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Ultimate Pioneer MPC-LX200

ThisAwesomeCOLA

New member
Hello everyone, so a while back I went crazy at Japanese auctions and bought a lot of cheap Macs and upgrades which were not so cheap after shipping.
Among these were a Pioneer MPC-LX200 which was just labeled as Junk, I also managed to score a matching keyboard.
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So 9 months later it arrived alongside a Color classic, being a rather sorry state with a loose top cover, and a front bezel loosely hanging on the audio knobs, It was missing a hard drive and had a Apple CD300i Cd drive.
I was going to work for a couple of weeks and did not really have time, until yesterday, when I suddenly pulled out all my broken Macs to fix after having a rather easy time with a 4400/200.
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When I tried went to power on the Pioneer, I was expecting to use a converter because of the only 100-120V label on the back, but I decided to see inside first (Not very hard when the cover just lifts up).
Looking at the PSU, it supported 100-240V, I thought that was rather odd, and decided to try without a converter.
And lo and behold it not only booted but even chimed on the second try, eventually I got a picture also, along with a missing disk icon, so I decided to dig deeper.
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Taking a look at the Motherboard, Which I soon discovered was from a 6500/250, I realized this had been modified to take a Gazelle motherboard, which is the only upgrade path this Pioneer can take, and also enables it to receive a G3 upgrade.
It had 64MB of RAM installed, along with a Apple ethernet card, Focus Video out card, and a Apple Video in Card.
The connector to the motherboard is broken away from the case, so it requires some assistance to connect the motherboard again.
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I continued attempting to getting it to boot, connecting an IDE HDD to the connectors by the PSU, and also replacing the CD drive, as it could not close properly, and would not read discs.
I Went through all my broken G3 desktops and salvaged Hard drives, with no success.
Eventuallty I found a Apple CD 300 plus drive from a broken 7100, which did not want to read my burned OS 8.1 installer, but did read a original Os 8 install CD, I guess it does not like CD-Rs?
It booted, and allowed me to check the RAM,and I hoped I could use a 5gb disk on module I had ordered, but it failed to recognize it, actually all my Macs refused to acknowledge it, except my G4 DA which freezes when it tries to collect data from it.

I even tried the hard drive which was confirmed working in my 4400, to no avail.
128MB form the 7500 mentioned earlier was scavenged, and I also installed a TV tuner card from Apple, along with a PCI firewire card.
It now chimes beautifully but I will not get a picture, only flickering when powering up.
I was hoping to test the speakers, but it was not to be.
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A bit of a long post, but I stayed up all night doing this because I was so excited.
I am hoping to get it fully functional in the future, and perhaps also install a graphics card and a 400mhz+ G3 L2 cache upgrade.
If anyone has one, I have a bunch CPU upgrades I can trade;)
Any suggestions would be helpful, there does not seem to be very much English documentation on these.
 

olePigeon

Well-known member
Man, that is one slick looking clone. Even has the custom Pioneer keyboard. I think it's one of my favorite looking Mac clones, right next to the elusive MaxxBoxx. I love the speaker mesh.

How is the audio quality on it?

Edit: I spy with my little eye a Fujitsu drive. That is awesome.
 

LCARS

Well-known member
That is very cool. Yahoo Japan proxy bidding can be oddly addictive. Some of their Macware prices are so like but after fees, handling, and shipping- sure, what's another 10,000 Yen? I had actually forgotten that Pioneer made a clone.

My Apple CD 600 is very picky about reading CD-Rs. Long posts are great when they relay the excitement of the poster.
 

MOS8_030

Well-known member
Nice score! The Pioneer is a neat clone! The keyboard is real bonus.
You might try removing the cards, it could be the power supply is getting weak.
No surprise the CD300 has trouble with CD-R's, they barely existed when that drive was made.
 

joshc

Well-known member
Good to know these do work with 240V mains. So this looks to be an Alchemy based machine, the other Pioneer slab/desktop being a 6100 based model.

Macs of this age with IDE are picky about the drives they'll work with. Try an older, small capacity drive.
 

jeremywork

Well-known member
Very sleek! I’d known about the model based on the 6100, but hadn’t seen one of these before.

I’ve been pretty satisfied with the generic IDE-CF adapter I use in my TAM (basically same as 6500/250.) I have a 128GB SanDisk CF card (120MB/s version fwiw) partitioned into two large HFS+ volumes for 8.6 and 9.1, and two 4GB HFS volumes for 7.6 and 8.1. It’s run that way for a few years now without a hitch.

The older CD-ROM drives such as the 300 are a bit hesitant to read CD-Rs, but I’ve found success using discs that were burned at slow speeds. Modern drives will usually allow the ~48x burn speed to be dropped closer to 16x or 24x, but older burners can be set as low as 1x, 2x, and 4x. These slowly burned discs will still be read quickly in modern drives, but seem to work in older drives too.

Regarding the USB/FW PCI card, do note that the Gazelle architecture isn’t friendly to multifunction cards. More details:



P.S. I do have a currently inoperable G3/L2 500/1M. I bought it broken and have put only a little effort into diagnosing it. If you’d like to trade something for this project card, feel free to send a PM.
 

Daniël

Well-known member
Good to know these do work with 240V mains. So this looks to be an Alchemy based machine, the other Pioneer slab/desktop being a 6100 based model.

There was also the lower end MPC-LX100, which was a Quadra 630 clone. I think Pioneer might be the only company to have released a 68k architecture clone as part of the Macintosh Clone Program.
 

CC_333

Well-known member
Yahoo Japan proxy bidding can be oddly addictive. Some of their Macware prices are so like but after fees, handling, and shipping- sure, what's another 10,000 Yen?
What I think is making this possible, at least for US-based people, is that Yen <==> US Dollar exchange rates are very favorable to US buyers right now -- 10,000 Yen is only about $78 US!

It's not cheap (especially once overseas S&H is factored in), but it's far more affordable than what is commonly found on eBay and the like. At least in my experience (I've never bought anything on Yahoo Japan, but I have browsed around a bit from time to time).

c
 

CTB

Well-known member
There was also the lower end MPC-LX100, which was a Quadra 630 clone. I think Pioneer might be the only company to have released a 68k architecture clone as part of the Macintosh Clone Program.
This is correct, the Pioneer LX100 is the only legit 68k clone. Pioneer installed LC/Quadra 630 logic boards in them with no mods. All mac diagnostic software sees it as a genuine 630.
 

olePigeon

Well-known member
I know it's SPAM, but ... how the heck are mixed Latin / Arabic URLs read? Is it still right to left, but only in the Arabic part?
 

CircuitBored

Well-known member
I know it's SPAM, but ... how the heck are mixed Latin / Arabic URLs read? Is it still right to left, but only in the Arabic part?

I'm not sure why but this is an absurdly funny observation. I too am now baffled by this. Perhaps it's both‽ You must read left to right and right to left simultaneously. You do have two eyes, after all.
 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
The ordering of path components remains left to right, least to most specific; domain names remain right to left least to most specific (JANET in the UK used to do domain names the other way around, fun fact). The names of individual path components are read right to left.
 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
you kind of bounce off the universe in the middle, just like you would in Latin :-D

I think we've rather derailed this thread, sorry OP!
 

olePigeon

Well-known member
In Japan they had the BookCaSE, which was a PowerBook conversion into a really cool looking super thin SE.
 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
Maybe I missed in reading the thread? What's that card with two ports sticking out the LC PDS opening? The 6500 twin slot riser has a cutout at the rear for something like that whereas the 6400 riser didn't. How does it work with the low 6360/5400/5500 single slot riser? Pics?
 
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