Reviving the Umax J710

[macinbot]

One of the more rare Macs, even if it is a clone. The J710 was the last production Macintosh clone made. It was Apple approved hardware and even got the go-ahead for the System 8 license, but the expense was too high. Mine comes courtesy of the Umax man himself, Kennedy Brandt. This was his J710 that he used for a number of years after leaving Umax.

Even though I've had it for over a year, I haven't made time to restore it, or even get it up an booting. So over the last month or so, I spent some time on eBay sourcing parts to get it going. The biggest hurdle was sourcing a 4.5v battery. Here's some of the stuff I picked up:

My solution for the 4.5v battery was a battery case box for 3xAA batteries and to splice the old connector into it. Needed the adapter for the old mac connection to vga monitor. I spent some time last year looking for Umax branded keyboard/mouse, but couldn't find anything that someone didn't want a small mint for (people wanting $50 for a Umax keyboard are pretty delusional). So I came across the Macally mouse and keyboard that are from the same OEM as the Umax line (and Power Computing as well). Other than the logo, they are identical to the Umax ones.

More pix from the boot up in a bit.

 

[macinbot]

Some pics of the disassembly in order to get the battery in.

Umax J710:

Open case - top view:

Front bezel removed. Two of the bezel tabs were broken, but I could only find one of them.

The legendary G3 processor.

Removing the drives sleigh.

Battery case ready for testing.

 

[Strimkind]

Very nice! According to everymac that unit never shipped. So you definitely have one rare Mac!

 

[PowerPup]

Very rare, according to lowendmac.com, only about 50 were made. 8-o

Very nice clone macinbot!

 

[macinbot]

Very rare, according to lowendmac.com, only about 50 were made. 8-o
Very nice clone macinbot!

Very nice! According to everymac that unit never shipped. So you definitely have one rare Mac!

Thanks guys. I used to own a Umax C500 and it was one of my favorite Macs, clone or otherwise. It was a very solid machine. The J710 ( as you can tell from the photo) uses the same exact case as the C500. In fact it has a lot more in common with the C500/C600 than the J700 it was replacing. Here's a related excerpt from Kennedy Brandts Umax history site:

The proper replacement for the J700, on the other hand, was clearly the J710. The J700 had always been an odd beast: oversized for a desktop, still with more expandability than most business users really needed, and despite leveraging much of the S900s innards, not nearly as cost-efficient as it should have been. The J710, codenamed "Blizzard," was the perfect successor. Crammed into a C500 case, it took up considerably less space than the J700 yet offered strong performance, an attractive price, and just enough upgradeability to meet most demands. On initial shipment, the ZIF socket would hold a 200MHz 604e, with a 250MHz G3 planned for release in the summer of '98. Video was driven by on-board Matrox hardware with 4MB VRAM (UCC had been looking for an alternative partner to IX Micro, whose future was somewhat in doubt). The 3GB HD and 24x CD-ROM were both IDE. A specialized port on the logic board could accommodate a proprietary internal modem (to be made by E-Tech, another Umax subsidiary), while the Extended Performance PCI slot could host an ordinary 7" PCI card or a Umax E100 card for 10/100BaseT Ethernet and UltraWide SCSI. And the same basic product could be marginally stripped down, loaded with a 603e, and sold as the C510.

The name J710 may have been a bit incongruous. The C500 and C600 made up the logically-paired "C-series" -- different form factors, but the same logic board and performance. There was even less visible separation between the S900 and S910, which were very obviously the "S-series." But the "J-series"? Other than one letter and that both the J700 and J710 were targetted at business users, thay had almost nothing in common. The J700 was resolutely SCSI, used a stripped down Tsunami logic board, and was huge. The J710 featured IDE internal components, was based on Umax' Tanzania 2 logic board design, and occupied little more desktop space than a small monitor.

The whole site is really a good resource, and his history pages are a very good read and give an inside glimpse to what was going on between Apple and the clone makers.

http://www.kennedybrandt.com/supermac_insider/index.html

It is my understanding, from emailing Kennedy, that there were approximately fifty J710 machines that came off the assembly line, but not all of them were G3. Apparently some where 604e's, so the amount of G3 based systems is even lower.

 

[macinbot]

Some pics of the boot process. Forgive the refresh bars.

First boot led to some bad news:

A quick restart without extensions proved okay, so I tried it again.

That's more like it.

About This Computer:

Newer Tech Gauge utilities are on the HD.

Matrox Mystique video card info:

 

[PowerPup]

Oooooo, that's a pretty "About This Computer" box.

Clones were always fun to look at in MacMall magazines when I was a kid.

 

[protocol7]

That's one of the better clone ATM screens I've seen. In fact, I think it's the first one I've seen that actually changed the Mac OS 8 one. This was usually done by the Mac OS Licensing Extension. I've been mildly obsessed with clones for a while now, trying to gather info and install media. I haven't found any extensions that altered the Mac OS 8 ATM screen though. I have to ask, did you get any install media with the J710?

 

[macinbot]

Oooooo, that's a pretty "About This Computer" box.
Clones were always fun to look at in MacMall magazines when I was a kid.

Yeah, I remember paging through the catalogs of the big retailers. The Umax C500 ended up being in my price range when it was being blown out, so that's when I got one. I think the Umax machines were pretty sturdy, but the Power Computing ones I had where kinda flimsy.

That's one of the better clone ATM screens I've seen. In fact, I think it's the first one I've seen that actually changed the Mac OS 8 one. This was usually done by the Mac OS Licensing Extension. I've been mildly obsessed with clones for a while now, trying to gather info and install media. I haven't found any extensions that altered the Mac OS 8 ATM screen though. I have to ask, did you get any install media with the J710?

The ATM screen is certainly unique.

It might be hard to understand for those who weren't there, seeing how Apple is a industry leading and financial power house today, but during the dark days of the MacOS, I always thought it was the cloners who were doing most of the leg work to keep the flame alive for us MacOS faithful. Specifically, the Power Computing ads really created a sense of unity and commitment when it looked like Apple was about to keel over.

Yes, my J710 came with a gold master CD-R. They never actually produced factory media, as the whole computer ended up being scrapped when Apple canceled the clone program. Well, cancelled them all except for this computer, but there wasn't much profit in this machine, so Umax gave up. I've posted an image of the CD-R at a couple private sites, but I could put it up again somewhere else if you haven't got it. The big load of stuff I gave to modplod had a hard drive that was pulled from a Motorola "Viper" CHRP machine. If you're interested, maybe I can borrow it back and try and make an image of it.

 

[IPalindromeI]

disk image all the disks!

 

[trag]

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.

 

[mcdermd]

The SuperMac J710 has made it to a new home. Thank you, macinbot!

 

[macinbot]

The SuperMac J710 has made it to a new home. Thank you, macinbot!

Your welcome. I'm glad it's gone to an appreciative home. That Sony monitor is absolutely spot on for the era. Very nice coupling.

 

[mcdermd]

I was keeping an eye out for a monitor that was "period correct". I found that one in a dumpster and aside from a few dirt scuffs it was - amazingly - unscathed.

 

[Blessed Cheesemaker]

Wow, that was really interesting. I have two S900's I boot up from time to time...thanks to Trag (who posted previously), I replaced the power supply in one already; I've been meaning to do it to the other (newer power supply is *much* quieter, also have ATA drives in there which are much quieter than the original SCSI's).

Interestingly, I think I could still do 90% of my computer needs on my S900...still lot's of life left in them.