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Radius

Radius Displays, Video Cards, and Clones

LEM Staff - 2015.02.14

Radius was founded in May 1986 by Burrell Smith, Andy Hertzfeld, and other members of the original Mac team. Radius produced the first full-page display for the Macintosh, introducing the Radius Full Page Display for the Mac Plus.

Radius Full Page Display with Mac PlusRadius logoOther products included accelerators for the Mac Plus and Mac SE, video cards, monitors (including the first screen to pivot between portrait and landscape orientation, which sometimes required proprietary Radius Pivot video cards), and the Radius Rocket, essentially a Mac on a NuBus card. In 1994, Radius acquired competitor SuperMac, another leader in Mac video cards and monitors.

Radius was also the first company to produce an authorized Mac clone in March 1995. It sold the SuperMac name to Umax in 1996, and Radius changed its name to Digital Origin, before being gobbled up by Media 100 and vanishing from view.

Radius Monitors

  • Radius Color Pivot DisplayFull Page Display. Worked in conjunction with the Mac’s built-in display, a feature Apple incorporated in the Mac II in 1997.
  • Radius Two Page Display
  • Radius Pivot Display
  • Radius Color Pivot Display (right)

Radius Video Cards

Radius Rocket

The Radius Rocket was more than just another Macintosh accelerator – it was essentially a full-fledged Mac on a NuBus card. With Rocketshare, it was possible to put multiple Rockets in a NuBus Mac, each running its own copy of the OS and its own set of tasks, or sharing a distributed workload.

Radius Computers

Further Reading

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