While most early Mac clones depended on Macintosh ROMs to function, NuTek spent four years reverse engineering the ROMs in a clean room in its quest to produce a legal Mac clone. It didn’t exactly succeed.
The problem was, NuTek’s “clones” didn’t run the Mac OS. NuTek’s graphical user interface was based on open source Motif – in great part so Apple couldn’t sue over the Mac-like, somewhat Mac-compatible operating system.
NuTek’s goal was to produce a “liability-free” chipset it could sell to others who would build 68020– and 68030-based Mac clones. The NuTek chipset was intended to also support 68000 and 68040 CPUs. The end result was a machine roughly equivalent to the Late 1992 Mac IIvx.
NuTek itself released two models in 1993, the One, a 33 MHz 68030-based Mac workalike, and the Duet, which in addition to that ran DOS/Windows on a 66 MHz 486 CPU. NuTek went out of business in 1994.
Further Reading
Articles are listed in chronological order from oldest to newest – the reverse of what we normally do on Low End Mac.
- The NuTek Archives: Articles from BYTE
- The NuTek Archives: Articles from InfoWorld
- The NuTek Archives: Articles from MacWEEK
- The NuTek Archives: Articles from Macworld
- NuTek Claims Liability-Free Full Mac Cloning Kit, Computer Business Review, 1991.01.29
- Clones from the Woodwork, Adam C. Engst, TidBITS, 1991.02.04
- Murph’s Vaporware Column for March 1991, Murphy Sewall, Apple Pulp newsletter, 1991.02.29
- Macintosh Clone Could Help Apple, T. R. Reid and Brit Hume, Chicago Tribune, 1991.05.05. “Head honcho John Sculley said recently that Apple will begin licensing its mouse-and-icon operating system to other computer-makers….” Apple didn’t begin licensing clones until 1994, and the first authorized clone, the Radius System 100, didn’t come to market until March 1995.
- NuTek to Unveil 1st ‘Legal’ Macintosh Clone, Amy Harmon, LA Times, 1993.03.15
- You’ve Got Company, Mac, Kathy Rebello, Bloomberg, 1993.03.21.
Keywords: #nutek
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