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Apple Businesses Hardware

Woz OK's Apple I Resurrection 275

Posted by Hemos from the all-things-old-are-new-again dept.
A reader wrote to us with a story from Wired about a gentleman who's hand-crafting Apple Is for ordering. He's been unable to get a response from Apple, but Woz has graciously responded.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Woz OK's Apple I Resurrection More

Woz OK's Apple I Resurrection

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  • Imagine... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...a beowulf cluster of these...

  • Why replicate down to last detail? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cioxx ( 456323 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @06:24AM (#6898396) Homepage
    Wouldn't it be great if it was built on the inside with modern hardware to run OSX?

    I plan on converting my Apple //e [kinnetica.com] into a full blown box that runs OSX, when some of the iBooks at work are written off.

    After some time, the whole "cuteness" of aged hardware wears off and you cease to be amazed with how far technology has come. It's only novelty for few days.

    • Re:Why replicate down to last detail? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @06:31AM (#6898424) Homepage Journal
      dude, the thing the guy has made is just a circuit board with interfaces for keyboard and monitor.

      how would you fit modern stuff inside a circuit board?-)

      it's just a nice electronics project..

      • how would you fit modern stuff inside a circuit board?-)

        The iBook logic board isn't that big and would easily fit //e with some drilling. The biggest challenge is the keyboard since the decades old keys are prone to breaking. Putting an alternate keyboard there would just ruin the feel of it. And there is also making the keyboard work with the actual board. What the guy in the topic is doing is trying to make it work like the original, and that's infinately harder. Slapping bunch of hardware inside an emp

        • What he's talking about is that the Apple I was (and will be) sold as just a circuit board; you had to make or buy your own case, power supply, keyboard, etc. Sure, slapping an iBook motherboard inside a IIe is easy (although I worry a bit about cooling), but there's no case of an Apple I to put a mobo into. :)
          • My bad. I thought he was ultimately trying to build a wooden case to emulate the first Apple I [applefritter.com] Woz built in his garage. Personally, I would have used an emulator. There is one [jantzer-schmidt.de] for Apple //. Not sure about 1.

            In any event, this guy is a geek.

    • Re:Why replicate down to last detail? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08, 2003 @07:36AM (#6898719)
      After some time, the whole "cuteness" of aged hardware wears off and you cease to be amazed with how far technology has come. It's only novelty for few days.

      For some people its not a matter of "cuteness", but of interest and appreciation. Some people enjoy the challenge of seeing what they can squeeze out of a limited platform, which can really be quite amazing. (How many K above 48k does your C compiler need to run?) Some people find the relative efficiency of earlier platforms agreeable. Some people enjoy the simplicity of earlier platforms. Some people just want to have what they couldn't afford at the time, to explore the things they missed. Some people want older platforms to run a program that they really liked (More(TM) on the Mac anyone?) that isn't availalbe anywhere else. Some people want to experiment and find the older hardware and software more approachable. There are lots of reasons besides "cuteness" for someone to want something like this. Bigger, better, faster isn't always better or faster or even as interesting.

      I've typed on everything from a 2Mhz Z80 system to a 2.8Ghz system. Can you guess how different my typing speed was? Can you guess which one booted faster?

      • Can you guess which one booted faster?

        In 2025, we will have to wait a full five minutes (still!) for the AI to load into the neural network so it can write our term papers for us.

        One thing I find very interesting is that my Commodore 64 with GEOS had comparable word processing and printing capabilities to PCs of several years later (for what I did, anyway). My color Okidata thermal printer was pretty snazzy for its day! Oh, and my C64, strangely, was more reliable than the Windows PCs I've owned...well
      • Let me say it another way (I agree BTW). There was function and utility in these devices. They are attractive because they did something really well and it was cool. Apple (the old symbol) is still cool and when I wear my Atari shirt "older" people (25+) as well as teenagers like it. Although one kid recently said "Yeah dude! the Atari's ROCK!" - *sigh* but I digress.

        The point is that with the growing use of OSS-style licenses (BSD, GPL, LGPL, etc) we may see a comeback of the older techs that had gr

      • Now that is silly (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @10:07AM (#6899876)
        "I've typed on everything from a 2Mhz Z80 system to a 2.8Ghz system. Can you guess how different my typing speed was?"

        I can respond:

        "I've mixed and edited audio on everything from a 25Mhz 486 system to a 3.2Ghz system. Can you guess how different the production speed was?"

        or

        "I've rendered 3d on everything from a 16Mhz 386 system to a super computer. Can you guess how different my rendering speed was?"

        There are LOTS of applications that need more power than old systems can provide. Audio mixing is one of my favourite. On an Apple I, it is just downright impossible. The system lacks the memory to be able to even handle the GUI needed, much less anything else. On a 486 it was doable, but slow. Everything had to be done in non-realtime. You'd spend hours rendering an effect, more time rendering a mixdown, and then listen to see if it was what you wanted. That or spend tens of thousands of dollars on dedicated audio processing hardware. Today I do it at home with ease on my 1.6Ghz. I can do things in software that used to be impossible even in hardware, and I do them in realtime.

        Or speaking of music things, how about MP3s? Back when I had a 486, I had to drop to DOS and run only a decoder program if I wanted to decode a 128k MP3 in stereo. Otherwise I had to do it in mono, and even so my system was sluggish. Now I do it in the background, with only seconds of CPU time spent in hours of play. What used to be a special thing is now something I do in the background while I work or play. On the flip side ripping and encoding, which used to be a 4 hour task, I now do while I'm in the kitchen getting food.

        Along the lines of things not using lots of CPU power, how about GUIs? I happen to LIKE GUIs and work more efficiently for them. I still can and do use command line for appropriate things, but the GUI is much better. Well, it's not free. Back in the day there was a non-trivial penalty for running Windows or X. Apps would drag if those were active because they ate up too much system time. Now it just doesn't matter. Window's GUI uses well under 0.1% of system resources on a modern system.

        There IS reason for progress in computers. Yes, if all you do is scroll text, then abything works fine. However most of us have larger tastes, and it requires more power to fill them. Also, interestingly enough, it makes things cheaper for all of us, text scrollers included. I remember how amazingly expensive my friend's 286 IBM was which, all said and done, didn't do much better on the text scrolling than my Apple II, however even the Apple II was pricey. Now you can get an all said and done comptuer form a major manufacturer (Dell) for about $430. It'll do more than just scroll text.

        Progress: It's a Good Thing(tm).
      • I've typed on everything from a 2Mhz Z80 system to a 2.8Ghz system. Can you guess how different my typing speed was? Can you guess which one booted faster?

        Hee hee! Actually, I'd guess it was about a tie on the boot-up race. Booting an Apple ][ with vanilla DOS 3.3 off a floppy took a while. On the other hand, you could hear every track seek, so you had audio progress feedback...

        Now once ProDOS came out and I installed it on a gargantuan 80MB SCSI HD, man startup flew!

        • Huh? Vanilla Dos 3.3 was very fast, as was the Disk ][ controller on a 5 1/4 - it certainly beats the hard disk startups of today (and sometimes even hard disks of that era, depending on spinup time). I could have games up and running in a minute or less (~15 seconds in some cases), where my Commodore owning friends would wait 5 minutes or more for their tape drives to load anything, and even the ones who had disk drives waited 2-3. Booting the Dos 3.3 startup disk usually took a while, I think because it
    • Hey, thanks dude. I was planning to replicate a Sopwith Tripe down to the last detail, but now realize that the "cuteness" of that would wear off.

      Now I plan to stick a Lycoming gas turbine in the puppy. Man that's going to be fun.

      KFG
    • It's practically impossible to design a hobbyist add-in card for the current PC architecture. PCI is fairly complicated.

      With the Apple bus and the original PC (and AT) bus, you could build one out of discrete logic on a breadboard.

      • It's not impossible. In fact, it has been done several times (an example is here [elm-chan.org]).

        While building it on a breadboard is looking more difficult, discrete logic is still quite usable (with, for example, wire wrapping). In fact, in recent years, advanced families of TTL (or hybrid CMOS) (like ABT, etc) have boosted speed to a point where discrete logic can easily manage these clock rates (33MHz isn't that bad anyway).

        That said, ISA and the standard 8-bit microprocessor busses were both much easier to inte

  • Irons at the ready (Score:4, Funny)

    by Scorchio ( 177053 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @06:24AM (#6898398)
    I'm glad to see the machine is being supplied in kit form as well as pre-assembled, for that true 70's home computing experience :)

  • What kind of demand... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fiftyvolts ( 642861 ) <mtoiaNO@SPAMfiftyvolts.com> on Monday September 08, 2003 @06:24AM (#6898399) Homepage Journal

    What kind of demand is there for Apple I's? The people who I know who have bought one is for nostalgic purposes; will an replica Apple have the same effect? I'm not sure. The fact that he took the time to "unimplement" features to make the computer more realistic is neat though.

    That aside, I bet the guy making them is having a really good time. Woz knows that home brewing computers is a lot of fun. It's good to see someone do something like this despite the patent situations that usually arise.

    • ..because the Apple I is considered a work of art. Some people consider Woz to be the engineering equivalent of a renaissance master. Some people hang framed prints of the schematics originally included with Apple I kits on the wall because the design was not only extremely elegant, efficient and clever--the drawing was also very well laid out and visually appealing.

      So...it's the same reason non-geek "artsy" types buy classic paintings (or prints of them) even though we have photographic equipent (both f

  • I start to understand.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by haggar ( 72771 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @06:26AM (#6898408) Homepage Journal
    ..why Woz is so respected and admired by some people. Heck, this guy has what one could call, a following of fans. The more I learn about him, the more I feel he'd be my perfect role model - a talented hardware (actually systems) engineer that is also noble.

    • Linux geeks could worship him too! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jonas the Bold ( 701271 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @06:41AM (#6898456)
      From the article: Besides, Woz continued, he freely distributed the Apple I's schematics and ROM code at the Homebrew Computer Club in 1975, long before he and Steve Jobs went into partnership and began selling the machines from Jobs' parents' garage.

      "The best anyone could say was that it was mine and that I made it public," Woz said to Briel.

      Could this be the first implementation of open source? Or at least open design? There wasn't a GPL at the time, but it was open.

      So linux geeks can love him too, just like astronomers love Gallileo!

      • Most source was open back then (Score:5, Informative)

        by Peter Cooper ( 660482 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @07:04AM (#6898547) Homepage Journal
        Other than in highly commercialized areas, most source was 'open' in as much that you could easily see a lot of it, even if you couldn't legally copy it or change it.

        Of course, it sounds like Woz was inviting people to take it and change it, although that is not made clear.. making something public back then was not the same as giving everyone a right to change it for commercial purposes (unlike today's GPL world).

        Back then, of course, even on mainframes the code for business applications was often interpreted. On the microcomputers that appeared in the late 70's and early 80's, a lot of source was also open to view. Everyone remembers typing in sources from books and computer magazines. And I'm sure a lot of us 'escaped' programs and typed 'LIST' (on those platforms which used BASIC anyway!) and watched the source code fly up the screen.

        The code was not 'open' in the GPL/Open Source way, but open as in.. not protected.. somewhat in the same way that nearly all Perl scripts you can buy now are readable source-wise (even if they're obfuscated).

        Today everything's only 'protected' because of the commercialization of the IT sector, and a cynicism and 'protectionist' attitude of coders. But back in the fun 'early' days, source was a lot more in your face, even if you couldn't change it and sell it on.
        • Everyone remembers typing in sources from books and computer magazines. And I'm sure a lot of us 'escaped' programs and typed 'LIST' (on those platforms which used BASIC anyway!) and watched the source code fly up the screen.

          Yes, and you could cheaply buy listings of the source for for the Atari OS and Atari DOS, for example. Who published the former? Atari! Who published the latter? The author of Atari DOS.

          But let's not get overzealous. With only a handful of exceptions, you could not get the sourc
        • A lot of commercial stuff was in hand-written machine code because it was the only way to get it small and fast enough to run on the hardware. While you couldn't just "LIST" the program, you could examine the content of memory, and with a disassembler or opcode table you could read the program. (If your machine was a 6502 you probably didn't even need the opcode table...)

          I wonder how many people today realise that MS-DOS (and the DOS-based Windows 9x series) came with a machine code monitor/assembler/disass

      • Re:Linux geeks could worship him too! (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        > Could this be the first implementation of open source?

        You must be kidding. "Open Source" is very old. It is the concept of hiding the source that is quite recent.

        (Think about it: at one point, the software was hand-assembled. This means that there was no distinction between the source and the executable)

      • Re:Linux geeks could worship him too! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Dog and Pony ( 521538 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @07:10AM (#6898589)
        You know, in the beginning software usually was open and free, then it became closed and proprietry - exactly the thing that got Stallman into a rage and ultimately produced the FSF, the GPL and tons of GNU software etc.

        Still, it was a nice thing of him to do - but I bet you dollars to doughnuts he didn't give it away because he had some ideals about freedom - I'm pretty sure, he like every other hacker in the 70's and 80's just wanted to show the others the cool stuff he had made. I know that is how I would have thought back then, almost noone cared about any licenses or anything then - it was all showing off, and lots of stuff went into public domain.

        If it had been an idealistic thing already then, you would have seen a whole nother company later, I'm sure.
        • "You know, in the beginning software usually was open and free, then it became closed and proprietry - exactly the thing that got Stallman into a rage and ultimately produced the FSF, the GPL and tons of GNU software etc."

          Actually, IIR, it all came to an end when Bill Gates sent out the first "you are all damn thieves" letter to members of the homebrew who were "sharing" his copyrighted basic interpreter. circa 1977?

          I believe that RMS started the GPL after Gosling refused to share his patches to emacs.
      • There is no open without GPL! duh! long live gnu/linux! rarr!
    • Woz is a class act all the way. A true engineer that really enjoys tinkering with hardware. Oddly enough, the combination of Jobs and Woz was the only thing that got Apple off the ground, the business sense of Jobs (along with the overwhelming ego), and the hardware savvy of Woz.

      I wrote Woz an email a couple years ago thanking him for creating the Apple and starting the whole ball rolling. It was the first computer I ever owned and it got me programming and using the machine at a young age. Love at fir

  • Disabling backspace (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08, 2003 @06:26AM (#6898409)
    For example, when typing onscreen, the replica can perform a backspace, which the original cannot. Briel said it took him weeks to figure out how to disable it.

    All he needed to do was install X

  • I digress... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stephenry ( 648792 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @06:27AM (#6898413)
    I'm sorry if I digress from the topic, but, with all the talk about Linux posing a threat to Microsoft's hegemony -I feel that *this* poses a greater one.

    Here we have a company, Apple, whose following is so devoted that they would actually resurrect one of their old products out of sheer love for it. I don't see any followers of Microsoft doing the same; in fact, anybody who uses Microsoft's products are looking for a way out. And that, in the end, shall prove to be Microsoft's undoing.
    • I installed Dos6 and Windows 3.11 on an athlon just for shits and giggles the other day. It's not just apple fanbois that do it.
    • Apple, whose following is so devoted that they would actually resurrect one of their old products out of sheer love for it. I don't see any followers of Microsoft doing the same
      If I close my eyes I don't see anything like that either. [freedos.org]

    • Re:I digress... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by IM6100 ( 692796 )
      I know a lot of people who collect old Microsoft products the same way.

      I personally have a copy of PC-DOS 1.0 on my bookshelf and have been considering selling it to a collector. I also have Microsoft/IBM's Basic Compiler 1.0 which will produce binaries for DOS 1.0 and above. I also have Windows 1.03, Wordstar 2.2 for DOS, and CP/M-86 (all complete original product with box, manuals, registration cards, etc. etc.) All cool old stuff.

      You're wrong. Collecting vintage software really has nothing to do wi
    • 1. Apple is not doing this. Woz, no longer with Apple, gave permission to a 3rd party to build the machines.

      2. This is hardware; Microsoft makes software. Software is much easier to preserve than hardware, simply due to space requirements. Much of Microsoft's software is still around. Some, like MS-DOS, have been replaced with similar products such as FreeDOS.

  • Wozniak - A true inventor and 'techie' (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Peter Cooper ( 660482 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @06:28AM (#6898416) Homepage Journal
    These days a lot of people class themselves as inventors or techies, but they're just interested in money, or the whole patent game.

    This story reaffirms Woz as my favorite techie of the last fifty years. His inventions, while not quite on the level of the wheel or the television, have revolutionized numerous areas of technology.

    But what sets him apart from the majority is his openness and friendliness. He doesn't appear to get riled at people asking him questions about his inventions or theories, and he doesn't put himself on a pedestal talking in techie-mumbo-jumbo. How many techies are like that these days? He almost seems to have no ego.

    We need more people like this in tech. I will even admit that I have an ego, and a tendancy to 'talk down' to non-technical people sometimes. Woz is inspirational in that you don't need to do this to be respected in the tech community.

    His Web site [woz.org] is a reminder of what an open minded, friendly, and unjaded character he is. I am sure he would cringe at reading this post, but I hereby dedicate it to the 'nicest techie of modern times', even if he's not the most famous.
  • From the article:

    For example, when typing onscreen, the replica can perform a backspace, which the original cannot. Briel said it took him weeks to figure out how to disable it.

    I guess if you're such a retro computer freak that you're going to buy an Apple I in the first place, not having a backspace key is important... or something.

    Kind of like those retro car freaks who disable the brakes.

  • A new target (Score:3, Funny)

    by MCS ( 202073 ) <scherem@@@gmail...com> on Monday September 08, 2003 @06:31AM (#6898425) Homepage
    Props to Woz for doing what is probably the ultimately right thing to do--- but how long will it be till SCO gets involved?

    Yeah it's early and this is the only witty thing I can think off.

  • Good call Woz! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by farrellj ( 563 ) * on Monday September 08, 2003 @06:32AM (#6898427) Homepage Journal
    It's nice to see that people will be able to experience and remember what once made the computer field great; a sense of wonder, and good engineering!

    No one today does anything innovative, except occasionally Apple...no one takes chances, and when they do, they do it so half-assed that they already seem to think that they are going to fail, and thus become a self-fufilling prophecy.

    But people like Woz were willing to take that leap, because their knew their engineering was good and innovative, and because of that we have the systems we have today. Without the Apple computer, we would still be using terminals on smaller, but more powerful mainframes and minis.

    So thanks again Woz, for the Apple 1.

    ttyl
    Farrelll

  • Want to emulate the Apple I for yourself? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Peter Cooper ( 660482 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @06:39AM (#6898449) Homepage Journal
    Having the machine would be really cool, but you can emulate the Apple I right now if you like.

    Java Apple I emulator. [zophar.net]

    Other Apple I emulators [applefritter.com] for Windows and Macintosh.

    I'm just about to give them a try. Can't find anything for Linux or UNIX though :-(
  • before people want to "resurect" an old PII or K-5? maybe we should start small with an 8088 :)
    • Resurrect? I have a 90MHz Pentium and several Pentium II's up and running just fine. I have an 80286 in storage which should boot up just fine, although even I'm having a hard time imagining a good reason to try it.
  • Is it just me or does the bezel on the NTSC video monitor have the Commodore logo on it (with the rainbow bit to the right)

  • No tape?!?!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by just fiddling around ( 636818 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @06:58AM (#6898519) Journal
    There's also no interface of any kind for a storage device. The original stored programs on tape cassette, but Briel hasn't recreated the cassette interface.

    Ah, the joys of cassettes as a computer storage medium... I remember the time when listening to the programs was key to getting them to work at all. Too bad that joy is lost for the buyers of this baby! Well, the buyers will probably already know those joys from using their original piece!

    I say: good luck to you, and don't^W keep on doing things that make me feel old(er)!

    • I love that sound too--it's the last thing you can't get from an emulator.

      On the other hand, waiting 6 minutes for Frogger or Canyon Climber to load got old really fast. Especially when the disk version of Frogger had music.

  • We never had the Apple-1 here.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by adeyadey ( 678765 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @07:11AM (#6898592) Journal

    We never really had the Apple-1 here, but you can re-live the heady days of the British equivalent, CLive Sinclair's MK14.. (Precursor to ZX-80/81/Spectrum etc)

    http://users.aol.com/mk14emu/emulator.htm [aol.com]

  • Woz to speak in Rochester, NY (Shameless Plug) (Score:5, Informative)

    by rufo ( 126104 ) <rufo AT rufosanchez DOT com> on Monday September 08, 2003 @07:22AM (#6898651)
    Just thought I would mention that Woz is appearing for our local Mac user group [applecider.org] on Wednesday. I realize I'll probably get modded down for this, but we really need to sell a few more tickets, so if you mods can find it in your heart to at least leave it at karma 1... :)

  • Commodore Monitor (Score:3, Interesting)

    by doppleganger871 ( 303020 ) <nothanks&nocontact,org> on Monday September 08, 2003 @07:37AM (#6898721) Homepage Journal
    Isn't it great that he's using a Commodore 1701 or 1702 monitor (Can't tell from that pic, they're identical aside from the label.) on his Apple computer? Those 170x monitors were actually very durable, they were made by JVC, I believe.

    • Re:Commodore Monitor (Score:3, Informative)

      by Schnapple ( 262314 )
      I've still got one of those 1702 monitors - they're great. Monitors (little televisions, essentially). Still holds up better than most televisions I've ever owned. In the front you could hook up standard A/V RCA cables and use it as a television. The back had two separate ports for video since the C64 split up the signal (luma/chroma, I think).

  • Is Woz Saying Apple I Is Open Source??? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ausoleil ( 322752 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @07:43AM (#6898768) Homepage
    "The best anyone could say was that it was mine and that I made it public," Woz said to Briel.

    Seems like the Woz is saying that he originally published the specifications of the Apple I, including the ROM code into open source.

    One wonders if he could be convinced to put it into the GNU license. Yes, it is ancient-ancient code that would be good for only esoteric or educational purposes, but it would also make a statement about obsoleted programs that have little or no commercial value being used to teach by example. Something Microsoft and other huge commercial code vendors should take a lesson from.
    • It seems to me that he is stating that he gave it out to people, not that he released it under any type of license. This is sensible, because if this guy wants to make some Apple Is, Woz'll be able to make a couple bucks (like he needs it) from licensing fees. But I don't think he'll open-source it so-to-speak.

      However, a BSD license or a release into public domain would be better for this kind of thing than GPL. If you GPL the ROM code, it seems that everything that ended up running on the box would need t

      • However, a BSD license or a release into public domain would be better for this kind of thing than GPL. If you GPL the ROM code, it seems that everything that ended up running on the box would need to be GPL. Which would suck, IMO.

        No, no, no. If your ROM code is released under the GPL license, anyone making a derivative work from that code (an upgraded ROM) would have to release their ROM code under the GPL. But simply using that code to run non-derived software doesn't require that software to be GPL

    • Actually, back in the beginning, in addition to making the Apple I, he also gave away the schematics for it, as well as a lot of the OS code.

      I still have my Apple ][+ manual, and it has the completely schematics for the computer in the manual, and the code for the Apple OS. The Disk ][ manual also came with schematics and code.

      They wanted people to love their computers inside and out. I think they succeeded. I still have my ][+ and pull it out every so often to play some of the games on it. After a ho

  • Colleco ADAM (Score:5, Funny)

    by SWroclawski ( 95770 ) <serge@wrocla[ ]i.org ['wsk' in gap]> on Monday September 08, 2003 @07:57AM (#6898855) Homepage
    Now where's my ADAM replica?

    And will it have the same features as the original, including:

    * Power supply for computer located inside printer
    * Being able to boot off tapes, BUT if you boot up
    with tapes inside, the magnetic field will
    erase them
    * Chip degredation temperature lower than unit
    operating temperature
    * Being unable to save word processor documents

  • If you're going to remove the Backspace... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Esion Modnar ( 632431 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @08:48AM (#6899245)
    ...to match the original Apple I, then you should also add a cassette interface, since the Apple I had that too.

    Part of hobbying around with stuff like this is spending hours keying in your own code, watching it do its thing. But if you can't save the product of your efforts, well, that sucks.

    I have an old Sinclair ZX-81 which I found still works, mostly, but I can't get it to load a program from tape anymore, or save it. So other than being a nostalgic piece of technology, its pretty much useless.

  • The case looks a little big. I'm wondering how much shipping the whole desk is gonna cost ;)
  • something like a modern version of the IIgs - try to see how modern you can make a computer that's still shares the apple][ spirit (can run the same code natively, have a 6502-like CPU, etc.). and then mass produce it an sell it in an affordable price. :-)~

  • Speaking of Retro... (Score:4, Informative)

    by bluethundr ( 562578 ) * on Monday September 08, 2003 @09:50AM (#6899736) Homepage Journal


    If you love this stuff like I do, and want a very nice replica of an "Altair Style" retrobox, the Imsai has been made available again [imsai.net](albeit at a slightly exorbitant price)....

    I for one will definitely pony up the $2bux this guy is asking for his Apple replica long before I can afford one of those old Imsais. Much as I want one, I ain't exactly rolling in dough sadly. Just pricked my finger, noticed my blood ain't blue enough. :(

  • I'm so disappointed! (Score:3, Funny)

    by BiOFH ( 267622 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @11:14AM (#6900553)
    None of you has started in on the typo in his BASIC program! Come ON, people!
    http://www.wired.com/news/images/0,2334,6 0329-8757 ,00.html ;)

  • He's using a Commodore monitor on his Apple I ! (Score:3, Informative)

    by dstone ( 191334 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @12:24PM (#6901320) Homepage
    He would have been lynched for such an action back in the days of the Apple-Commodore-Atari religious wars! The photo on his home page [vintagecomputer.tk] clearly shows the Apple I prototype hooked up to a Commodore 1701 monitor on the builder's workbench.

    (BTW, was that model # 1701 -really- Commodore's reference to the USS Enterprise as we all seemed to think at the time? Or did we just not get out enough?)

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