The Earliest MaclonesBefore Apple chose to license its operating system, there
were clandestine ways to make clones. Some required ROMs
from a Mac Plus. One repackaged an SE/30 as a portable. All
these were well before Apple licensed the Mac OS to Radius
or Power Computing. Unitron Mac512: A contraband MacRainer Brockerhoff  from
Brazil writes, "It's a long story, but here are the
highlights -- condense as you see fit. Facts are as they
were told to me at the time, but I've no way of verifying
the political parts. "The clone was made around 1985 by Unitron, a Brazilian
company that had a very successful line of Apple II clones.
Initially the plan was to make a Brazilian Mac under license
from Apple; however, Apple would not accept less than a 51%
share of the operation, which at that time was specifically
prohibited by Brazilian law. "Unitron went ahead anyway, getting a $10M loan from a
government bank, and, with help from university laboratories
and National Semiconductor, they succeeded in
reverse-engineering the 'custom' Mac chips: the diskette
controller (which was simply a one-chip version of the Apple
II controller board), the real-time clock, and the PAL
chips. "At the same time, a software team reverse-engineered the
ROM, based on the 'Inside Mac' specifications. I was a
consultant for that team and eventually did most of the
Toolbox managers . . . everything was coded in C, except for
some critical device drivers and the QuickDraw emulator
which were done in Assembly language. As a result, the
resulting ROM was originally double the size of Apple's . .
. in fact, in the final shipping version it was substituted
by static RAM, which was loaded from a special pre-boot
floppy. "Meanwhile Apple had somehow obtained an early hardware
prototype which still contained an actual Mac ROM, used for
compatibility testing of the chips. They promptly cried foul
and pressured the Brazilian government through the State
Department. Faced with threats of import barriers for
Brazilian shoes and oranges (so they tell me) the government
quickly backed down. At the time, a special license was
required to manufacture computers in Brazil. The Unitron
seems to be the only case where two contradicting reports
were filed by the official appraisers: a technical report
which lauded the project as a sterling example of
reverse-engineering and technical ingenuity and a political
report which denounced the project as a contemptible theft
of trade secrets. "Needless to say the project was canceled -- over 500
machines had already been made and were ready to ship -- and
Unitron took a serious financial hit (they're still paying
off interest on that loan). "The chip designs were later sold to a Taiwanese company
which also made noises about producing a Mac clone. There
was a write-up in Byte magazine at the time, but I can't
find their name right now. The lawyers descended on that
company, too, and they weren't heard from again. "Unitron was subsequently downsized. Today they make
industrial electronic equipment and still produce small
numbers of Apple II clones, which apparently are still used
as stage lighting controllers and similar stuff." More details at Applefritter. Outbound: Portable PlusThe first portable Maclone came from Outbound in
August 1989, just weeks before Apple announced the Portable.
Their first laptop used the same 68000 CPU as the Plus and
SE, but runs it at 15 MHz. It had a unique built-in pointing
device, the Isopoint TrackBar, that rolled to scroll up and
down, moved sideways to scroll right and left. The TrackBar
was part of the detachable keyboard. The Outbound required
ROMs purloined from a Mac Plus or SE. To keep your desktop computer working, you could attach
the Outbound to your Mac, providing access to the pulled
ROMs. To attach a SCSI device, you had to buy a $95
adapter. Still, at $3,995 with a 20 MB hard drive and 10 pound
weight, it was an attractive alternative even after Apple's
Portable shipped. In late 1991, Outbound released a modular laptop. This
model used faster CPUs (from 20 MHz 68000 to 33 MHz 68030),
could handle 2-14 MB of RAM, had a backlit display,
supported 20-120 MB IDS drives, worked with high density
floppies, and ran off a standard camcorder battery. (More
information on the Outbounds at Weirdstuff.) If you have an Outbound, be sure to visit Outbound
Computer Support. More information on the Outbound
Laptop and Outbound
Notebook pages at Applefritter and the
Outbound page on EveryMac. Atari ST: MactariYou may not remember the Atari ST computers, a
series based on the same Motorola 680X0 CPUs as the
Macintosh. They never really carved out a niche for in the
U.S., although they were popular in Europe. The STs offered
PC compatible floppy drives, a DOS-compatible filing system,
and GEM, a Mac-like GUI. But they were of interest to Mac lovers for one reason:
the Magic Sac cartridge, developed by David Small,
allowed them to emulate the Macintosh. All you needed was an
Atari ST, the cartridge, and ROMs pulled from a Mac 128 or
512. With a device called Transporter One, it could read and
write 800K Mac disks. The ST was cheaper than the Mac,
making this a viable option for some. David Small later developed the Spectre 128 and
128/GCR. These allowed the Atari ST to use Mac Plus ROMs.
The GCR version included support for Mac floppies, making
Transporter One unnecessary. And if you wanted a laptop Mac, the Atari Stacy
($1,495-1,995) offered it, complete with a 600x400 pixel
backlit supertwist LCD display. The fifteen pound weight was
comparable to the faster $6,500 Macintosh
Portable, which was released at about the same time.
(Details on Stacy from MacUser, October 1989.) Colby WalkMac: SE/30 To GoIn the era of the Sony Walkman™, it was inevitable
someone would create a WalkMac. That's what Colby
called their portable, available in two configurations: SE
($4,498) and SE/30 ($6,798). Battery life was about 3 hours.
When I dig up more information on it, I'll post it here.
(This information is from a MacZone ad in November 1989
MacUser.) More information on the WalkMac
SE and WalkMac
SE-30 at EveryMac. Dynamac: Black & BeautifulThanks to  Richard
Savary for sending information about the Dynamac.
Mentioned in Byte (May 1988), the jet black Dynamac EL
weighed 18 pounds, used an 8 MHz 68000 CPU, had an 800k
floppy, and came with 1 MB RAM (expandable to 2.5 MB or 4
MB). Essentially, this was a portable Mac Plus. The electroluminescent screen supported 640x400 pixels.
20 MB and 40 MB hard drives were optional, as was a 1200 bps
modem. You had to use a mouse -- there was no built-in
trackball. More information on the Dynamac
and Dynamac
EL at EveryMac. Other Clones and Repacks
MacPromote
Xchange
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