6 Jun
1998
6 Jun
'98
8:56 a.m.
I'm reading _Build Your Own Macintosh and Save a Bundle_ and it has an
interesting reference to early Mac clones. The book states:
"The same Apple Macintosh Powerbooks that legitimized the whole Macintosh
portable area have spelled the death knell for most other third-party
Macintosh portable builders who cannot compete with Apple's overwhelming
manufacturing economies of scale. While Outbound continues to
flourish-thanks to a wisely forged legal agreement and clever positioning
of their Macintosh portable models versus the Apple Powerbooks-I question
their long-term staying power. Most other third-party Macintosh portable
vendors have either gone out of business entirely or have quietly dropped
their portable offerings."
Does anybody know anything about these "thrid-party Macintoshes?" I'm
familiar with the Outbound computers, I have never even heard of any
other early Mac clones. Any info?
Thanks,
Tom Owad
6 Jun
6 Jun
11:58 p.m.
On Sat, 6 Jun 1998, Tom Owad wrote:
Does anybody know anything about these
"thrid-party Macintoshes?" I'm
familiar with the Outbound computers, I have never even heard of any
other early Mac clones. Any info?
How about Atari STs and Amigas running Macintosh emulators? :) :) :)
Thanks,
Tom Owad
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/
7 Jun
7 Jun
3:40 a.m.
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4 Jun
4 Jun
8:26 p.m.
On 7 Jun 98 at 16:40, Tony Duell wrote:
It was called Magic-sac ands put out by a very bright guy called Dave
Small. He got into a lot of litigation hassles. He emerges periodically to
present some idea or other. TMK he's just gone back into hiatus again.
I've got 2 Magic-sac+'s , 1 needs a batterie replacement. I haven't opened
it up for a while but it's entirely possible it had the controller chip.
I prefer to use the real thing or else the ST. There were also PC, C64 , and
CoCo emulators for the Atari ST as well as Minix, a Unix clone. Magic -sac
was probably the best and Minix needs an upgrade to 4 megs to properly
function.
Not to be confused with Magic-Mac an ST emulator from Germany. Word is
it speeds up the Mac and some ST users made the switch based on that.
ciao larry
lwalker(a)interlog.com
On Sat, 6 Jun 1998, Tom Owad wrote:
Wasn't there a thing called a 'Magic Sack' or something that was a cartridge
for the ST which you put the ROMs from a Mac into. One version had a Mac
disk controller (IWM) chip in it as well, I think.
Problem was, it needed genuine Apple Mac ROMs. The only way to get those,
at least at first, was to strip them out of a Mac.
-tony
Does anybody know anything about these
"thrid-party Macintoshes?" I'm
familiar with the Outbound computers, I have never even heard of any
other early Mac clones. Any info?
How about Atari STs and Amigas running Macintosh emulators? :) :) :)
9 Jun
9 Jun
5:10 a.m.
On Sun, 7 Jun 1998, Tony Duell wrote:
Wasn't there a thing called a 'Magic Sack' or something that was a cartridge
for the ST which you put the ROMs from a Mac into. One version had a Mac
disk controller (IWM) chip in it as well, I think.
A-Max on the Amiga had a similar arrangement. The disk controller was
necessary for using the multi-speed drives (which seems to be just about
the only format an Amiga can't read).
Does anybody know anything about these
"thrid-party Macintoshes?" I'm
familiar with the Outbound computers, I have never even heard of any
other early Mac clones. Any info?
How about Atari STs and Amigas running Macintosh emulators? :) :) :) Problem was, it needed genuine Apple Mac ROMs. The
only way to get those,
at least at first, was to strip them out of a Mac.
I think actual ROMs were used because of legal issues, not because they
were actually needed. At least on the Amiga, we could use a ROM image
from disk instead.
One funky thing about A-Max running on an Amiga 1000 was that it was able
(by use of a special bootblock on the A-Max disk) to overwrite the
Kickstart in the Writable Control Store. This meant that my 512K A1000
had as much memory available as a Mac 512K, even with the 128K ROM and
emulator loaded. And there was also a RAM disk available at the same
time, of about 128K.
The BAD thing about (at least that version of) A-Max was that it took
over the entire system. This is obviously necessary if Kickstart is going
to be removed, but even when this wasn't done, the machine essentially
became a Macintosh. AmigaOS was no longer running.
I think this may have been fixed in later versions. Other, more recent,
emulators allow both operating systems to coexist quite nicely.
Oh, BTW, the experience I had with A-Max was with a pirate version, so
it's possible the commercial version couldn't work without actual ROMs. I
hope I can be forgiven that transgression as I was still a teenager at the
time. :)
I think MagicSac on the Atari was on the market a year or two earlier than
A-Max on the Amiga.
-tony
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/
7:43 a.m.
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8 Jun
8 Jun
12:35 a.m.
Doug Spence wrote:
On Sat, 6 Jun 1998, Tom Owad wrote:
I've got a user port add-on for the ST called "Mac-in-Sack" which I'm
guessing is a hardware emulation board. No docs and I haven't had time
to play with it. I would assume it runs Mac software pretty slowly with
assorted compatibility issues. Anyone have experience with it?
--
mor(a)crl.com
http://www.crl.com/~mor/
Does anybody know anything about these
"thrid-party Macintoshes?" I'm
familiar with the Outbound computers, I have never even heard of any
other early Mac clones. Any info?
How about Atari STs and Amigas running Macintosh emulators? :) :) :)
9 Jun
9 Jun
1:45 a.m.
Doug Spence wrote:
You'd need the disks for it. Mine are labelled Magic Sac+. It's possible
you
have an earlier version cause I seem to remember it being referred to as that.
I don't have docs but I have the disks if you want copies. I'm sure there's no
copyright problem since you have the dongle.
You'd boot with an Atari disk and then use the mac-sac transfer disk.
IIRC it used System 6.03 . It was much better than the PC Ditto emu that was
also available for the ST at the time, which was incredibly slow .
ciao larry
lwalker(a)interlog.com
On Sat, 6 Jun 1998, Tom Owad wrote:
I've got a user port add-on for the ST called "Mac-in-Sack" which I'm
guessing is a hardware emulation board. No docs and I haven't had time
to play with it. I would assume it runs Mac software pretty slowly with
assorted compatibility issues. Anyone have experience with it?
--
mor(a)crl.com
http://www.crl.com/~mor/
Does anybody know anything about these
"thrid-party Macintoshes?" I'm
familiar with the Outbound computers, I have never even heard of any
other early Mac clones. Any info?
How about Atari STs and Amigas running Macintosh emulators? :) :) :) 
7 Jun
7 Jun
3:58 a.m.
I'm reading _Build Your Own Macintosh and Save a
Bundle_ and it has an
interesting reference to early Mac clones. The book states:
I think that's the same book I've got a copy of around here. Interesting
reading, but I've basically never seen any of that stuff anywhere. Though
I found it really interesting, has anyone ever seen a Mac Plus or simular
system recased into a PC case? It would be a fun project, but I've got to
many other projects :^)
The closest I've got to a Mac clone (I'm writting this on a PowerMac
8500/180) is a Amiga 3000 with emulation software. The Amiga is actually
about as fast as the real thing.
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh(a)ix.netcom.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| For Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| see http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |
| For the collecting of Classic Computers with info on them. |
| see http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/museum.html |
5:46 a.m.
Zane H. Healy wrote:
I think that's the same book I've got a copy
of around here. Interesting
reading, but I've basically never seen any of that stuff anywhere. Though
I found it really interesting, has anyone ever seen a Mac Plus or simular
system recased into a PC case? It would be a fun project, but I've got to
many other projects :^)
The closest I've got to a Mac clone (I'm writting this on a PowerMac
8500/180) is a Amiga 3000 with emulation software. The Amiga is actually
about as fast as the real thing.
I had a coworker in the late 80s who had his Mac and his Amiga 2000
recased and rack-mounted, sharing a rack with a lot of _serious_
video editing gear.
--
Ward Griffiths
They say that politics makes strange bedfellows.
Of course, the main reason they cuddle up is to screw somebody else.
Michael Flynn, _Rogue Star_
3:47 p.m.
Date sent: Sun, 07 Jun 1998 13:46:25 -0400
Send reply to: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu
From: Ward Donald Griffiths III <gram(a)cnct.com>
To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers"
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Early Mac Clones
Zane H. Healy wrote:
IIRC, NewTek (makers of the Video Toaster) decided that since they were
having some trouble getting the Toaster accepted in the mainstream because
most people thought the Amiga was only a toy, they created an interface card
for a Mac that would allow the Mac user to run the Toaster-equipped A2000
(private-labeled for NewTek) from his Mac, thereby making it 'legit'.
I had to laugh at the thought of paying a grand or more just to see the Amiga
Workbench come up on a Mac screen instead of the "toy" Amiga screen. Of
course, this 'toy' made multimedia possible before Uncle Bill said it was ok to
use it.....too many people forget that. Not you guys, though. (I hope.)
One of my other favorite Amiga stories was something I swear I read in
AmigaWorld or Byte -- right after the A1000 came out, Gates had a press
conference to talk about Windows. Some reporter asked him about
multitasking, and Gates replied that multitasking really wasn't possible in
anything under 8 megs of ram. To which the same reporter replied, "But doesn't
your own Amiga Basic multitask nicely on a 512k Amiga?"
A question which Gates promptly ignored and moved on.........
Paul Braun
NerdWare -- The History of the PC and the Nerds who brought it to you.
nerdware(a)laidbak.com
www.laidbak.com/nerdware
I think that's the same book I've got a
copy of around here. Interesting
reading, but I've basically never seen any of that stuff anywhere. Though
I found it really interesting, has anyone ever seen a Mac Plus or simular
system recased into a PC case? It would be a fun project, but I've got to
many other projects :^)
The closest I've got to a Mac clone (I'm writting this on a PowerMac
8500/180) is a Amiga 3000 with emulation software. The Amiga is actually
about as fast as the real thing.
I had a coworker in the late 80s who had his Mac and his Amiga 2000
recased and rack-mounted, sharing a rack with a lot of _serious_
video editing gear.
-- 
8 Jun
8 Jun
1:59 a.m.
At 10:47 PM 6/7/98 -0500, nerdware(a)laidbak.com wrote:
IIRC, NewTek (makers of the Video Toaster) decided that since they were
having some trouble getting the Toaster accepted in the mainstream because
most people thought the Amiga was only a toy, they created an interface card
for a Mac that would allow the Mac user to run the Toaster-equipped A2000
(private-labeled for NewTek) from his Mac, thereby making it 'legit'.
At the time, my company had licensed some software to NewTek that was bundled
with the Toaster, including the PICT bitmap translator for that variant.
I also wrote the smoke-and-mirrors demo of the Toaster for the PC,
shown at a COMDEX and that won a little "Best of Show" crystal trophy.
So thorough was the judging that they didn't notice the Amiga under
the table that was actually doing the flashy video, or the serial
cable from the PC that was running a Visual BASIC program that sent
ARexx script commands to the Amiga...
I liked your Robert X. Cringely tribute page. I've had several
leaks leaked through him, although they were usually quite unrecognizable
once they'd been digested and printed.
- John
Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm>
9694
days inactive
9697
days old
11 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
ds_spenc＠alcor.concordia.ca -
gram＠cnct.com -
healyzh＠ix.netcom.com -
jfoust＠threedee.com -
lwalker＠mail.interlog.com -
mor＠crl.com -
nerdware＠laidbak.com -
tomowad＠earthlink.net