Having opened the doors to the Mac clone manufacturers, Apple found itself quickly losing what market share it still had in the face of the 'all powerful' IBM PC. Allowing third party suppliers to release machines that could run Mac OS may have made sense when attempting to increase market penetration as a whole but, as IBM had discovered, it wouldn't take long for the 'clones' to be outselling the 'original'. It was this situation that Apple found itself in during the mid 90's.

In an attempt to turn the company's fortunes around, Apple attempted to release faster and cheaper machines that could compete on the all important price/performance equation - the flag ship PowerMac 9600 was an important step in that direction. Despite sporting one of the bulkiest cases ever seen on a Macintosh, the 9600 did offer something that many Macs were sadly lacking - expansion.

With a whopping 6 PCI slots, the 9600 matched the older 9500 but its revised case made accessing them (and the 12 RAM slots) a whole lot easier. Elsewhere there was a single spare 3.5" drive bay - not exactly enormous compared to some of the systems being offered by Umax and Computing Power but enough to add a second hard drive. Onboard graphics were removed and the 9600 (like the 9500 before it) used a PCI video card which not only allowed room for upgrade in the future but was actually pretty quick in its own right. Apple also retained the CPU 'daughtercard' approach and this allowed the machine to not only ship with a range of different speed CPUs (200MHz through to 350MHz) but also live on long after Apple 'officially' retired it - it's even possible to install a 500MHz G4!

The 9600 was a favourite for power hungry users at the time and its easy upgrade potential ensured that it would live on for many years to come. Historically the 9600 was an attempt by Apple to once again regain the initiative which it had lost to the 'clone' manufacturers. It may not have been as all conquering as Apple may have hoped, the competition may have had even more expansion built in, and it may not have been the cheapest machine available but it was faster that the competition and it did sport that magic coloured logo on the front.

Besides which, when the going gets tough, the tough can always axe the competition - which was exactly what Apple did...

The MacMuseum is primarily concerned with 680X0 Macs but occasionally a machine will come along that forces its way in despite not meeting the main criteria. Usually this is by virtue of it being dirt cheap and this was the case with the PowerMac 9600 - that and the fact that it just looks 'the business'. The 9600 has one thing that immediately strikes you: size. The thing is huge and owes a lot to the PC market, both inside and out but still manages to retain that special something that makes it worthy of the colourful little logo on the front.

The 9600 was released in a range if different speeds (via its daughter-board mounted CPU) and I'd ended up with a 233MHz model boasting a, by comparison, huge 192Mb of RAM. The hard drive was a little lightweight coming in at 2Gb but hard drives are easy to come by so it wasn't too much, especially as the whole thing only cost me £27! The 9600 is, as I've already mentioned, big. It's case is a huge slab of beige that has no right to be as appealing as it is but Apple's use of plastic instead of a big steel case helps enormously and manges to make the 9600 feel 'chunky' and familiar. The case does also have the great advantage of being easy to work with - press the green release button and the entire side folds out and off, and unclipping two further plastic clips allows the drive chassis and PSU to swing out, revealing the motherboard in all its glory. All so easy compared to some of the maze-like designs that have gone before.

The PC inspriration is clearly evident but never more so than in the PCI slots. Yes, PCI slots in a Mac and six of them means that it's going to be very difficult to run out of space in this baby, especially as it already has onboard sound and onboard LAN. The 9600 doesn't come with on-board video but Apple did wisely supply a PCI graphics card and my machine came equipped with a second Matrox Millennium graphics card (although it won't allow a Mac monitor to be connected, only a VGA one). Nestling alongside the PCI slots is the CPU daughter-card and if ever it needs to be replaced/upgraded, the job should be a total doddle.

As a machine the 9600 flies and, although the previous owner had overdosed on system extensions and control panels (causing the machine to take forever to boot), a fresh install of OS 8.6 sped things up enormously and luckily it supports USB, which will be handy when the USB card that I have on order actually turns up (I tried installing OS 9.2 but the 9600 is sadly too old). This though is one of the areas in which the 9600 hits problems (and indeed this affects all of the PCI based Macs): Although the PCI connection is 'standard' across Macs and PCs, what you can plug into those slots is more restrictive. Just because a card has PCI connection doesn't mean that it'll work and cards must be explicitly Mac compatible - 'PC only' cards just won't work. This is one of the few flies in the ointment as, typically, the Mac version is priced higher than the equivalent PC version.

The 9600 is a big, behemoth of a machine and it certainly offers more than many users would ever need but for anyone who needs to add peripherals aplenty or is looking to buy an older machine that does have some future worth, it's well worth a look. Improved CPU cards are often cheaper than buying a bone fide machine and if you can push your 9600 all the way up the dizzy heights of a G4-800, add USB and FireWire then maybe you won't have to pay a fortune for a machine that can still cut the mustard...