Another clone to the collection!

[Applemeister]

I got a ComputerWarehouse New York yesterday. It's by far the most unusual clone I've seen so far.

It has a PC-style floppy disk drive and, dig this, two PS/2 ports. That's right, you can actually connect a PC mouse and keyboard to this thing. It also has an SVGA video port, as opposed to the standard Apple one.

By the looks of things, it's quite a rare clone. According to EveryMac, it was in production for less than a year and was only sold in the United Kingdom.

I really love the red PowerPC logo on the front; it's a shame Apple didn't think of using it on their machines.

At the moment, the machine is being very temperamental. It's having difficulty booting into its current operating sytem (7.6.1). I'm trying to perform a clean installation of System 8.5 on it.

Specs-wise, it has 32 MB of RAM and, possibly, a 1.2 GB HDD. Unfortunately, I don't have its original mouse or keyboard (I'm not sure if it ever shipped with one, seeing it has PS/2 ports, which would suggest that PC users simply plug in their existing mouse an keyboard into it).

On the other hand, I've got another UMAX keyboard and a strange, unmarked, ADB mouse. It looks identical to the UMAX mouse I have, except that it's lacking the logo – is it possible that it could've worn away without a trace???.

Speaking of wear, this is a little strange; the UMAX keyboard I took has exactly the same keys worn away as my other UMAX keyboard. I'm just wondering why, of all the keys, A, S, D and R have the most wear.

I was due to pick up another UMAX today, but the chap who's in charge wasn't in

This should make for a nice double liberation in June; I aim to take, both, the UMAX and the Macintosh IIci I missed out on earlier – turns out it's only missing some sort of memory DIMM. At the moment, I'm not sure if it's standard RAM or VRAM. At any rate, the memory modules I salvaged from the LC should be fine.

Wish me luck!

 

[Applemeister]

Update:

The New York is now happily running System 8.5, and it actually has a 2.1 GB hard disk (although this is reduced to 1.9 GB, when formatted) and not a 1.2 GB.

I also forgot to mention that it has a built-in 100 MB Zip drive, which is nice. This is my third Macintosh SSW-compatible that has a Zip drive (the other two are the G3 and the G4).

Another thing I didn't mention is that it has the Motorola logo printed beneath the case, as it uses a logic board developed by Apple and Motorola.

I'll see about making some pics available, seeing that the picture on EveryMac isn't particularly good

 

[Quadraman]

Is the photo on everymac correct? That looks like Motorola Starmax to me. I have a sketchy recollection that Motorola might have allowed others to market the Starmax overseas. I'd have to do some hunting to find where I read that, though as it's been a while.

 

[Applemeister]

As promised, here's a photo. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a StarMax under a different name, seeing that quite a few clones on that site seem to share similar photos – and the StarMax is one of them.

 

[Quadraman]

It sure looks like a Starmax 3000 with only minor differences to me.

http://www.macintoshos.com/macintosh.museum/clones/motorola/desktop.jpg

 

[Applemeister]

Yep, it certainly seems to be based on a Starmax 300.

The FDD on the Starmax looks like it's a standard PC model with a hard eject button – the New York has a very similar one, except that there is no hard eject. I actually prefer the New York's form to that of the Starmax. Those openings over where the speaker is housed are a little too fussy for my tastes.

I didn't know Motorola made monitors, that'd be quite neat to have one of those

 

[Temetka]

Looks like a nice clone you picked up there. Cute little case.

 

[QuadSix50]

This reminds me a lot of my StarMax 4000 minitower that I used to have (mine was 160MHz), except this looks like the desktop model. As far as the floppy drive on my StarMax 4000, it was the same floppy drive used on the regular Macs (autoeject). Although I've also seen the pictures depicting the manual eject drives, I've never personally seen them in a Power Mac clone. Maybe it was just used for show?

Also, the PS/2 ports worked great, but the second mouse button didn't work out of the box. You needed either the software that shipped with the StarMax's installed OS version or something like Mouse2B (which I recently used on it). Only then could you pull up the contextual menu using the right mouse button (if you were right-handed, of course).

I eventually gave this to my father who had his Power Macintosh G5 CPU fry out on him. 8-o (Hey, it runs OS 9.1 great and he has the needed apps for it). But while I had it, it dual-booted wonderfully with Mac OS 9.1 and Debian Sarge with only 128 MB RAM and a 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 vidcard.

 

[LCGuy]

His G5's CPU FRIED???? :O I hope it was under warranty still!!!

 

[Quadraman]

This reminds me a lot of my StarMax 4000 minitower that I used to have (mine was 160MHz), except this looks like the desktop model. As far as the floppy drive on my StarMax 4000, it was the same floppy drive used on the regular Macs (autoeject). Although I've also seen the pictures depicting the manual eject drives, I've never personally seen them in a Power Mac clone. Maybe it was just used for show?
Also, the PS/2 ports worked great, but the second mouse button didn't work out of the box. You needed either the software that shipped with the StarMax's installed OS version or something like Mouse2B (which I recently used on it). Only then could you pull up the contextual menu using the right mouse button (if you were right-handed, of course).

I eventually gave this to my father who had his Power Macintosh G5 CPU fry out on him. 8-o (Hey, it runs OS 9.1 great and he has the needed apps for it). But while I had it, it dual-booted wonderfully with Mac OS 9.1 and Debian Sarge with only 128 MB RAM and a 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 vidcard.

Wait, I thought all Macs starting with the Firewire 800 G4 only ran 9 in classic mode?? You shouldn't be able to dual boot on a G5, should you?

 

[The Macster]

Wow, that is a strange thing! I've never seen a clone before, but I had assumed they were at least like Macs in all but name and casing! Does the MacOS have built-in support for PS/2 connections then? Presumably it can run Mac OS 9, despite Apple having killed the clones by then?

Wait, I thought all Macs starting with the Firewire 800 G4 only ran 9 in classic mode?? You shouldn't be able to dual boot on a G5, should you?

He's talking about the StarMax, isn't he?

 

[Quadraman]

Wow, that is a strange thing! I've never seen a clone before, but I had assumed they were at least like Macs in all but name and casing! Does the MacOS have built-in support for PS/2 connections then? Presumably it can run Mac OS 9, despite Apple having killed the clones by then?

Wait, I thought all Macs starting with the Firewire 800 G4 only ran 9 in classic mode?? You shouldn't be able to dual boot on a G5, should you?

He's talking about the StarMax, isn't he?

No, I think he is talking about the G5 his father had. He said it dual boots 9 and X. I don't think G5's can do that.

 

[Applemeister]

Quiksilver G4s can. I have a separate partition for OS 9 on mine – although it's currently empty as OS 9.1 doesn't work. 9.2 is the minimum for Quiksilvers.

 

[Quadraman]

Quiksilver G4s can. I have a separate partition for OS 9 on mine – although it's currently empty as OS 9.1 doesn't work. 9.2 is the minimum for Quiksilvers.

Quicksilvers can and MDD's but the Firewire 800 is where dual booting ended.