UMAX stopped building them.

Apple clearing out its own backlog and canceled orders from resellers was specifically cited as a reason for decreased profits at Apple one year, although I forget which one.

The other thing, of course, that would've killed Apple in good time, is the huge glut of models. This was cited as a part of the problem that had been causing reduced demand for their machines.

 

[CC_333]

@Cory5412Yes, brittleness has only become a problem as these machines age (notable exception: Powerbook 190/5300, which had terrible plastics that were brittle almost from new, and the brittleness was exacerbated by a terrible hinge design that was virtually guaranteed to fail during normal use).

That being said, the designs of most of the clones may not have been quite as unique or streamlined or whatever, but they were simple and they worked, much to the dismay of Apple, whose many multiples of Performa models confused everybody, so it was good that Steve reduced the product line to four customizable models. To that end, I think their product line has been getting a bit fragmented again as of late, but nothing like the Performa debacle!

@IIfxYou're totally right. In many ways, the clones were probably better, but they were undercutting Apple where it hurt the most, and without Apple, the clones wouldn't have any designs to copy (and the Macintosh probably would've died soon after as a result), so they had to go. It's too bad, but as you said, it had to be done, and it was probably one of the the smartest things Steve did when he became iCEO.

c

 

[Unknown_K]

I kind of wonder what clones would lave looked like in the 68030 era. Few of the PPC era ones (except for the Radius 81/110 and that 4 CPU Daystar one) looked interesting.

 

[128keaton]

The 'mystery' card ended up being a Pinnacle Capture card.

I'm pursuing purchasing a SATA card. Now I've got the itch to get my Macintosh II running again

 

[128keaton]

Finally got around to tinkering with the clones. I got the 225 running, I just swapped the CPU, PCI cards, RAM, Front face, and ZIP drives from the 225 to the 220, effectively making it the 225. The VGA card works which is great. I need to grab a load of misc things before I can install anything on it, but I found the PowerComputing OS 8 images on Macintosh Garden, just need a blank CD.

 

[128keaton]

I got a Lombard and a 520 from work a couple of weeks ago. Both need drives, but work otherwise. I'm installing OS X Public Beta on the Lombard since that was the only CD-based install I had at the moment.



I also got the SATA drive into the PowerTower with my fancy new SATA card:



The CD drive doesn't appear to operate anymore, so I'll just clone the OS install onto a 2nd SATA disk and boot/install off that.

I'd love to get the 520 working, as the case isn't terribly far gone, but man I'm fed up with the cracking plastic.

 

[luckybob]

You could have made your bed for us.  Didn't your parents teach you anything?  

 

[128keaton]

You could have made your bed for us.  Didn't your parents teach you anything?  

No .

I had one of the biggest 'duh' moments in my entire life. Why am I trying to boot from a drive with a cloned install, when I can boot from a working SATA CD drive. Doh!

 

[DarthNvader]

One of the elusive Sonnet G4 1 Ghz would be a nice card to have. They sold their remaining stock in Japan, so check the Japanese auction sites from time to time, and you may come across one.