October 25th, 1999

[2:45 PM] MacTell, Maker Of EvilEye & FireWire Devices, Closes Doors For Good In a devastating blow to Mac gamers, Mactell has announced that they have permanently shut their doors. Mactell is the former Mac cloner who successfully turned the business into a G3 upgrade manufacturer and maker of video cards, and more recently their very successful FirePower line of FireWire products. Those video card included the EvilEye Voodoo 3 card with optimized Mac drivers. According to a Mactell press release. Mactell Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: MTLL - news), a leading manufacturer of performance enhancement computer products, today announced that it is permanently closing its doors. Mactell has been attempting to work its way out of the problem created when Apple Computer, Inc. made the decision to discontinue the licensing of the Macintosh operating system to clone manufacturers in August of 1997. Mactell has attempted to recover from an operating loss incurred of approximately $2,800,000 during the year ended June 30, 1998 and an additional loss of approximately $1,800,000 for the year ended June 30, 1999. Although Mactell had a profit during the months of May and June 1999, the Company had amassed payables in excess of $3,200,000 between many different vendors, much of which is well beyond their payment terms. Many of these vendors have either filed suits against the Company or are threatening to do so. The Company has neither the funds to contest the litigation or pay the amounts to the various creditors which are due them. Additionally, the Company doesn't have large enough credit lines and cash flow to meet the demand for its existing product lines to enable it to continue on in a profitable manner. The Company has attempted vigorously to obtain additional working capital through additional loans, the factoring of its account's receivable and the issuance of additional common stock of the Company, which have all been unsuccessful. It is for these reasons that on October 22, 1999, the Board of Directors made the decision to permanently close the operations of the Company effective as of the close of business on October 22, 1999. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Mactell Corporation is a publicly traded company, trading on the NASD electronic bulletin board, key symbol: MTLL. Officials or other spokespersons at Mactell could not be reached for comment. The company's phone number, while still active, simply rings. As of this writing, their web site is still active. It is unknown what will become of their current product lines. It is also not known what will become of any existing orders. The Mac Observer will be bringing you more information as soon as we have it confirmed. The Mac Observer Spin: Mactell was a real triumph story for a long time, and one of few such triumph stories coming out of the Clone Wars. They had completely reworked their company into a manufacturer of other products rather than going the way of so many other clone companies who had found it necessary to shut their doors. We have had a good relationship with the company since that time and count Mactell as being among our earliest sponsors. EvilEye, their unreleased and overdue Voodoo3 card, represented a somewhat new direction for the company as well as the best opportunity yet for Mac gamers to be on a par with PC gamers when it came to 3D acceleration. The company had gone to great lengths to optimize Mac drivers for the card that offered unparalleled performance. We can only hope that some of the company's product line, like their FireWire peripherals and the EvilEye in particular, will see the light of day through the agency of some other company. So far we have not been able to find out any information on this. Also, we can only hope (though it is a good assumption) that any and all unfilled orders will be filled or otherwise completed in some manner. In any event, we offer a big Mac Observer salute to Mactell and wish them a fond farewell. So Long Mactell! Mactell