Motorola Starmax 3000/180

[HAL2001]

Any thoughts on the Motorola Starmax 3000/180? I can get one cheap.

 

[billymade]

You might start; by looking up the specs, on lowendmac.com and everymac.com. At the time; they were using 603e PowerPC processors, so they were similar to the Apple Performa line of computers. If you end up needing major parts; like motherboards or daughter cards, they might be hard to find, as they were not made that long and I don't think their production numbers were that high (introduced 1996.09.17; discontinued 1997.07.01). The clones; tended to have pc style cases and loud fans; were not a "polished" as their Apple counterparts. Unless, you really want a clone; I would tend to look for a genuine Apple computer, as the parts and ease of use, is better. I don't know about in Europe but at this point; in the USA these older machines can be purchased for low prices and you could get a better performing Mac easily (in the Power PC era; a g4 mac mini or power mac g4/mac pro g5 come to mind). Let us know; what you actually want to do with a Mac and we could give you some advice. 

https://www.google.com/search?q=Motorola+Starmax+3000%2F180&oq=Motorola+Starmax+3000%2F180&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[HAL2001]

Thanks. It's not my intention to use it as my main computer. It's just a hobby. Of course they are ugly as hell but I like that it has mainstream connectors like ps/2 and svga and that it has pci slots. It could be a nice machine for experiments.

 

[johnklos]

They're good machines. I have one I found in the trash in NYC more than a decade ago. It's been a NetBSD NAT / firewall / DNS / email server for many years with incredible reliability.

It has an IDE disk but I like that it has SCSI as well, since I've installed a SCSI tape drive to do backups.

 

[Bunsen]

mainstream connectors like ps/2 and svga

That would be handy if you had it on a KVM with a PC - save having two sets of mouse/KB/monitor.