Jeff wrote: > Do you have any memories from the end of Radius when they arranged > for CRA Systems (AKA Radius Vintage) to take over their support > obligations and gave (sold?) their remaining stock to CRA? Radius > had been clearing out the Thunder 24/GT, arguably the fastest NuBus > video card ever made, for about $499. When CRA took over the price > went to $899. I may be off by $50 on those. It's been a long > time. I had been bracing myself to buy one, but I waited too long. > Very annoying.
I do remember that. It was right around the time I left Radius, but I can't recall which left Radius first -- me, or all their service stock. The guy who had negotiated the CRA deal for Radius, Tom Cockrell, was later my manager at Umax, and then at Microsoft. It all came about because Radius wanted someone to take over legacy product support, but wasn't willing to pay them much to do it. CRA's only option to turn any profit on the deal was to raise the prices far above what Radius was willing to let them go for. The lowest price you ever saw from Radius, it turned out, would have been the best option. SuperMac and Radius had both gotten used to scrapping or writing off huge volumes of product to keep service inventory low. Umax was actually talking to CRA about taking over service support on the SuperMac computers, too, near the end. The president of Umax, Vincent Tai, solicited a bid from CRA, but expressed disappointment to Tom that the figure was so low. Tom couldn't understand this reaction. Then he realized that Vincent thought the figure was the amount CRA was willing to *pay* Umax to take over post-shutdown support of the SuperMacs, not the minimum they'd accept to do it themselves. Once Vincent was clued in and Tom explained that no one was going to pay Umax to take on such a proposition, Vincent just abandonned all the service parts. That's why about $5-million of them ended up sitting in DecisionOne service warehouses around the country. Anyway, you're right, the Futura II's weren't that bad. The Futura II LX was actually a re-branded SuperMac Spectrum card. And E-Machines did a fair job designing the Apple Duo MiniDock (sold by E-Machines with Ethernet first as the "PowerLink DeskNet" and later as the "EtherDock") and Floppy Adaptor. -Kennedy Brandt SuperMac Insider (http://home.earthlink.net/~supermac_insider/) -- SuperMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | Service & Replacement Parts [EMAIL PROTECTED] | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> SuperMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/supermacs/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/supermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
