Macs Were Not Necessarily Always Apples
A company called Nutek (Cupertino, CA) said it had developed
technology for creating a Mac clone without requiring the use of Apple's own Mac ROM chips. The company hoped to sell its chips and software to other companies that wanted to produce Mac clones. In later issues, BYTE editors evaluated prototype systems based on the technology but found that they weren't totally compatible. Ironically, Apple is now sanctioning and encouraging vendors that want to create low-cost Mac systems. And Nutek appears to have closed shop: Our attempts to contact the company were unsuccessful.
Do you remember our Microbytes section? From
March 1991
here's wh
at Dennis Barker reported on Nutek's technology attempts:
Nutek Claims True Mac Clone; No Mac ROMs Required
by Dennis Barker
No one's done it yet -- made a Mac clone that doesn't use Apple's own Mac ROM chips and can still get past Apple's attorneys. But Nutek Computers (Cupertino, CA) says it has designed a set of chips and software that form a "legal functional equivalent of the Macintosh operating system." Nutek hopes to sell its Mac replicant technology to computer makers who want to produce Mac clones.
he Nutek design, said company president Benjamin Chou. Manufacturers using the Nutek chip set must add the CPU, which can be anything from a 68000 to a 33-MHz 68040; a SCSI controller chip; memory; and glue logic.
Reverse-engineering a Mac clone is quite a technical accomplishment. But the fast-selling Mac Classic has changed the scenery. Now that Apple offers a real low-cost Mac, the demand for imitations isn't what it was a year ago, when the cheapest model had a price tag twice that of an IBM clone. However, Chou said the OEMs who use Nutek's core technology won't try to compete "with a single, low-end product." They'll offer machines that are more flexible than Apple's and "competitive on a price/performance basis," he said.
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5 Years Ago in BYTE
