Taiwanese Macintosh cloner Umax Computer Corp is pitching directly at the Unix graphics workstation market with the addition of a 233Mhz system to its SuperMac S900 Mac OS compatible workstation family. The company, which set out its grand ambitions at the end of last year to be to the Mac world as Compaq Computer Corp is in Wintel, and wants a 30% market share by the Millennium (CI No 3,027), says it is playing its part in expanding the Mac operating system segment of the high end graphics market by incorporating the latest PowerPC processors into the SuperMac line as soon as they become available. The S900/233 is based on a 233Mhz PowerPC 604e processor, and is the first Umax product to ship with the latest Mac OS version 7.6 (CI No 3,013). It offers 8Mb Video RAM as standard on an IMS 128-bit graphics accelerator. All the S900 family are built on Umax’ Advanced Scaleable Processor Design architecture, which enables a user to upgrade the machine’s primary processor board to faster speeds, and also enables a secondary processor to be added, creating a dual processor system, without removing the primary processor. Andy Chang, senior vice president of worldwide sales for Umax, says the new system provides the Unix workstation-class performance graphics professionals demand at substantially lower prices than are typically found in the workstation market. The 233Mhz systems will ship at the end of the month for around $4,200. The company also announced it is shipping new primary processor upgrade boards for the SuperMac S900 family, as well as for the lower end J700 business-class systems, the SuperMac C600 small office systems and the C500 entry level desktops, and secondary processor boards for the S900. 225 MHz primary processor boards for the S900 cost $1,200, and $995 for a 200MHz board.
