A few weeks ago, I was invited to a “Homebrew/Apple reunion event” at the Living Computer Museum and Lab. Here is some of the text from the invitation.

Living Computers: Museum + Labs, founded by Paul G. Allen, would like to invite you to a very special private event.

We are celebrating the opening of our latest exhibit, which follows the first 20 years of Apple Computers, by throwing a party for those who were there. This is a unique opportunity to reconnect to the people, and computers, that you remember from the start of the personal computer revolution.

I was given no additional information about who was coming or since I never worked for Apple Computers, even exactly why I was invited. However, without hesitation, I accepted the invitation, and made plans to attend.

Fast forward a few weeks, to just a few days before the event. Someone noticed a little reported article announcing that a very special Apple 1 was going to be on display at the LCM+lab’s new Apple exhibit and brought the article to my attention. This happened to be the computer that I reported in a blog posting a few years ago, though I never updated my Apple 1 registry with this unit. I didn’t think a whole lot more about it, as I have been involved in communications with many Apple 1 owners over the years.

I arrived in Seattle on Tuesday afternoon for the Wednesday evening event, still unsure why I was invited, and who else would be there. A small bus picked up about 8 or 9 of us from the Hotel late Wednesday afternoon to take us to the celebration. I could not identify anyone on the bus, though everyone was very friendly and in good spirits.

When picking up my name tag, I saw an impressive number of familiar names on the tags that hadn’t yet been claimed, including Woz and Paul Allen. Anyway, I introduced myself to a number of people and had some interesting conversations, including a chat with Lāth Carlson, executive director of the museum. However, I still was unsure why I was invited. I was taking the approach of “when in Rome, act like a Roman” – in other words, I was just trying to fit in and not ask too many questions.

After a bit, we were led through a behind the scenes tour. As we were watching the Bendix vacuum tube computer G-15 being demonstrated, someone that I didn’t recognize, saw my name tag and said “Mike Willegal is here”. The people identified themselves as the Hutmacher family and told me that they had donated the computer to the museum. The donation was kept a secret, which is why I wasn’t told anything. The Hutmacher family had asked the museum to invite me to this celebration, since, with the help of some acquaintances I had with early Apple people, I helped them verify the history of the computer and also pointed out that it belonged in a museum. The mystery of why I was there, was solved.

The fun part of being identified by the Hutmacher family is that they made a big fuss over me, and some of them had their pictures taken with me. During all this fussing over me, Chris Espinosa, who I had never met and only could identify by the name on his badge, looked on from the background with a puzzled look on his face. I could almost see his brain working – who is this guy that they are making such a fuss over. After the Hutmacher family moved on, I introduced myself to Chris Espinosa and explained what had happened.

Lastly, kudos to the Hutmacher family, a very special group of people, for putting a very special Apple 1 into very good hands.

Do to the acts of an extraordinary generous family, I was invited to a private gathering of micro-computer legends at the “Living Computer Museum” in Seattle, earlier this week. The gathering included a number of people that were involved with the Apple 1 while it was still based out of the Job’s home and others that were involved in the early days of the personal computer revolution. It was a gathering that, as long as my brain is functioning, I will never forgot. During this event, I learned several little stories and will share them in the coming days on this blog. Here is the first story.

While several of us were admiring the original Apple 1 that will be available to visitors to the museum to use, we discussed how it was being booted with the museum staff. Inevitably, the topic turned to how WOZ used to enter the 4K of BASIC object code by typing hex codes using the Apple 1 monitor. Several of the people there, said they witnessed him do it, and confirmed his amazing prowess at data entry through a keyboard.

Let me tell you, when I first built an Apple 1 clone, I tried to replicate the feat and gave up after screwing up a few hundred bytes worth of input. This was so difficult for me, that I found it hard to believe that it could be done. At the time, I sent an email directly to Woz to ask him about it. He responded that he did it all the time.

I can’t find any blog post that reported this exchange. I may have made one or perhaps, I was so dubious, that I decided to file the whole episode away. Anyway, hearing directly from a couple of eye witnesses has eliminated any remaining doubt and I’m rectifying any omissions in faith by making this post.

I can’t remember hearing about anyone else achieving this, but assume it’s possible. I’ll bet it’s not something that anyone else has done repeatedly. This is a difficult feat, and the fact that WOZ did it repeatadly makes it simply amazing.

A few days ago, I was searching through my small personal archive of Apple II floppy disk images, looking for an Apple II clone of Colosal Cave. As fate would have it, among those images, I ran across a program called “THEGREATAMERICANPROB.MACHINE”. Vaguely recalling it being a fun program from the “old” days, I started up an Apple II emulator, loaded the DSK image and ran the program. Here is a screen capture

GREATAMERICANPROB.MACHINE

and a movie of the program in action.

GreatAmericanProbMachine

Just as I sort of remembered, it was a pretty cute Apple II low res color graphic animation. However, when the credits rolled, I discovered something totally unexpected. It was written by none other than Bruce Tognazzini. Tog, as he is now known, is now a respected authority on user interface design.

Having had a brief email interaction with Tog a few years ago, and knowing he was quite approachable, I decided to send him a message. I let him know that this old work wasn’t forgotten. I figured that he would appreciate that. The response I recieved, had some quite unexpected news. Here is Tog’s reply.

Thanks. It was when Steve Jobs saw that program that he decided to hire me. It was the first ever full-screen animation done on the Apple II.

I sent him another message thanking him for his reply and asking him if he minded if I shared it on my blog. He responded with more details about how “THEGREATAMERICANPROBMACHINE” helped get him hired at Apple.

Not a problem. Specifically, I took a piece of code I’d written that added a new command to Integer BASIC down to Apple to show Steve. After selling him on that, he asked me what else I had done. I showed him the Probability Machine, throwing it up on Apple’s large-screen Advent projector. He got really excited, left the room, and gathered up everyone he could find in the building. (Apple was still all in a single building in those days.) I was quite surprised it caused so much excitement; I had no idea I’d pulled off something that, at the time, was a breakthrough. A week or so later, Jef Raskin called me up and said that Steve thought we should talk. I assumed he was going to want to buy some more of my software. It turned out, he and Steve wanted me,

-tog

After I received the original snap shot of John Draper’s Apple II, I asked for and received better images. Here is one of them, showing the unusual Apple II memory arrangement.

Crunch’s Memory

If you look closely, you will notice that all the memory banks are double stacked, largely with Signetics 2660 chips. These chips are 4Kx1, compatible with 4096s. This gives this system 24K of memory in 6 banks of 4K on each bank. Though I’ve seen double stacked memory on other systems, occassionally even on production boards, I’ve never seen this on any Apple II. Everyone else, managed to find 16Kx1 DRAMs and used those to expand their systems memmory. Don’t get me wrong, 16K memory chips were not cheap, especially in the early days of the Apple II. In fact for a long time, I ran my original Apple II with 2 banks of 16K and 1 bank of 4K for a total of 36K, which is all I could afford. I do believe John Draper’s approach is truly a unique solution to expanding memory for the Apple II.

What is more remarkable is this article, where John Draper, Capt. Crunch talks about his Apple II.

http://www.webcrunchers.com/crunch/Play/comp_rev/charlie.html

John mentions his Apple II memory configuration in the second paragraph, “My apple used the cheaper 4k rams and I piggy backed them to get 24k of ram.”

At some point, I plan on reviewing the wiring to see exactly how John wired up the 6 banks of memory.

I have more information on this system to post in later blog entries.