Performa LC 475 oddity? Pre-production? Demo?

[belgaonkar]

I've got the same board in my (Proto?) Quadra 605. Mine has the ROM SIMM and the red button. 

My serial number is XC336TQS12V. No serial number search can decode that serial, it comes back as being made in 1983. The back FCC label is stamped in and is not a sticker.

Interesting part is that mine has a '040 33MHZ CPU in it.

 

[belgaonkar]

The only real date on the machine is 06/93 and that was when the speaker was manufactured.

 

[saybur]

Adding some more pieces to this puzzle, I found another one of these oddball Performa 475s.  Pictures are here:

https://imgur.com/a/dGszw

This one came with the original packaging, showing it was originally sold at Best Buy as part of one of those all-in-one-box Performas.  The picture on the box conveniently shows the way the system is supposed to look, so I imagine the original owner may have been a little confused when they popped the thing open to discover this beaut inside.

Here's the serial number decode:

Manufactured in: SG => Singapore
Year of production: 1993
Week of production: 30
Production number: 5YL => 6888
Model ID: 1PT => Macintosh LC (Performa)

Your Macintosh LC (Performa) was the 6888th Mac manufactured during the 30th week of 1993 in Singapore.

Same week of production as unity's, separated by a few thousand systems.

So, seems likely to me that these strange critters were early run Performa 475s.  I'm surprised that Apple would be willing to let a system out of the factory with such an amateurish looking sticker slapped on for the model.  Maybe there's someone out there with a story explaining what was going on internally to lead to this.

Finally, I wasn't aware of it, but there were apparently auto-inject LC 475s as well, albeit with the model printed properly on the case.  See here:

http://oldcomputer.info/apple/L475/index.htm

So perhaps these computers were a transitional step during production.

 

[saybur]

Looks like the 8-Bit Guy on YouTube just got one of these as well:

https://youtu.be/nDmNAz8yQ7Y?t=3m10s

It's hard to see, but it does appears to have the sticker and the generic front case printing.

 

[techknight]

he must be nearly as popular as dave jones (eevblog) because he gets a ton of donations. VERY EXPENSIVE donations... 

 

[EvieSigma]

Yeah, even getting something like a complete boxed Mac Classic for free is nuts to me...

 

[techknight]

Yep, hes popular. He doesn't even produce that much content, but when he does, its a very thorough presentation almost mini-documentary style to it. And thats likely why he is popular.

 

[mrpippy]

Were there different variants of the 475 (I.e. 476, 477) like there were for later Performas (where the variants just differed by bundled software and stores it was sold at)? That at least could explain why the case silkscreen was just “Macintosh Performa” and the number was on a separate sticker. Sort of a worse version of the labels on the Perorrma 600/6100s, where the silkscreen was just “Macintosh” and “Performa 6116CD” was on a sticker.

 

[EvieSigma]

There was definitely a Performa 476, I saw one on eBay once.

 

[unity]

^ I thought of that but have still be unable to locate any other sticker versions. Stickering just one variant is indeed rather "cheap" of Apple and pretty tacky. As for screening just Macintosh, thats fine and the path they moved to but at least the sticker was a nice composite not some standard Avery sized label.

Its just odd and very unlike Apple.

 

[mrpippy]

Here's a video of a 476 with the same case, unfortunately he never moves the keyboard so you can't see the lower sticker: