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SuperMac C500

CircuitBored

Well-known member
That's either a Umax SuperMac C500 or a J710. Here's an excellent site detailing all of SuperMac's products.

The C500s are one of the more common clones but they are still sought after. I'd expect to get between at least $150 for it but $1,000 is high. That sort of price is reserved for the ultra-rare clones like the Daystar Genesis MP or SuperMac S900DP/S910.

If it's a J710 it's a much more unusual machine but they are not in crazily high demand. I think you'd see a sale price of at least $250 for a J710 but it could go a lot higher if it has one of the unobtainium G3 upgrades.
 

MOS8_030

Well-known member
I bought one of those for my grandfather some time after the end of the clone era. I think it came from Small Dog.
 

Franklinstein

Well-known member
Ha. Yeah they weren't terribly pretty, were they? Akia in Japan made a rebadged version of this with a slightly different front panel and a stand to orient it on its side instead of as a desktop.
Anyway UMAX were one of the more interesting clone builders in that these are Alchemy-based systems but they use an entirely custom logic board (Apple's Alchemy systems were the drawer-style logic boards for the 54/6400s) whereas lower-tier cloners just used a variation of the Tanzania/II architecture (which were mostly just rebadged StarMaxes). I think UMAX and PowerComputing are the only ones who built custom Alchemy systems (and UMAX would sublicense these designs to others such as Akia).

I doubt I'd pay more than $100 for it unless it was one of the top-end models with the fast L2 cache on the processor card, or one of the elusive Akia or Tatung or other off-brand cloner's version of it. I think I paid something around $100 for the UMAX Apus 2000 (which is the same thing only sold outside of the States) that I bought about two years ago.
 

Fizzbinn

Well-known member
Anyone have any idea if the case used in the SuperMac c500 series was based on a common PC version or if it was custom to Umax? Perhaps Akia licenses their tower version (MicroBook Power) from Max?

e218880621.1.jpg
 

Byrd

Well-known member
These cases do look much the same as popular generic "book PCs" of the era, but you'd assume are completely custom internals.
 
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