Power Computing P120

Macintosh have finally started licensing their operating system to other manufacturers.So when is a Mac not a Mac? Paul D. Lehrman looks at Power Computing's range of Macintosh clones.

My first Apple computer wasn't made by Apple. Back in the dark days before MIDI, there was a computer music system called an alphaSyntauri that was based around the Apple II+ computer, which I wanted very much to get. After substantial research, however, I decided to buy a Franklin Ace 1000, a clone of the Apple machine made by a company in New Jersey. The Franklin was in a much sturdier case than the Apple, came with a beefier power supply, had all the RAM I needed (the Apple required an additional 16K(!) of memory), plus a better keyboard, and a lot of useful software included with the package.

Among that useful software was Applesoft BASIC, the native operating language of the Apple II, which was burned into the computer's ROM. Apple, who had created Applesoft BASIC, didn't think very much of this idea, and shortly after I bought the Ace 1000 they brought a massive lawsuit against Franklin for copyright infringement. Franklin claimed that because the computer code was in memory, and it wasn't actually 'written', it couldn't be copyrighted. The court, in a landmark decision, ruled that code was copyrightable, no matter what form it was in, and Franklin very quickly went out of business.

The court decision was probably a good thing for the industry: otherwise, we would have a world filled with umpteen different versions of 'public domain' computer operating systems, each one incompatible in some obscure but important way with the next, and stifling any kind of meaningful development. But the downside of the judgment was that it gave Apple a taste of courtroom victory. Like the crocodile in Peter Pan who got a nibble of Captain Hook's hand, they have been lusting for another such taste ever since, firing off lawsuits any time a rival system exhibits an Apple 'look or feel.'

Another effect of the case was that no Macintosh clones ever made it in the marketplace. Apple guarded their operating system jealously, and while a few enterprising manufacturers tried to create faux Macs using Apple ROM chips gleaned from repair shops and other dubious sources, none of them were successful. Elsewhere in the industry, meanwhile, so‑called IBM clones were proliferating to the point where IBM itself became only a minor player in the personal computer business. Microsoft and Intel, the real forces behind the clone explosion, encouraged every electronics assembly house in the world to make PCs. The increased competition has driven prices down and performance up.

A couple of years ago, taking a belated cue from their competitors, Apple finally decided to break up their own monopoly and license their operating system to a handful of other manufacturers. Two players have released Mac clones to date. One is Radius, a company closely associated with Apple for years as a maker of video monitors and accelerator cards for Macs. The Radius machines are geared for high‑end graphics, video, and publishing applications. As 1995 drew to a close, Radius suffered some major losses, and as I write the future of the company looks shaky. Another company, DayStar, also known for its accelerator cards, has shown a super‑high‑end, parallel‑processing Mac clone, but hasn't shipped any yet.

That leaves the field to the other clone‑maker, Power Computing, of Austin, Texas, a new company made up of engineers and marketers who have an impressive pedigree from other firms, including Apple. The Power Computing machines are available in a range of sizes and configurations, and as it happens they are ideally suited to music and audio production studios.

Narrowing The Field

Harking back to the days when the Macintosh product line was comprehensible to mere mortals, there are three models in the Power Computing range. The company originally announced an model with an 80MHz CPU (the P80), followed by a 100MHz model (the P100), but as faster CPUs became cheap and plentiful, the P80 was never manufactured, and the P100 has now been discontinued. Only a few of these made it into the UK, and all will probably have been sold by the time you read this. The model in most plentiful supply is the P120, which, not surprisingly, uses a 120MHz, 601 CPU chip. This simple nomenclature offers a refreshing change from Apple's practice of calling each different configuration by its own model number, and muddling the labels so badly that you never know whether you're getting a fully‑fledged professional computer or a child's toy with no expandability. The third Power Computing line is the new Power Wave, of which more in a moment.

The P120 is available in two physical formats: desktop, designed to lie flat on a surface, and tower, designed to stand upright. The two are virtually identical, with minor differences in the ways the various disk drives are mounted. The P120 has three NuBus slots and built‑in video. Four pairs of slots are available for RAM, although one pair must always contain 4Mb SIMMs. The others can take 72‑pin SIMMs up to 32Mb each, for a total of 200Mb. A floppy drive is standard, as is a hard disk drive, whose size you can specify when you order the machine, and a quad‑speed, caddy‑less CD‑ROM drive. There are bays for two more internal drives as well. A high‑performance video card, with 2Mb of VRAM (expandable to 4Mb) is an optional extra.

The computers ship with a variety of useful software pre‑installed, thereby saving the user (especially the first‑timer) lots of time and frustration installing what may be unfamiliar applications into a new operating system. On the hard disk are Apple's System 7.5.1; Now Utilities, Now Contact, and Now Up‑to‑Date; Quicken; FWB's hard‑disk and CD‑ROM toolkits; ClarisWorks; and some 250 fonts from the Bitstream library.

Every machine has the standard Mac modem and printer ports, an Ethernet (AAUI) port, external SCSI, ADB, and separate stereo audio output and input (microphone) plugs. The audio connectors are, alas, those silly eighth‑inch stereo miniplugs that Apple favours, which are not known for their sturdiness or reliability. Full 16‑bit, 44.1kHz audio is supported at both input and output, so that you can use these machines like any other Power Mac for (reasonably) high‑fidelity audio recording and editing. As I say in my review of three software‑only digital audio recording packages for Power Macs (elsewhere in this month's SOS), some necessary design compromises dictate that the audio performance of built‑in hardware is not going to be the same as that of a dedicated card, but the Power Computing clones sound pretty good — and if I want better quality, I can pop in a Digidesign card.

In Use

What's it like? Well, the Power Computing clone I got to play with worked flawlessly. They really are Apples — I saw at least five chips visible on the motherboard with the word 'Apple' on them. I used a variety of software including graphics, page layout, MIDI, multimedia, digital audio and communications, as well as extensions and control panels from a host of different sources, and I never encountered a single problem — except one. Opcode's Digitrax apparently has a problem with the FWB hard‑disk drivers, and when you quit the application it crashes; not the computer, just the application. Since you've already saved your files, this shouldn't damage anything, but it is disconcerting.

The clones work perfectly with MIDI Manager and OMS, and I even had one wonderful surprise: for a laugh, I installed an old Audiomedia card, the kind that Digidesign stopped supporting a few years ago when the Mac Quadras came out, because (according to Digidesign) Apple changed the timing on the NuBus slots just enough to make them unreliable. I ran an old version of Sound Designer II (version 2.5) — and guess what? The program recognised the card and recorded and played brilliantly with it! So I then tried OSC's Deck II 2.2, with the same results. Any application that uses Digidesign's DAE (including newer versions of Sound Designer) or Apple's Sound Manager 3.1 (such as Macromedia's SoundEdit 16) won't see the card, but this is wonderful news for those of us with old Audiomedia cards gathering dust on the shelf who haven't thrown out those old Sound Designer disks.

Ergonomically, the machines are like a dream. Unlike many recent Macintoshes, which require a degree in industrial engineering to make modifications to, everything in the Power Computing machines is laid out simply and accessibly. Removing a single thumbscrew and pressing two plastic tabs (all obviously located) releases the case, which slides off the back. Once inside, the three NuBus slots are easily accessed without any of the finger‑slicing acrobatic routines required in some Macs. Two of the three RAM slots are easy to get to, and the third just requires moving a couple of cables aside. A fourth comes already occupied, but you don't want to change what's in it. Both the hard drive and the floppy can be removed and replaced easily, with only a Phillips screwdriver. On the optional video card, the Apple/VGA monitor switch is easy to find, and the VRAM slots are accessible.

Conclusion

So do I have any complaints at all? Very few, and very minor ones. If Power Computing want to take the audio market seriously (and from conversations I've had with the company, they do), they should put RCA or quarter‑inch connectors on the back for audio in and out — there's plenty of room for them. The programmer's switch and interrupt buttons on the front panel require some sort of sharp implement to push — mere fingers don't press them far enough to make contact, and so mine are getting black from the pencil I've been using.

It's also worth noting that Power Computing are not resting on their new laurels, but are pushing ahead into the next wave of Mac‑compatible computers. They have announced a new line, the PowerWave, that uses a 604 processor. An expansion daughter card is planned that will support the new PCI buss or a combination of NuBus and PCI slots. This last is good news for those of us who've invested heavily in NuBus hardware (like audio cards), so we won't be left behind when the next generation of Mac peripherals becomes available.

Would I hesitate to recommend the Power Computing clones as your next Macintosh computer? Not for a second. They're true Macs, with 100% compatibility, no surprises in hardware or software, a smooth and zippy operating system, and real power. And they're at a good price. Mac lovers finally have a choice, and it's not a hard one to make.