UMAX SuperMac Clone Computers |
First, those folks with SuperMac computers should look at an excellent resource provided by Kennedy Brandt, one of the folks who worked for UMAX. The URL is: SuperMac Insider. Thanks, Kennedy, for providing this wonderful resource.
This is one machine that does NOT want you to take it apart for maintenance! . To gain access to the interior, you have to take off the front panel (see below for catches that allow you to do this) - it disconnects and then rotates up from the bottom.
These catches, when pressed, will allow you to take the front panel off. You see here the bottom of the front panel, the catches are the small plastic tabs sticking down from the bottom of the panel.
Here is the computer before we take off the top cover or front panel; you can see the right side catch in the back on this photo.
To get the cover off, you spread two tabs at the back of the computer. Then the cover rotates up and off, as you see in the following photo:
Now you take off the floppy drive, it is not a simple process.
Here is a photo of some tabs on a bracket that holds the floppy drive, they slide into slots on the side of the bracket that holds the two drives. So the floppy drive bracket and the drive bracket lock together - you have to pull the floppy drive back and lift it off.
There is a bracket (a very solid metal bracket!) that holds the CD drive and the hard drive; I hope to have some good photos soon. Kennedy Brandt tells me that the case was also made by Palo Alto Products. They must not like people that maintain computers - they certainly don't make their lives easier!
Here you can see the battery, this photo is the computer after removing several components. The battery is the black square with the white and gold label; the red and black wires wrapped around it are the ones that connect the battery and the logic board. Does that power supply on the right remind you of some Egyptian temple?
I currently have a UMAX S900L - it was originally a 200 MHz PowerPC 604 but now runs a Sonnet Crescendo G3 at 400 MHz. Amazingly, the new CPU card is about half the size of the original CPU card. The S900L uses the 3.6 volt lithium battery - which will not need to be replaced for several years. The S900L is a tower configuration with 6 PCI slots, to which I quickly added: an internal Zip drive, another hard drive, and a 12x CD drive - it was fairly simple.
This case is the same one that the J700 uses - but the J700 has the case on it's side.
I have taken a lot of Macs (and a number of NeXT, Amiga, Intel, etc) computers apart and I am satisfied with the workmanship in my UMAX. The box itself is a standard PC type, made by Palo Alto Products, and is also used in some Dell machines that I have seen. So it is not nearly as easy to maintain as Apple computers, but it can be done.
Here is a photo of it, with the side off and the front door open. You can see the three catches that hold the front panel on - loosen them and the front panel comes right off.
The rear fan is actually very easy to remove, just press in some tabs that hold it and it slides off.
I do plan to update this page dedicated to the clones, by the way, adding some new photos and more information.
Interested in how I did these pages (I have gotten a lot of questions about that)? Click here
This page has been accessed times since
Errors are entirely the fault of the author, email me with comments. The author has no connection to Apple, UMAX, Radio Shack, any battery company, or anyone else listed here.
Charles D Phillips
If you want to, you can
send me mail. AOL users - please type your email address in your message - AOL doesn't always send the right address so I can't just reply to your message.