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Apple Businesses

For Sale: The First Apple I 158

Posted by CmdrTaco from the as-old-as-me dept.
Foxman writes "It's got no case and no hard drive. Still, a computer handmade by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs could fetch the most money ever paid for a personal computer. The very first Apple computer is going on the auction block. "
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For Sale: The First Apple I More

For Sale: The First Apple I

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  • A revolution in its time (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I was at the SLAC Homebrew Computer Club meeting
    when the two Steves showed it off back in '77.
    Their innovation was off-the-shelf I/O, i.e.
    keyboard and monitor. Lots of us were still
    playing with dipstick-L.E.D. lights I/O. We'd
    enter the assembled machine code sequences by
    hand and watch the register results on L.E.D.

    Lots of us at the time thought the Steves'
    off the shelf computer was for sissies who really didn't understand computers. Boy were wrong!
    But we all had fun and few even got rich.

  • Some details on the Apple I hardware (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just to provide some needed technical details about the Apple I (since everybody here seems to not know what a PC back then constituted):

    The Apple I consisted of a single PC board. It had built onto it a parallel 8-bit input port for attaching an ASCII keyboard (user supplied). There was a scratchpad area on the board near the keyboard interface to add an inverter chip if your keyboard used the wrong logic state for the port.
    There was no AC power transformer included, because that would have added significant weight to the shipped unit. There was a connector to attach a composite-video monitor (television resolution) to the board, to act as a display. Mass storage was provided as an interface to connect a Cassette tape recorder.

    Up until a few years ago I had a nearly complete set of Kilobaud Computing magazine. (sold them to a collector for probably-way-too-little- about $80) Issue One included a full page ad for the new Apple I computer, and the issue also included a legnthy review article about the machine. The things that were innovative about the Apple I were that it came out of the box ready to attach a keyboard and video display monitor. (and also ready to attach a power transformer you had to get elsewhere) Earlier personal computers generally included a row of toggle switches or a hex keypad (like on my two Syn-1 machines).

    My Big-Board computer (also sold as the Xerox 820) was similar to an Apple I, although of a far later design. It has on-board video and a parallel keyboard interface. But it's also got a floppy diskette interface (50 pin connector for 8" floppy drives) and serial ports. And it has !64K! which is far more than the Apple 1 came with.

    There are still good deals to be had at flea markets and swapmeets for the older gear. I got my BigBoard for $10 a few years back. I got a Syn-1 (Synertek clone of a Kim-1) complete with the original box and manual, for $10 a few years back as well. Someday I want to wire both Syn-1's I own together and make some sort of multi-player game for them.

    rendent@earthlink.net (not interested in getting a Nick)

  • Re:AFAIK, (Score:1)

    by Zack ( 44 )
    > the Smithsonian already has one.

    Yes, and I've got a 386 chip lying around, but the the first one....

  • Re:AFAIK, (Score:1)

    by Zack ( 44 )
    > Yes, and I've got a 386 chip lying around, but
    >the the first one....

    Ack! Brain fart.. "the the" = "not the"
  • You all know that Bill Gates is the one who's gonna buy all three of these machines. Not for nostalgia or any such reverie, but because he needs to steal more technology from Apple :)

    The next version of Windows will be "Windows Interactive" which requires the user to place the software on the harddrive manually.

  • Hmmm.. (Score:1)

    by drwiii ( 434 )
    I wonder if it runs NetBSD.. (yet..)

    Good thing it doesn't have the Microsoft tax or it'd be that much more expensive.

    Let's come back down to earth though.. It makes me wonder who (besides you know who) would waste 40 grand on the first Apple computer.

    And it doesn't even have a see-thru blueberry colored case, or come with a whimsical one-button mouse. In fact, the only thing it has in common with the iMac is the lack of a floppy drive.

    (-:

  • Hum, I wonder if Microsoft will bid on this one, or if they'll just decide to steal it too...

    ----

  • This technique definately reminds me of my old VAX days in Germany; we had a couple of 11/785's (nice steel cabinets) clustered together. When one would start flaking out we would shut it down and kick the shit out of the sides with our boots. Did wonders about 90% of the time.
  • I soldered it together myself...built it part by part as I could afford it...completely socketed, no direct soldering of chips. I remember doing 3d wireframe graphics using GraForth, and writing a turtle graphics package for it that imiated the LOGO command set.

    ttyl
    Farrell
  • The Mac is not the same thing. The Apple I and Apple II were computers almost completely designed by Steve Wozniak, and are both quite excellent. My 1984 Apple //c still works perfectly (and fits inside a briefcase if you buy the optional LCD version of the monitor). Apple started to go downhill when they started all sorts of stupid projects such as the Mac, the Lisa, and the Apple ///. The Apple IIgs, by the time it came out, was almost ignored by Apple's marketing department, despite being an overall excellent computer (and being compatible with the huge libraries of Apple II software people and schools had amassed). Apple without Steve Wozniak is not the same.
  • haha, yeah right. I bet you couldn't even fit Linux into an Apple //c's 128kB of RAM, let alone the Apple I's tiny amount.
  • Posted by ConradUn0:

    At school we found an old Apple I made speciallly for a company called Bell and Howell. This discovery took place about 3 months ago in a place we call the graveyard, and ever since then we have been lovingly taking care of it and learning it inside and out... ahhh.. what a great machine. Recently ran a prime number generator, took something like 2 hours to find the first 1 thousand, and that was running a highly optimized algorithm. Sure the machine is porbably worth tons, but we have no intentions of selling it :)
  • Posted by zippy@cs.brandeis.edu:

    Beagle Bros' Diapora:

    http://www.response-o-matic.com/
    familiar style, eh?

    http://www.westcodesoft.com/WestCode-Company.htm l
    scroll to the bottom to see ...
    http://www.westcodesoft.com/Artwork/beagle.gif

    --Pat
  • As I recall, noone ever designed a clone of the Apple II. [though there was one machine (Sorceror?) that had a 6502, z80, and 8088 (6?)) that could run apple, trs-80, and ms-dos software. It died when it could no longer run pc-dos software when programs starting using keyboard scan codes instead of ascii input].

    Franklin and the others simply flat-out stole the apple design. Copied the ROM's, and usually the motherboard layout. Then, having saved on R&D costs, they undercut apple. In short, these weren't competitors, but thieves.

    Also, this did *not* cause the Apple II to die. Apple finally pulled the plug because people wouldn't stop ordering them (and still, they made an emulation card for the LC). Each sale of a II put apple that much further behind the ms-dos machines. Yes, the II had a loyal following, but it was an anchor holding apple back from progress. They certainly could have sold more in the short term, at the expense of the long term prosepects for the mac.
  • As someone else pointed out, the II did not run at 2 but 1 mhz. The III ran at 2, and would drop to 1 for compatibility mode.

    I'm not sure that all of the II's came with cases. The old purple manual was softbound, so I presume it came with the II. It was written with the assumption that the user would be supplying case and keyboard, and had instructions to connect these (and power supply, iirc). I believe that at least some of the boards shipped, and remained on the product list long after they could be ordered. I saw one once at Alltronics, in a blue wooden case--though I now wonder if it was an original and not a II.
  • He is probably the wealthiest grade school teacher in the area, then :)

    Sure, he's spent lots of his fortune. But the reported "loss" on the US concert included *buying* the land it was held on. Don't worry about him, he may be down to his last couple dozen million, but he'll be fine :)
  • Graphical [mumble] Machine

    There was a mac prototype that used a 6809. They got quickdraw running at least somewhat, and had a bouncing ball on the screen. However, the bright idea of "a single bank of memory" meant that it would have 64kx8, or 64k of memory, and would lose a third to the video display. Thus the 68000 was brought in, for 64kx16 total memory [ I *wish* I was making this up!]

    Could this have been the GLM?
  • Would the date codes on the ROM or CPU suffice?
  • Actually, I think that was the Apple III, a notoriously cheap-ass machine.

    That's why you never see any of them.

    adr
  • I had a totally no-name pirate knock-off of the Apple II that I got in Singapore before Singapore had copyright laws. But it wasn't a cheap piece of crap, by any means -- it worked entirely too well and had these nifty-ass macro keys besides... you'd hit the macro key, and then another key on the keyboard, and the machine would spell out "RUN" or "PRINT" or "CALL-161" or whatever the macro key was bound to.

    Crazy days. I loved that damn machine.

    adr
  • Ok, who is going to be the one who buys it and puts linux on it? :)
  • Heh, those guys at debian seem to be able to fit debian linux on any kind of computer. :)
  • Without a doubt they were the one company that did more about making the Apple ][ fun than any other. I still have a bunch of Beagle Bros. disks and manuals at home.. I should really scan some stuff and put it online (providing there are no legal issues these days).

    And yes, I rememeber the quote about the Apple I. I believe one of the women that worked at the company had recently purchased one for $10,000.. That was around 1986? I don't believe that the price increase is that far off, yet. I figure within another 20 years the price of one (given the current value of money) will reach at least $200,000. Apple does pretty much get credit for starting the computing revolution (read: home and small business), so this icon sure deserves the price tag.

  • Now there's something you don't find with computers anymore! When I had my Apple ][+, I had the joys of opening up the schematics and seeing the flow of hardware logic that the software controlled. It was beautiful and right down to each gate. Writing low level assembly was a breeze since I knew exactly what the computer was going to do when I exchanged bits on the ports. It was easy to write code without bugs, because all the information was there.

    The schematics allowed some very inventive software to be written and helped cause an explosive growth of community. It was a hackers dream to toy with the internals and code.

    I would gladly pay double for computer boards with schematics down to the programmable ports. Documentation makes hardware much more useful for me.
  • Quite the opposite! If I remember the first Apples were sold as a board. The Apple II had quite a durable case that allowed the computer to survive fire and any abuse. It was a solid computer from the enclosure to its core guts. It was simple and well designed. They still seem to fetch a high price tag. I hope to catch an Apple II surplus, because they do work well for what they do. The Apple II that I had only ran at 2MHz on its 6502 processor, but for simple things, one or two million instructions per second is fast. Screen updates were faster than a blink of an eye. I wrote some GUI environments that were mighty quick too. The only problem was that you could not write bloated code in less than 48K of memory. Which was a good thing.
  • From what I hear, Microsoft is an agressive collector of art [corbis.com] in addition to buying other information services. I always thought that most works of great art were bought and collected by rich people. It may have been just be something they enjoyed doing, admired, or an ego boost. Let's say it takes money to run a museum with grand exhibits. I dislike Bill Gates, but he may care enough to display some history. Yes, I know Microsoft has published that timeline of computer history and ignored most of the major players (where was UNIX!)
  • I had the Apple ][+ (I never saw a plain ][) with a stock 2MHz crystal driving a Rockwell 6502 processor. I would later find out that processor was used in video games, such as Asteroids (my all time favorite!)

    Some time ago, I relived my memories by finding an Apple ][e emulator for DOS and a stash of warez. I would be most happy if I stumbled upon an emulator for Linux!

    The only problem I had with the emulator was that the games ran WAY TOO FAST! It was a joy to relive the experience of programming this simple, yet effective computer. I always wanted to see technology advance where the platform could get small enough where an Apple computer could fit in my pocket. Well, now I just got a Palm Pilot and hope they are easy to program just like the ][+...
  • $12,000 for the first 386 chip? Might not be a bad deal if you knew the price of transistors back in the early days cost $100 each. [in-search-of.com]

    The 386 had 250,000 transistors. [intel.com] So this would mean you are getting a damn good deal. Go for it!
  • The size of the schematics would not have to be large, since chips are represented as blocks, and a bus of many wires is represented by a thicker line. It was easy for me to whip out an 8-bit computer on a CAD program in minutes due to these tricks. If you only have a dozen chips on a board, its quite easy to do the wiring with a CAD program and print it out on a single 9x11" sheet of paper. It might not be usable to print every single trace on the board. (Who could read that?)
  • Not a bad project [www.ctv.es], really. A cluster of Apples these days would make an excellent lab experiment. They are simple enough to trace what happens when they talk to eachother and compute a larger problem. It may be slow, but it would be a learning experience!
  • Apple seemed to have been very aggressive toward any competitors [google.com] that made a clone. Its a shame, because my uncle had a Franklin, and it was a damn fine clone that would have really motivated Apple to produce a competitive next generation. Unfortunately, they decided to spend the money on lawyers and sue competitors out of the game. The Apple ][ died due to the legal crap.
  • A mouse peeing on the power supply back in those days was a valid excuse for a computer failure. In my experience, it took some act of nature, like a squirrel jumping into the substation transformer to cause a computer to die.

    Nowadays, people accept a computer not working for no reason at all. Its a damn shame. What used to be external causes or hardware failure can now be blamed on what was once solid, reliable logic. Now we have bloat running the majority of consumer's computers. So much for innovation and the billions people pay for the newer crap!

    A few months ago, I read in the Wall Street Journal about a software developer's forum about making a profit was held in Silicon Valley. The main point was driven into the crowd that don't wait for perfection, but to release it and worry about bugfixes later. I was appauled that this seems to be common business practice. No pride.
  • It may sound crazy, but if you knew anything about graphics, you were a hit. In 1984, I was at La Jolla Jr. High in southern California. Apple ][+ computers filled a classroom. They were a great learning tools and those who knew how to do anything graphical, eye catching candy, were the first to be asked for help. Our teacher enjoyed the opportunity and encouraged us to learn. Computer classes were electives attended by both sexes and I have quite a notes and colorful kisses in my yearbook from helping those of the opposite sex.
  • No software?

    A good starting point [dimensional.com] for Apple III software.

    A good archive [mcw.edu] for Apple II software.

    Eat your heart out this link [google.com].
  • Zaxxon? Castle Wolfenstien? I remember those! Email a copy to me, I will host them for you!

    Old gems like those should never be allowed to die.
  • About making music on the Apple just by toggling a flip-flop for the speaker: it was incredible! I forgot exactly how to write those little programs, but it was about 22 lines of assembly (I knew all the hex codes and did it by hand!) involving a shift, xor, and a compare in a couple of loops. If I still had that Apple, I would be doing work writing sound effects. Unfortunately, I have not seen any pages on the art of making noise.

    Using computers as matchmakers was the rave back in the 80's. The cool uses one could dream of... *sigh*

    I'm not sure how you did it, but the only way I can think of distributing the load on simple computers, is to batch out parts of the job to others, and fetch the results and finish the job.
  • I wish I still had Beagle Bros' Big Tip Book laying around at work so I could quote this. I remember them stating, somewhere in the mid-80's, a very brief history of Apple (pre-Mac) machines. When they started off with the Apple I, they said not to expect seeing one, as they were extremely rare and worth $10,000. 15 years of inflation and vintage-ness only crank the 'value' of it to $40,000? I'd actually expect it to be auctioned off much higher.
    Does any old Apple ][ guy/girl have this book laying around to quote that section?
    Man, Beagle Bros. rocked!
  • Taken straight from this wonderful book from Bert Kersey and Bill Sanders, circa Bantam Books, April 1986:
    APPLE I?
    Of course there was an Apple I. Back in the old days when computers cost megabucks and only corporations and the government could afford them, the Apple I was one of the first "affordable" computers for the home. It was around 10K (that is, $10,000). Of course, it only came with about 4K of RAM, and you had to supply your own keyboard and there were no disk drives; only cassettes. Now that was fun!
    ----------------------
    Now if my dad hadn't donated my //c to Goodwill... Grr!
  • Try Sun Remarketing, http://www.sunrem.com

    They're pricey, but right now I saw a Apple /// system utilities disk. $15.00

    More sigh...they used to sell Lisas cheap, too.

    And this is _really_ making me want to go find that landfill in Utah that has all the unsold Lisas buried in it. _Real_ computer archaeology! ;-)
  • I still have my old VIC-20 w/tape drive and C-64(lightgrey keyboard) w/1541 disk drive. I wonder how much those would go for...

    And check out www.geocities.com/~compcloset [geocities.com].

    Today's English Lesson: Oxymorons

  • ]

  • I once worked at one of the first computer stores in the Bay Area, what was originally the Byte Shop of Walnut Creek, but by the time I worked there had become Microsun computers. (Sort of an ironic name nowadays..) Anyway, I worked there in 1979, and the owner of the shop told me about the time that Jobs and Wozniak asked him for investment money for starting Apple. My boss was involved in the Homebrew Computing Club, and thats how he met the guys back then. He and his father went down to the famous garage to look at the machine, to see what their money (something like $10,000 to $30,000, I forget exact the amount) was going to buy. Jobs and Wozniak had the first Apple I prototype, but they could not get it to work at all - it crashed every time they tried to do anything at all with it. They spent the whole vening trying things, without any success. As a result, my boss and his father decided not to invest any money in it, because they thought it was never going to work. In 1979, my boss told me this story, kicking himself because even then he knew that he would have been a multi-millionaire. I can't imagine how much money he would have ended up with, but he certainly would have done quite well.
  • I used to have an enhanced ][e, with all the trimmings (except a good printer), and loads of software... Too bad I was STUPID and got rid of it all in Germany. I've recovered somewhat, laying hands on an unenhanced ][e and a copy of EDASM, and am banging out various fun and silly things with it.

    I really miss the enhanced part, tho, and Merlin, and ProDOS 1.8, and. . . *sigh* I really want a IIgs, tho... as well as copies of _Beneath Apple DOS_, _Beneath Apple ProDOS_, _What's Where In the Apple_, and _ProDOS Technical Manual_.

    The Apple was the reason I got into computing bigtime.

    Crawling back under the couch. . .

    --

  • The Apple II that I had only ran at 2MHz on its 6502 processor

    A stock Apple ][ ran at 1.023MHz... yours must've been accelerated. :o)

    The only problem was that you could not write bloated code in less than 48K of memory.

    I just got done writing a rather cool hexdump util that's quite featureful for the 128 or so bytes of 3page[1] memory it takes.

    [1] "3 page" refers to the chunk of RAM at $300-$3CF

    --

  • The above URL points to an Altair... interesting piece of art, tho...

    --

  • About making music on the Apple just by toggling a flip-flop for the speaker: it was incredible!

    something like:

    spkr = $C030 ;speaker toggle
    wait = $FCA8 ; mon wait routine
    cass = $C020 ;use as a 2nd speaker instead of cassette out

    (here, reading the spkr toggle and creative use of wait will whap speaker once... writing to spkr whaps it twice. Lots of groovy ways to make sound with ONE bit! _Robotron 2084_ was a prime example of exploiting this to its fullest. Oh yes, you can fake "stereo" sound by using the cass toggle connected to another speaker.)

    --

  • Your boss wouldn't have happened to be a Mr. Terrel, would he?

    You can get the entire story of the Byte Shop and Jobs' interactions with it in 'Infinite Loop', a book about the history of Apple.

    Take a look on Amazon some time for it - it's a good read.

    - Darchmare
    - Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
  • They also have a Sun 1. It is swank.
  • If your company has the oldest piece of hardware in use in the USA, then theres obviously someting right with it. They are probably very happy with their setup because it gets the work done. Upgrading it to modern crap will probably harm their opperation more than it would help..
    Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
  • I collect old computers, and while I don't have any Apple IIs, I do have an Apple III. Unfortunately, I have *no software* for it. If anyone knows where I can obtain any software for it (even just the OS) I'd appreciate it. I also have a MIPS workstation in the same boat (MIPS branded, down to the MIPS mouse).

    I have a (full?) set of Apple II manuals still in shrink wrap if anyone is interested. Also a full shelf of documentation on the AT&T 6300 down to schematics and BIOS source dump if anyone needs the info...

    --Rubinstien
  • 10 PRINT " A"
    20 PRINT " H"
    30 PRINT " / \"
    40 PRINT " | |"
    50 PRINT " / \"
    60 PRINT " | |"
    70 PRINT " | |"
    80 PRINT " | |"
    90 PRINT " | |"
    100 PRINT " | |"
    110 PRINT " | |"
    120 PRINT " //\|/\\"
    130 PRINT ""
    140 PRINT " * * "
    150 PRINT ""
    160 PRINT " * * *"
    170 PRINT ""
    180 PRINT " * * * "
    190 PRINT ""
    200 PRINT " * * * *"
    210 PRINT ""
    220 PRINT " F R"
    230 PRINT " I U"
    240 PRINT " L L"
    250 PRINT " T E"
    260 PRINT " E S"
    270 PRINT " R !"
    280 PRINT ""
    290 PRINT ""
    300 PRINT ""
    310 GOTO 10


  • Lots of companies frame the first dollar bill from their first transaction. The first computer ever rolled out by a company (if it was built by two guys in a garage, so be it.), is an important milestone in a company. I can't understand why they're getting rid of it.

    Although the $40,000 would probably double Apple's last-year revenues. ;)

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • I had a similar close call. I own a small collection of Commodore Products myself, consisting of a VIC 20 (complete with 64k Ram Expansion Cart!!@#$), 2 Commodore 64 Computers, 2 Commodore 128's, some 1541 drives, several 1571 Disk Drives, even a 1581! (The 1581 held a HELL of a lot of data in Commodore measures.) Epyx Fastload cartridges, blah blah yadda yadda....

    On with my story. I come home to find my Mother stuck my Vic, and both 64's in a box ready to go out to the trash. It took some arguing, convincing, and eventually hiding to get those puppies back in my posession. Now, my mother uses one of the 128's in the kitchen for recipes.

    Occasionally, I'll pull out the old Game Collection and play some games on the 128 in c64 mode. There's NOTHING like playing on the original machine. (No, Not even an emulator.)

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • lets all throw some cash in, and get this, so we can port linux to it . . . .
  • The only problem I had with the emulator was that the games ran WAY TOO FAST!

    Have you tried nesting emulators? Like they did on bedope awhile back... I can't find the screenshot anymore, but it showed BeOS running a MacOS emulator, on which they were running a dos emulator, which was running windows 3.1, and on top of that they had a MacII emulator running digdug!

    That should slow things down nicely I think...

  • As was mentioned in the article, an attendee at last year's Vintage Computer Festival [vintage.org] bought one for $2,000. (The buyer wants to remain anonymous.)

    I have heard of confirmed sales in the $10K area, and there was apparently an auction some time ago where one sold for something like $30K (I seem to remember Woz being involved?)

    This one will probably sell for $40K or more -- there are some very well financed collectors running around these days.

    The one at Fry's in Sunnyvale, btw, belongs to the Computer History Association of California [chac.org].

    Shameless plug: Check out my collection [sinasohn.com] as well -- I don't have an Apple I, but It's on my wanted list.

  • why are they selling it?

    Apple isn't selling it. Someone else is.

    Rumor has it that it's a guy named Computer Jones [computerjones.com], but I don't know for sure. CJ is, shall we say, a little not-quite-mainstream.

  • This is a museum piece...
    ...And it should be placed in a museum.

    Actually, the former does not necessarily imply the latter. There is a never-ending debate about the value of museums. On the one hand, they are excellent for making artifacts accessible to the general public.

    On the other hand, however, they are often under-funded and lacking adequate space. It is not unusual to find incredibly important items locked in a back room, or even worse -- left out in a storage yard, due to lack of display space and lack of knowledge on the part of the curators.

    As an alternative, private collectors do it because they care about the items personally. They spend their own money to rescue artifacts and restore them lovingly.

    Of course, none of these are always the case, but my own personal feeling is that I'd rather see something like this go to a collector who knows what they are doing rather than a museum that will stick it in a plexiglass box so the public can watch it decay.

    I know that when I die, my collection [sinasohn.com] will go to another collector [blinkenlights.com] rather than a museum.

    No, really, this should probably be donated to the Smithsonian.

    Well, if you have to donate it, I would recommend the Vintage Technology Cooperative [vintage.org] (which puts on the Vintage Computer Festival mentioned in the article.)

    Of course, it's a moot point as it belongs to a private citizen who is free to do with it what he wants. But you're welcome to bid on it, purchase it, and donate it yourself.

  • An Apple III or Amiga 500. They both had ICJ problems (Intermediate Chip Jump).
  • Think of the Beowulf clust.e....r.......


    SIGBADHUMOR received: Program terminated.
  • why are they selling it?
    if i had one of those i'd still be using it :)
  • to get the monitor.

  • Hmm.. would have thought it'd have gotten a bit mouldy now.. it probably looks better than an IMac anyway :>
  • close one ;> .. Must have hit that submit button a tiny bit quicker than I did...

    AppleII's were amusing, yea.. I seem to remember those little goobers with their tiny round screens and beige (or was it just dirty?) plastic.. aww..
  • Hmm.. can you imagine the SIZE of such a schematic these days for current hardware? :D .. I bet the schematics don't even exist in printed form but inside chip design computers anyway.

    There's also the competition these days in chip design .. think Intel want to print out their specs so that XYZCheappChips can come and copy them? :) .. I know there's patent laws against such things, but it still might make industrial espionage a lot simpler, something I doubt any company in business wants to do.

    Yes, a sure sign of the days past indeed.
    (play nostalgic tune) :>

  • Actually, I think what when wrong with the "manufacturing process" is that Steve Jobs insisted that the machine wouldn't have a fan.
    --

  • Actually the black Bell+Howell Apple ][ (while cool) were actually pretty common. I doubt that it's worth a lot more than a standard Apple ][
    --

  • I think Apple pulled the plug on the ][ in 1993 or 1994. It had an odd name like "Apple //e+ enhanced". I guess people (or schools) were still buying them, even at $1200 or whatever, although they hadn't been manufactured for a while.

    What screwed Apple was their decision to push the //gs as a low-end computer rather than making a cheap Mac. If only the LC + Apple ][ card came out years earlier! (When you look at all the Mac stuff - LocalTalk, HyperCard, Mac GUI, that they ported to the //gs, you wonder why they bothered.)
    --
  • I think it would be incredable to find a good book on the history of innovations and stuff that I missed out on while growing up and being blissfully unaware of the computer world. Anyone have any suggestions?

    I don't think that anyone should be allowed a place in the hacker community without reading Hackers; Heroes of the Computer Revolution [amazon.com] by Stephen Levy. It is an absolutely stellular novel on the history of the early hackers.

    Here is another review [mihalis.net] of the book.

    -Brent

    PS: Amazon's URL can't be copied and pasted, so if it doesn't work, use the Amazon search :-)
  • Actually, the Smithsonian already has a mock up of it with wooden case and everything. It's in a display set up as if it's the Homebrew computer club where the Woz first showed his wares.
  • The land fill is in Logan, Utah where Sun Remarketing is located. My Uncle helped start Sun Remarketing.

    I used to have a Mac XL which was a Lisa converted to be a Mac. It was a pretty neat machine.

    The Lisa's had removable I/O, CPU, memory cards that all fit in a removable thing and you could do it all with out a screw driver.
  • So do I. That computer was a riot. I used to be able to impress people by operating at the '*' prompt and using only memory addresses to access commands. I probably could still do it if I had one right here too :-) I once wired the button of the paddle port to my door such that the computer would beep if my door was opened. It would also print "INTRUDER ALERT" over and over. It was a true Hacker's machine. I was an 11 year old kid with nothing more than a public library card but there was still enough information around for me to find out what went on under the cover. There was a guru in my school who taught me well in the ways of hacking. She used to give me books and software free of charge for my home machine so that I could learn. My favorite programs were animations where I would have something flying through space and it would be blown up by a laser beam or something. It was always fun to try an code a better looking explosion.

    My sister used the machine for word processing until about 1992 or so when she got a Dell 486.

    *sniffle*

    They just dont make em like they used to...

    -Rich
  • That was the COOLEST book.

    I especially liked the part where they were like "This is a secret so dont tell anyone" and then had the cartoon beard covering the bits of information. I'd love to get in touch with the people who wrote those things.

    I wish i knew what happened to mine. I used to
    check it out from the library continuously for about a year or so. At some point I lost the library's copy and ended up having to pay for it to be replaced. It never was. And I never found the copy I had been charged for.

    -Rich
  • Actually.. I think those Bell and Howell boxes were II's. We had one at my grade school and it was black. It was the guru's workstation, she never let us touch it :-)

    I dont know how much they are worth but the curiosity value is certainly worth something. These were machines designed by hackers for hackers. The best thing about them was you didn't need an Electrical Engineering or Computer Science degree to have fun with it. I was just a kid when I started hacking things into the paddle ports and learning assembly language.. Those were the days. It's a shame it's not that simple anymore.

    -Rich
  • Not quite ANY abuse. My first job in computing was coding for and supporting a couple of Apple IIe's for a small company in the UK. Had a support call one day from one of the two users saying that her computer wouldn't switch on and 'smelled funny'.

    Turns out that a mouse had sneaked into her computer through one of the ports on the back, and crept onto the top of the power supply. At some point it had obviously succumbed to a 'call of nature' and relieved itself, managing to kill both itself and the Apple IIe in one hit.

    Ah, those were the days...
  • It is very unfortunate that this huge piece of computer history is being sold. It should be in a museum, perhaps in the Smithsonian. I hope that the buyer is willing to donate it to a museum.

    Ah, such is capitialism...

    -AP
  • Hmm. I remember quite a few years ago I was at my sister's science class and there was a plain apple][ sitting in the corner. It was mega old looking, even for those days.
  • I was watching wargames on TNT the day before yesterday I think and I saw an advertisement for some movie about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. It'll prolly be all fluff and fake stuff but mebbe they'll have something interesting in it.
  • This will be how they continue to remain profitable for an eighth quarter... they'll start selling their Apple I and ]['s that are sitting in the dungeon. Because everyone knows that these iMacs will stop selling once Gateway, Packard Bell, et al start selling "cute" PC's that cost half as much and run "twice as fast" (to use Jobs' benchmarks).

    -Chris
    ... I wonder what it's RC5 rate is? :)
  • The Apple III was a damn fine machine. They had a manufacturing problem for a while which caused the chips to not be fully seated after transportation (I think they sockets were too tight and they weren't fully seated). I sold a bunch of them with my software for several years, and we never had a failure. I don't like dropping machines so we opened up each one and manually pushed down on each chip. Yes, they machine ran a little warm, but they never overheated. The main problem with the machine was an image problem; once people thought there it was a bad machine they didn't sell at all. But that machine could have 256K of memory, and when running Apple Pascal was a dream to work with. We sold Corvus (any remember them) hard disks, and they worked like a champ. Our largest customer had 8 Apple IIIs on a Corvus network all hooked up to a Corvus 80 meg drive (really big in those days). The networking was a bit primitive, but this customer was running a payroll/billing system for several hundred employees.
  • I too learned on an Apple II+, with the language card, but have since forgotten the opcodes to poke in a music player at location 768. Man, the nostalgia. It's been a long time since I typed in 100 pages of hex digits to code up a proper assembler. Anybody remember the Beagle Brothers Two-Liners?

    Anyway -

    About the clustering thing -- I did this one time using another 6502 machine, the PETs. Our school had a lab with one printer, one floppy disk, and I was in charge of the school's dating program. (You know, you fill out a questionnaire, everybody gets matched, and then blah blah blah, you get a list of the opposite sex...)

    Problem was, my program was too slow. The results had to be out before a dance. I was going to be in deep trouble. Anyway, I got ten machines running in parallel, using FOR and STEP commands ... the project finished in time. It was cool.
  • ...but something went wrong with the manufacturing process that all the chips didn't properly seat.

    In the second "Batman" movie, all the computers in Penguin's campaign headquarters are Apple IIIs.

    Dave
  • The article mentions that they offered the machine to Steve Jobs, but they didn't mention Steve Wozniak. I guess his current position of grade school teacher doesn't give him the prestige (or salary) to be offered a $40,000 antique machine. Or perhaps they just know that he'd refuse to buy back something he built with his own hands, and could still build today, given the proper tools and components.

    Steve Jobs is a good businessman, but the Woz is a great hacker.

    They should give the machine back to the Woz and let him auction it off for charity, or keep it, or trash it, or whatever he wants to do with it. The Apple computer was his brainchild. Apple Computers, Inc. was Steve Jobs' creation.

    --Kevin T.
  • There is (still?) an Apple I on display at the Fry's Electronics in Sunnyvale, CA.

    BTW, I dispute the claim somebody made in the news article that Apples are the most sought after vintage computers. Altairs, even pieces of them, are going for ridiculous amounts on eBay.

  • Wow! I wasn't even BORN then :) I think it would be incredable to find a good book on the history of innovations and stuff that I missed out on while growing up and being blissfully unaware of the computer world. Anyone have any suggestions?
  • If other people are interested in this topic I suggest a PBS documentry called the newds of silicon valley. It talks about all this stuff and is generally really cool. I'm not sure if you could buy a copy but amazon sounds like a good bet. I taped my copy off the VCR.
  • If other people are interested in this topic I suggest a PBS documentry called the nerds of silicon valley. It talks about all this stuff and is generally really cool. I'm not sure if you could buy a copy but amazon sounds like a good bet. I taped my copy off the VCR.
  • I really want a IIgs,

    Wow. I still have working (I think) IIgs at home, with 1.25 Meg of Ram, and the Apple High Speed Scsi card. (Yes, it even has a 20 Meg hard drive).

    Unfortunately, my software for it is somewhat limited. My collection of games was sold with the Enchanced IIe that we sold 8-10 years ago. Ooops.

  • Aw crap

    Call -936 just popped into my head - gotta clear that out and go home.


    ( I handle SIGBADHUMOR much more cleanly )

    :)
  • Microsoft has been collecting digital rights to artwork for the purpose of propping up their own encyclopedia software while denying competitor's products the benefit of using such artwork. I find it disgusting, and yes, Microsoft has a history of rewriting history with a pro-MS slant.

  • M.E.S.S (Score:1)

    by / ( 33804 )
    here you go [internetter.com]
  • There's one at auction now [ebay.com] and the bid is only $1136.

  • It was on May 22nd (sometime that weekend, anyway); I have no idea why, it was supposed to be some Mt St Helens movie. Interesting, but too much about Jobs' personal life (not necessarily related to his real personal life--gotta keep the movie interesting), not enough about anything else. Kinda fun though.

    (Hah! I didn't start the thread this time, let's see the moderators get me now ;-)
  • This thread is making me weepy!

    My first box was an Apple ][c... and come to think of it, since it was at "the top of the line" of the time (128k memory... stand back!), it was my parents fault for starting this damn habbit I have of buying the expensive "better" stuff... ::stroking my beloved PPro200::

    I loved the "Portability" aspect of the the Apple ][c... It had that cute little green-screen monitor, and that speedy 1200 baud modem (which could fill an entire 760k disk with pr0n in just over night ).

    I kick myself evey time I think of the fact that we sold that comp when we upgraded to the 386... I would love to spend a few hours optimising the Distributed.net client in BASIC:

    10 Print "Moo"
    20 goto 10

    A
  • Can you say Altera baby?..... Its sure useful....
  • I figured he'd use it to upgrade the POS on his desktop.
  • My first experience with a computer was with an Apple ][e, programming simple things like making our name tile across the screen...... those were the simple days. The coolest game around was Oregon Trail. (I always broke an axel while crossing those darn rivers...)
    I wish I had one of those things, just to play around with. Oh well. =)
  • Somehow I doubt they will put it on eBay...

    Do you 'spoze they'll take old atari 800's in trade?
  • Ahhh, that brings back memories.

    The GLM was a research prototype of a modular, slotted mac. There was a movement inside of Apple to create a slightly more open mac, a little bit cheaper, and to merge the best of the ][ line with the mac. The GLM was a small box which became the ][GS, a machine aimed at the K-12 market. The ][GS was an amazing machine, carefully crafted by the hardware hackers of 87-88. Unfortunately it didn't fit in with the philosophy of the time, and the development of GS tools and support was underfunded until the project died.

    The best bits of the GLM became a project known as Reno, the mac with slots (the MacII).

    And I've still got my Kim-1 and Syn-1 boards, but I haven't powered them up in years

    the AntiCypher
  • If I remember correctly, one of the early Apple boxes--might be the Apple I, maybe a little bit later--wanted you, as one of the inital installation steps, to actually:

    "Lift the box to a height of 18-24 inches and then proceed to drop it to the ground. This will ensure proper setting of some internal components.

    Ah, the good old days.

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