The UMAX SuperMac C500, a Slick Mac Clone from 1996

[@00Klingon]

The clones may have been a misstep for Apple, but for the college I was working for, it was a real boon. I was able to deploy an entire Macintosh lab for a fraction of the cost of buying from Apple which allowed me to convince the anti-Apple IT administrator to go ahead and approve the purchase. This kept Macs as a viable alternative for students on campus and made for a more rounded learning experience for the computer science department. In fact, it became the preferred platform for the Physics, Mathematics (using Mathematica), Geology and Art departments.

[@norcalrallyx]

My High school computer was a Performa 635CD. I took it to college with me and swapped the logic board and power supply from a Performa 6360, it worked like a charm! Going from a 33mhz 68LC040 to a 160mhz PPC 603e was just amazing.

[@BlahBleeBlahBlah]

For anyone commenting about the somewhat underwhelming performance of Duke Nukem on a 140 MHz CPU - The DOS versions of games mostly run in a 320 x 240 graphics mode. Classic Macs didn’t have support for these low resolutions so games running full screen are actually rendered at 640 x 480 (or higher). So here the Mac’s pushing 4 x the pixels of a PC running the DOS version. Same with Wolfenstein 3D. It’s one of those things I didn’t understand when I had an early PPC Mac, and it annoyed the heck out of me when I’d try and show my friends who had PC’s and hated on Macs 😂

[@PAKA62]

The DOS version of D3D can run at 800x600

[@BlahBleeBlahBlah]

@@PAKA62 I wonder what kind of performance you’d get running Duke Nukem on a P133 @ 800x600 in software rendering mode? Also, a lot more software optimisations for the x86 DOS/Windows versions of the game vs Mac OS + PPC.

[@martinnyberg71]

Love the T-shirt! 👍🏻❤

[@j.m.7580]

Oh, I love this! I used the C500’s taller sibling, the C600, as my daily driver back in the late 90s. Got to the point where it had max RAM, a Vimage G3 upgrade, Xclaim VR graphics with a TV tuner to boot, USB, a nice Sony monitor. It even ran Linux PPC! Excellent machines these C series UMAX clones.

[@theBoomerDoomer]

I had that exact setup in college. The C500 was insanely easy to upgrade, and I did upgrade mine all the way over the years. I loved that little computer.

[@mattshomeworld]

This was the first MAC OS system I owned. I had it up until 2007 because I loved OS 9.1 over MAC OS X but eventually, I had no choice to but to update and I trashed it after getting a Macbook. I wish I didn't trash it.

[@rigues]

Very nice learning about the clones, never got to see one "in person" here in Brazil. But... Duke Nukem? What's this, LGR? Where's Marathon? 😅

[@ActionRetro]

😂

[@3rdalbum]

Marathon runs on 68k machines, so it's not a great test of a Powermac.

[@JakePlaysGames8878]

I love how all tech people like this know each other

[@juanignacioaschura9437]

Leave Marathon to 65scribe :P

[@johnnino7520]

Haha I literally thought the same thing

[@motheroats]

Love that you do 4K so I can see that dead spider on the back of the clone. 😂 Martha Stewart’s KZbin is still on 1080p, Thank you for setting the standard 💅 iconic AF

[@Aoji-XS]

And right after that clip, everytime he glanced over to the clone, it looked like he was nervously checking if the Spider moved

[@GarthBeagle]

Very cool seeing the tear down - I had no idea a 603 processor could be in a socket like that!

[@marklechman2225]

Love your shirt! When I got my Power Computing PowerBase, the System 7 install disc came with all kinds of extra apps and utilities, clip art and a crap ton of fonts :)

[@DarthVader1977]

I'd like to see him wear a Palestinian shirt.

[@andrupka8749]

@@DarthVader1977 Fr bruh

[@_..-.._..-.._]

@@DarthVader1977 ooof 🤦‍♂️

[@_..-.._..-.._]

@@andrupka8749 fr fr bruh no cap ong

[@Revenant_Knight]

Nice. I picked up a C500 a year ago. They’re neat little time capsules.

[@joepepsi]

LMAO Energy Star Rating for the computer, imagine if any other computers had that today

[@CubeAtlantic]

That clone actually sounds so investing, & unique in my eyes :O

[@fsfs555]

The C500 used the same chipset as Apple's Alchemy designs (basically the 6360 and 54/6400 series) but installed to a custom board. The video chip was the weak point of the Alchemy models: it's basically the same core as the Q630's Valkyrie chip from 1994, just modified to use a 60x bus instead of the '040 bus, and still limited to 1MB of VRAM which was scraping the bottom of the barrel in 1996.

[@memsom]

My C500 came to me with an ATi card and it was a lot better performance.

[@jonah9927]

There's no way this dude was not in a hardcore band at some point

[@ActionRetro]

How did you guess that hahaha

[@MistahMatzah]

Dude their cover of Fugazi's Blueprint was amazing. Probably.

[@_..-.._..-.._]

Did you guess or did you see him talk about that in previous episodes? 🤔

[@thischannelwillselfdestruc4977]

4:25 - the spider just chillin' there

[@ActionRetro]

I didn't even see that hahaha

[@_..-.._..-.._]

4:15

[@xvilemx]

Your monitor looks great, center the dang picture with the OSD though! Was driving me crazy.

[@helomechjmc]

I owned one of these many years ago. It was my first PPC Mac.

[@mar4kl]

You're a lot of fun to watch! I'm not really into Macs, but my dad was. He owned a string of them from 1989 on. His first was a Mac SE, which replaced a 1979 Apple II+. The SE's hard drive failed at some point, and since none of us knew anything about fixing computer hardware (this was before my PC technician days), he found a way to run it off of a Zip drive. The SE went off to college with one of my sisters, and Dad replaced it with a UMAX clone. Yours looked familiar, but I'm not sure if Dad's was the SuperMac C500 or a different one. I do know that the SE didn't last long for my sister, and when it seemed to be beyond reasonable repair, Dad gave her the UMAX. I'm not sure what happened to the UMAX after that. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

[@keithyakouboff8755]

You're surprised by how well the game played. I'm surprised that a 28-yo machine even booted up to normal functionality. I find myself technolusting after these Mac clones. That quad-proc Daystar beast is my dream 90s machine, with a IIci, Quadra 700, and either a PPC 6100 or 7600 or maybe a 9600 being among the others I'd like to amass.

[@DavidStahlOLDHAPPyMACs]

Neat Sean Yes That G3 Upgrade Will really make it fly

[@AiOinc1]

Always wanted one of these machines! There's not many out there to get anymore but I always thought an early Mac clone would be fun. Also that 8GB thing could very well be down to IDE limitations of the time. It might not be able to accurately describe the geometry to the hardware because I doubt it supports LBA. All this just goes to show that as soon as someone else has their software they'll start rolling down the hill again.

[@rkmugen]

Ah, the clones.... UMAX, Daystar Digital, Power Computing, and I think even Pioneer came out with a Mac clone too. When you said it was a weird time for Apple, you hit the nail, square on the head!

[@joeconti2396]

It blows me away that you manage to find all these crazy upgrades. It's like watching a fever dream sometimes.

[@Toonrick12]

Agreed. He doesn't have even 50k subs yet, but he keeps finding Unicorn upgrade cards!

[@askhowiknow5527]

I'm glad you're showing your face more in videos

[@steveg5122]

7.6.1 would be fun to see running on a G3. You should do a benchmark comparing it to 8.6 which has more power PC code

[@mccrh7737]

Brings back good memories for me :) I had the c500 / 200 MHz edition, pretty much with the same config :)

[@JeffWaynee]

What a unique and interesting machine.

[@HaveYouTriedGuillotines]

This is the Macintosh clone I think everyone knows. These and the Power Computing ones were the ones that you'd find all across schools, I remember fixing one of these up in middle school around the year 2000. All the techs at the school only knew wintel boxes so it took some kid to come along and fix it. :P

[@drewzero1]

The only one I remembered by name was the Motorola Starmax, but I've never seen one or found much info on any of the clones other than the fact that they existed.

[@flippy10x]

Keep crushing it Action. You’re living out the golden age of Mac dreams every day. We’ve gotta get you an Apple Network Server. I’d throw in some bucks for that.

[@davidhastoomanyinterests6361]

i had one of those and this brought back SOOO many great memories! if i ever can find one in germany, i will get one :D

[@stevew8513]

I bought a UMAX C500 back in the day, from Fry's Electronics for $500 because it was a floor model. That machine had a lot of quirks... the PCI slots were 1.0, well after everybody else in the industry went to 1.1. So a Voodoo 1 card (and later a Voodoo 3) would work but an ATI Rage 128 wouldn't. And Apple's disk formatting software didn't work too well with the drive in the C500 and every once in a while it would fail to recognize the internal drive. I did upgrade the crap out of that machine - the aforementioned Voodoo cards, a larger HD, more memory, and a CD-R drive (that died probably due to all the heat generated by the Voodoo 3 card). I do remember seeing the processor upgrade card in ads and catalogs, but in the end I decided to just get a new machine. I ended up getting an eMac G4; far less upgradable but generally trouble-free.

[@darkestlost]

My goodness this image quality of this monitor it's just amazing

[@xenotiic8356]

Banger as always

[@elm.0]

4:20 that dead spider hanging there xd

[@MrKillswitch88]

It is things like this that I love the most about the 68K and PPC era macs that is sadly missing from the current era.

[@DatBlueHusky]

i saw one of these units pop up randomly on yahoo and i grabbed it for a good price without knowing anything but shipping did suck. Mines is the apus 2000 branded unit and i slapped in a g3 400 upgrade and man this thing rips. Selling off my performa 6400 now and this umax will take its place

[@JackBender]

"FWB software" is such a great name

[@only1gameguru]

Omg PCBway let strange parts tour their factory!

[@ibmpc]

Nice! We have almost the same crt! I have a SONY Trinitron 100sf :D

[@ZiggyTheHamster]

This chassis is very reminiscent of a Gateway or Dell desktop I worked with a lot in education in the mid 2000s.

[@memsom]

There is a version of Mac OS 8 for these machines. It is UMAX branded and has all the extras the 7.5.5 has.

[@drzeissler]

very nice built machine!

[@timmooney7528]

Speaking of conflicts of iunterest, when I worked for ZDS there was a Heath/ Zenith educational store on the far end of the service center. Along with ZDS computers, they sold Apple/ Mac's as well. The store didi good business, however they were selling more Macs than ZDS products.

[@dennisud]

You are playing one of my favorite games of the era. I also have almost 300 maps on a CD just waiting to be played again. I also hand Doom, Quake, and Shadow Warrior and I had a blast on my old Mac! Can you recommend a good Emulator for systems 7.5 to 7.6 using the M1 Mac-Mini? And I am highly anticipating the upgrade you've got planned! Thanks!

[@matyev-hcuabg]

Thank you for the T-Shirt man! I love it!

[@greygray8399]

even has a dead little spider hiding in the back of it.

[@tonybossaller4074]

I only ever worked on a few Power Computing machines and only one Umax system. But I think the S900 model was attacking the 8100 Mac market while the C500 was the 6100 competitor, which explains that weird "latch" to lift the lid pizza-box style. I believe all the clones had a 8Gig physical size limit as I remember it on both the Umax and the 6100-level Power Computing systems. We were running a multi-system customer database using a shared RAID and when we hit 8gb for that volume size, I spent months trying to find the issue and that was as close as I could get on why they couldn't see the volume. (And it was weird as sometimes it seemed to work but other times just refused.) So that may be the same issue with your IDE ssd. And look forward to seeing the cache slot used. Hehe. I *think* I see where you are going but will be fun to watch.

[@meebis7]

I’d like to know more about using the G4 PowerBook as a bridge machine - guess I’m doing some research!

[@paulatreides9554]

Wow Thanks god.. Finally I found this great review. I sitll have Umax Apus2000/160 with ati card ( video capture and out ) and Apple adjustable keyboard.. actually same one. It still works. Bungie Marathon was great game~

[@webpoet73]

Looks like a Compaq.... My Dad had a Compaq that was similarly designed. Not exactly, mind you, but similar enough.

[@ClassicMacMold]

Can you please tell me where I can get a copy of that install disk cd. I have a C600 in need

[@dieKatze88]

That's the same SFF casing as some late 90s/early 2000s gateway pizza boxes. So umax was doing that then too!

[@pseudotasuki]

Definitely gotta upgrade that to 8.1 so you can use HFS+.

[@MrSmithUK]

The Umax clones were great. Way better value than Apples own hardware.

[@McTwistedTwisties]

Your channel seems to be growing! Hopefully the likes and comments gets you more engagement!

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Umax "Begin the clone wars has" Apple "Oh I don't think so..."

[@megan_alnico]

If I'm not mistaken Duke nukem 3D was targeted for a DX2 66 megahertz x86 chip. In fact I believe the developers lamented that fact because they really would have rather made it much better. With that in mind I think it's interesting that it takes 144 megahert 68,000 chip to run it. I didn't know that there was that much of a difference in performance per clock.

[@BlahBleeBlahBlah]

The Mac doesn’t support low res 320 x 240 modes like PC’s did. So when running Duke Nukem and Wolfenstein 3D full screen the Mac’s actually pushing a resolution of 640 x 480 or 4x the pixels of the DOS versions of the game.

[@iturbo5733]

Do these use the same motherboard as the 6500? Will you be installing the Tempo PCI into it? I dig your SSD solution and want to do that to my 6500 and also hopefully get Tempo PCI working.

[@Alepf2]

Please try MorphOS and even BeOS PPC as alternative OSes, it would be an amazing new series! Of course, MorphOS is for AmigaOS apps and games, but it now has a modern browser that makes it much more usefull as a daily driver.

[@xnonsuchx]

I did support for Radius PowerMac clones and couldn’t figure out why Apple did it.

[@jens256]

What's the screen resolution?

[@draggonhedd]

Hey i recognise that chassis, i had a point of sale computer that used the same metal chassis with a different faceplate around 2001 or so. That keyboard probably has 2key rollover. A few apple keyboards are like that. the Apple Design Keyboard I and II sholud have at least 6kro, if not Nkro.

[@idubzh243]

Great stuff ! Reminds me my time in my first job in Paris : we were playing Duke Nukem on these same machines everyday at lunch time, it was the real beginning of the multiplayer era, and the release of solid games on Mac. I was working for a press company, as a video game writer, and we were playing Duke everyday, some on Macs (like me) and some on PCs. Great memory ! Just to mess around, I hope you investigate a little bit about the insignia on your T-shirt... This is the flag of the nationalists ukrainians, they were not with USA and allies during WWII, if you see what I mean. They were fighting for the little man with a strange moustache. I like your videos, I'd prefer not to see political content in them, if possible. Thanks.

[@craigcooper1967]

MacOS9.1 not supported with Clones??? How?

[@jamesburke2759]

My Favourite test! How well can something run Duke 3d. Shame i had one of those trinitrons in the 90s a 21"! it lived on for many systems after it.

[@Toonrick12]

Cute little Not-Mac. Off-topic, but Sunflower are beautiful and their seeds are very yummy.

[@SteveChisnall]

i'd like to see you do a video on the Daystar Genesis quad 604e tower if you can get your hands on one

[@ActionRetro]

That's one of my absolute grail machines!

[@TheJuanvisu]

Wow those are hard to come by

[@scheitinjebroek]

A full OS install only taking up ~30MB. Those where the times

[@babyboomertwerkteam5662]

a full OS... that was single user, couldn't properly multitask, and wasn't even fully ported to PowerPC!

[@KiraSlith]

Nice machine! One of those weird situations where Apple was forced to show some humility after the jig was up. Prayers for Ukraine!

[@oleksandrshulha7451]

@@youtubeisgarbage900 Prayers for what? For destroying my homecountry, millions of people fleeing from the country to stay alive; millions lost their homes, their family members and such? They came to save us from the neo-nazi regime, which is just embarrassing, considering that our president is Jew himself. Just plain stupid.

[@KiraSlith]

@@youtubeisgarbage900 The people of Russia sat on their fingers for 20 years letting Putin do as his pleases until it finally bit them in the ass. They have to dig themselves out of the mess they let build up for so long. Something us in America aren't far off from, with Grandpa Moron and the Corruption Gang sitting at the helm. He could just start the pumps back up and America could easily cover the worldwide oil deficits caused by the Russia sanctions but no, he'd rather use it as an excuse to have Psaki play the blame game for an entire hour straight.

[@Toonrick12]

@@youtubeisgarbage900 We pray for Russians, not the country.

[@ps5hasnogames55]

@@oleksandrshulha7451 russia is in the right here lol

[@left4d0g]

@@youtubeisgarbage900 а твой дом бомбят что ли, чтобы за тебя кто-то молился?

[@timsenecal1727]

I am pretty sure my c500 was a 180mhz, and i spent a ton of money on a 13" viewsonic 640x480 lcd display...

[@AnAltWindows7User]

Its even marchintosh, next month, aprildows as windows stuff

[@aTaryum]

Nice pc and nice shirt

[@Vlamat67]

Bella macchina compatta; nel prossimo video fai un test con applicazioni, video, grafica, audio....e li paragoni con la nuova cpu

[@drzeissler]

put a banshee pci in it and it will FLY!

[@andresbravo2003]

It's more of a Office Mac Computer from the mid-90's.

[@MrLurchsThings]

That’s a noisey little sucker. Seems to play Duke pretty well. I always forget how many AAA games game out on Mac. Also, props on the tshirt 👍

[@CyberFox2077]

Thank you for supporting my country! I really appreciate this!

[@ps5hasnogames55]

ur country is a US puppet regime. russia is in the right

[@daemonspudguy]

You binding a and s to turn hurts my soul.

[@joetheman74]

Shouldn't be abnormal for Duke3D to run on that machine fine. In PC land Duke3D ran great on a Pentium 90 mhz. There were even some higher end 486 133 mhz machines that could run it with the right video card. The game in PC land was DOS and not 3D accelerated but a quality video card with a bit more memory was still better than a cheap generic one. Since Macs usually perform faster than PC's at the same mhz it should be no problem. At least that is my assumption. Never played with enough macs myself to know for sure.

[@CralexKokiri]

beep… beep… beep… Looking forward to seeing more from this odd machine! Anything planned for the multiple partitions?

[@setoth1234]

Please do a video of OutSpoken running on various systems... The Mexican TTS was Spanish Macintalk, when it existed... Now we only have American English voices.

[@johnnino7520]

I think if you are going to demo game play on a 90’s Mac it should be Marathon 😉

[@ActionRetro]

I’m so bad at Marathon 😂

[@johnnino7520]

@@ActionRetro Lol well I have tons of demos disk from old MacAddict if you want to use any of that software!

[@JakePlaysGames8878]

I wonder, if there are any illegal clones (not hackintosh) that are out there?

[@antonzadorozhniy6605]

Love the shirt, thank you! 🙏

[@wojiaobill]

love the shirt man, good job!

[@RobReynolds]

I am always intrigued why retro youtubers reinstall the OS's on vintage computers. I get a fresh OS install will make the thing run quicker. And you may want to remove any personal data. But a computer with just an OS isn't much use. So why not transfer the existing install to an SSD so you can retain the old software?

[@repatch43]

Great video, and shirt!

[@bamdadkhan]

people still use zoom? better than teams i guess..

[@AlfOfAllTrades]

The case reminds me of the 4400... my least favorite Mac ever. It's not a bad machine as such, but the chassis and the case is just.. so unrefined and clunky. 7.5.5 was a great system version though. Stable and rarely caused problems.

[@orestes1984]

L2 Cache G3/G4 upgrades.

[@singletona082]

Soooo.... Where can I get that shirt?

[@insertaverygenericnamehere]

I will create a new clone - with M1 Ultra, for $1,500 less.

[@superkirpi1405]

I m waiting extreme upgrade this machine. vuuuhuuuuu

[@lepidotos]

The day they killed the clones was a great day for Apple and a terrible day for the Macintosh.

[@iHusk]

That's a damn good shirt right there.

[@yevhenizonin1653]

Thanks for UA support!

[@jkrod3302]

Wow