On 11/30/2010 10:28 AM, Britt Dodd wrote:
Does anybody have one of these machines? I really liked it because I
could use a standard keyboard and mouse (and use a KVM switch to
switch it between my PC and MAC) and it was pretty quick.
I've also been looking for a 5400/200 for quite some time. I loved
mine, but it got stolen.
Know where I can find either of these machines?
I had the 604e/200 variant of the Starmax 4000, and it was indeed a good
little box. It was a kind of interesting Mac/PC hybrid and I got a
decent amount of use out of it. I had it overclocked for awhile too,
which added a boost. It started falling by the wayside when my Mac usage
tended to split between more vintage than it for nostalgia sake
(Classic-form factor and later 68ks) and OS X-capable boxes for actual
use. One day I went to fire it up and something must have happened with
cap leakage or the PSU as several bits on the mobo let out their magic
blue smoke and it never worked again. I kept some of the bits around
Just In Case but finally got rid of it entirely when I moved a few years
ago.
Doubt they'll ever be worth much as collector's items but they're an
interesting footnote in what could have been if Apple hadn't killed the
clone market. Apple purists considered them sacrilege, while others felt
they were what an entry-level Mac should have been. Oh, the what-ifs.
As for the 5400, aside from the usual suggestions of eBay and the Swap
List, best bet is googling and looking at some of the equipment
surplusers that come up. IIRC the 5400 was the giant all-in-one thing,
so shipping will likely be prohibitive. If you're more interested in the
specific performance rather than the form factor, you might consider a
6400 as it's the same motherboard. Though they're in a big heavy tower
case, so the shipping might not be much less. The 5500/6500 would be a
slight performance boost in identical cases as well.
The mental picture of someone leaving a house lugging a 5400 around
amuses me. The things were not light or particularly portable as I'm
sure you know.
Scott
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