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My son already had a Mac for a while, but I was still hanging on
to my Atari ST: after all, it was only a hobby. Then, in the fall
of '97, he told me that there were Mac clones going cheap because
Apple was yanking the license. I ended up with a Motorola StarMax 3000 tower, with a 240
MHz 603e processor for less than half the price of a comparable
Mac. It came with a 15" SVGA monitor, a 2-button Macally mouse, Mac
OS 7.6 installed, Mac OS 8.0 bundled, a SCSI CD-ROM, a floppy, a
Zip drive, 10Base-T ethernet, five PCI slots, and a five year
warranty. Along with the SCSI port, it has the regular Apple ADB,
modem, and printer ports. It also has ports for a PS/2 keyboard and
mouse, which I must try someday.
It has now turned into a bit of a FrankenMac with a second
monitor on an ATI 128 card, a 300 MHz G3 upgrade card, an ATA 66
MHz hard drive host card - about 40 GB storage on three hard drives
and room for two more, a Umax SCSI scanner, an Epson Photo Stylus
(6 colour) printer, a Yamaha 8824 CD-RW, a woofer, and speakers
that look like little iMacs. I've got an old 14.4 modem plugged in
just for the odd web site where you can only order by phone.
The only thing that ever quit was the Zip drive, which developed
the dreaded click of death.
I'm after Iomega for a replacement. The StarMac has been the 8.1,
8.5, 8.5.1, 8.6, 9.0, 9.0.4 route, and is now running OS 9.1 - very
stable.
I burn CDs for nieces and nephews from Napster downloads, fiddle
with family pictures in Photoshop, do some email, and surf a bit. I
did my wife's reunion pictures on the Epson. I've even been able to
help out on a StarMax list.
When I retire, I'm going to set up a family history web site, a
kind of living family tree, with "cousins by the dozens."
This computer has been more fun than I would ever have thought!
I learned to take it apart to install all the stuff, and I'm quite
proud of it and of myself. One of these days somebody will write
the kernels to let me boot OS X, and then it will be a long
time indeed before there is a second Mac!
Links for the Day
Mac of the Day: Power Mac G3, Nov. 1997 - The first G3 Power Mac and the last Mac in a beige enclosure.
List of the Day: Mac OS 9 List covers Mac OS 9 as both a freestanding OS and as Classic mode in OS X.
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