Thursday, November 9, 2023

Thursday, July 20, 2023

 How Wozmon works  (Ben Eater)

How the Apple-1 Monitor works

Wednesday, March 29, 2023

 Question: what were the white stickers with a number on them on the apple 1 computer?


ChatGPT Answer:  


The white stickers with a number on them that were found on some Apple 1 computers were likely inventory labels used by the Byte Shop, the first retailer to sell the Apple 1. When the Apple 1 was first sold in 1976, it was sold as a kit that had to be assembled by the buyer. The Byte Shop, which was located in Mountain View, California, purchased the first 50 Apple 1 computers from Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak for $500 each, and then sold them to customers for $666.66.

It's believed that the white stickers with a number on them were used by the Byte Shop to keep track of their inventory and sales, and to match the individual boards with their corresponding cases and manuals. The exact meaning of the numbers on the stickers is not known, but it's believed that they may have represented the order in which the computers were sold or the date they were received by the Byte Shop.

Today, Apple 1 computers are rare and highly sought after by collectors, and the presence of the white stickers can add to the historical significance and provenance of a particular machine.

Question:  if the byte shop purchased 50, why are some of the numbers on the stickers higher than 50, for example, 86?

ChatGPT Answer:  You are correct that the Byte Shop initially purchased 50 Apple 1 computers from Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. However, it's possible that they continued to purchase more Apple 1 computers directly from Apple or from other sources after the initial 50 were sold.

It's also worth noting that some Apple 1 computers were sold as partially assembled or unassembled kits, which may have been numbered separately from the fully assembled computers. Additionally, some of the Apple 1 computers were sold to other retailers, and it's possible that they also used inventory stickers or labels.

So, while the exact details may not be known, it's likely that the white stickers with numbers higher than 50 were used to track inventory and sales of Apple 1 computers beyond the initial batch sold to the Byte Shop.




Friday, March 3, 2023

 


Thursday, February 23, 2023

 Apple-1 for sale - this one was not in the registry.  Rare hand-written documents.

video

More info at Mac Rumors




Credit: Fred McCann

Thursday, December 1, 2022

 Up for auction again is #78


See here


Update: Sold for for $442,118




credit: Fred McCann


 "Apple Computer A"  prototype

Broken in half / pirated chips.  More info at macrumors.com

images here


Update:   Sold For: $677,196 USD





Saturday, June 11, 2022

 Another Apple 1 for sale on ebay -  Check it out here.

UPDATE:  sold for     $340,100.00 USD  112 bids ]
















Tuesday, November 9, 2021

 Apple-1 sold today for 400,000 USD

check it out here

thanks to Fred McCann for pointing this out.







Thursday, August 19, 2021

 Apple 1 sold today -






Thanks to Fred McCann




Thursday, September 24, 2020

Home Brew Computer Club Newsletter

Obtained from Steve Wozniak's website 





Apple-1 with wooden case and monitor For sale on ebay

US $1,500,000.00 Apple-1 on sale - ebay














Sunday, May 26, 2019

Thursday, August 23, 2018

New Apple-1 computer headed towards the auction block.

Read about it here.




UPDATE 9/25/18 :  Sold for $374,500 USD

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Envelope provided by John Gott shows address from 1973 - Dial-a-Joke



John Gott has asked that this image NOT be distributed/posted on any other site or publication.  Thank you for respecting his request - he was gracious enough to go through the effort to determine the address, based on what he could find, and share this great piece of history with us.  Thank you John Gott!

Friday, June 23, 2017

UPDATE: Where was the first hand-wired Apple 1 designed / built?

I heard from John Gott today - John was able to dig up a letter from Steve Wozniak from 1973.  So, here's a bit more clarification from Woz, as John Gott's letter from Woz, shows the address as Apt. #16D  (not yet #16K).

And now we know *why* Woz moved.  :)

Villa Serra Apartments
20800 Homestead Rd
Cupertino, CA 95014
#16D

(408) 255-6666

Per Woz:

I lived in 2 apartments in that complex.

The first one was on the ground floor and the 2nd was in a different building on an upstairs floor.

I created my “Crazy Polak” business cards while living in the first apartment, downstairs.

Most of the Apple design stuff took place there but some took place after I moved.

One reason for moving was that a loose pet mouse, which I thought was a male, turned out to be female and I wound up with a dozen mice and a horrible allergy with asthma and I was told that moving was my only hope.

The building I moved to may have had my apartment as some other number - K. Or maybe I stayed in the same building after all. Hard to remember. But the Apple work was split between the 2 apartments, and I think most of it was done in 16D now.

ʞɐıuzoʍ ǝʌǝʇs 

Saturday, May 20, 2017

Saturday, May 13, 2017

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Milestone-Proposal:Introduction of the Apple I Computer: 1976

I've been corresponding with Brian Berg, who was involved in overseeing the milestone-proposals for the first Mac, the Apple 1, and the Apple II.

See the milestone-proposal document for the Apple I here.


Brian Berg has been a data storage technologist for over 30 years through his Berg Software Design consultancy. His current specialty is flash memory as used in consumer electronics and enterprise applications, and he works extensively with patents and intellectual property. Brian is Technical Chair of Flash Memory Summit, and he has organized, chaired and spoken at over 100 technology conferences and events including at the Computer History Museum.

Brian has a long record as an IEEE officer and volunteer in the Santa Clara Valley Section, including as Section Chair as well as Chair of the IEEE Consultants’ Network of Silicon Valley. As IEEE Milestone Coordinator for the western US, he has secured Milestones for the EEPROM/Flash Memory, the Apple Macintosh and SHAKEY, and he helped oversee Milestones for CP/M, Moore’s Law, and the Apple I and II. He is a CHM Core Member, has a Bachelors in Mathematics from Pacific Lutheran University, and has been a Computer Engineering graduate student at Stanford University.

Monday, May 8, 2017

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

I owe great gratitude to the following people who have helped me in my research, especially Steve Wozniak, who has painstakingly taken the time to answer my questions over the years.

If you have contributed, and you are not on the list, please contact me - John Calande, or comment on this post.

Steve Wozniak  (Woz) - early history in detail, and providing me with contact info with the early Apple engineers, and others.
Steve Jobs - early history
Daniel Kottke - early history
Mike Willegal - hardware hacking, late night debugging and history. Mike also had produced a run of beautiful Apple 1 clone PCB/Kits - known as the "Mimeo 1", and also cloned my Datanetics keyboard. Thanks Mike!
Corey Cohen - hardware hacking and history
Steve Galby - hardware hacking - created the first clone - from "Obtronix"
Allen Baum - early history
Randy Wigginton - early history
Alice Robertson - (Wozs' former wife) early history
Brian Berg (IEEE) - early history - info on Hewlett Packard, where Woz worked, and informed me of the Milestone-Proposals for the Apple 1.
Bill Fernandez - early history
Dan Sokol - early history
John Draper - early history
Stan Mintz - early history
John Gott - early history, verification of apt. #16D as Steve Woz's first apt.
Provided image of Dial-a-Joke envelope with address, from July 14, 1973.
Wendell Sander - early history, hardware hacking, and providing me with his design for the keyboard interface which I used on all 3 of my clones.  Wendell designed the Apple III, and also worked closely with Woz on the Apple II.
Fred McCann - for providing links to current articles on early history (many still incorrect)
Lisa Reynolds Marshall - my former wife, and mother of my 2 beautiful children, who put up with all of my late night hacking

I have made some great friends, and wonderful acquaintances along the way.
Thank you all so much!

Saturday, May 6, 2017


This is a video from some of the guys that started the Homebrew Compuer Club.  The club was started on March 5, 1975, but this date is questionable, as mentioned in the video.

(Computer History.org)
Let's take a closer look where Steve Wozniak designed, built and hand-wired the VERY FIRST Apple-1.

Villa Serra Apartments
20800 Homestead Rd, Apt 16K
Cupertino, CA 95014
Phone number(408) 257-1060

When Steve Wozniak lived in the apartments at the above address, the name of the complex was known as:

Villa Serra Apartments

Apparently, the complex had an overhaul, and was later renamed:

The Markham Apartments





I asked Woz if he remembered the apartment number, and this is his response:

I don’t remember the apartment number.

I had a lower apartment early on at that complex but very soon moved to an upstairs one…something like 22L or 24L I think but I have no reason to think that, especially the number. I might be able to find the exact apartment location in person.

I’d say that maybe half of the design and conception and most of the software work was done in that apartment, but the real prototype construction was done in my cubicle at HP, mostly at night. I’d go home from work, eat a tv-dinner, watch Star Trek, and often head back to the building. I sometimes worked on HP stuff at night but usually my own fun constructions.

There are people who may have old address books with my apartment number. I have too many artifacts in too much storage to find it myself, although I’ll keep an eye out. You might also consider HP records. The APD division is now in Corvalliis, Oregon.

Actually, I may have been in the upstairs apartment at first and then moved. I do remember that it was the upstairs apartment where I ran at least part of dial-a-joke, which was ahead of the Apple stuff.

ʞɐıuzoʍ ǝʌǝʇs 


Per Brian Berg (IEEE):
BTW, it would be nice to add that the HP facility to which Woz refers is the one on Pruneridge Ave in Cupertino - where Apple Park is now, interestingly!


This is the VERY FIRST Apple-1 ever built, in Steve Wozniak's apartment, and after hours at HP.  It is hand-wired, and soldered underneath.  The wooden case was built by Randy Wigginton's father.  I asked Woz where this computer is, he said it may be in storage.  At one point it was on display, I believe at Apple Computer, Inc.


UPDATE:  Sun May 7, 2017 - Randy Wigginton's memory recollects that the Apple-1 was built in apartment #16K, on the second floor:

Hi John,

Yeah, I would know it if I went there in person; it might be 16K, for some reason that feels right.  I do know that his phone number back then was 408-255-6666. When he built the Apple I he was in an upstairs apartment; I never visited him in a downstairs apartment.  He drove the worst car in the world - a Fiat :)
Next time I am down that way I will drive to the complex and take a look - I'm curious myself now.
Randy

After informing Woz, here's his response:

WOW

16K feels very correct to me…strong enough that I’m very sure it’s right. 2nd floor.
ʞɐıuzoʍ ǝʌǝʇs 

I checked the above number 255-6666 and verified that this was the number that Woz asked for, for his dial-a-joke biz  (reference, page 130, "iWoz" book, published in 2006).

Address location UPDATE June 23, 2017:  http://apple1computer.blogspot.com/2017/06/update-where-was-first-hand-wired-apple.html




Micro Switch Keyboard used on the Apple-1
(image obtained from Time.com)



Friday, May 5, 2017

Wow!  This is the first 2519B shift register from Signetics I've ever seen on ebay (2 available) $110 And all of us who have had to shop around know that they are very hard to find!
Date code 1974.  (I found 11 in Germany and had to purchase the whole tube!)

By the way - the seller is the same guy I purchased my Datanetics keyboard  from years ago (serial number 10, stamped May 1976)   ( A few years ago, Mike Willegal cloned my keyboard I don't know if Mike has any kits left - from what I recall he had a relatively small production run)  Anyway, the seller generally has pretty fair prices - but he knows this chip is rare.

This one looks to be plastic, I believe mine are ceramic, I'd have to double check.




And there's another one on ebay here  (plastic) - 3 available, $120 each



Interview with Steve Wozniak at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. (January 11, 2011)


Thursday, May 4, 2017

 "Steve Jobs’ custom Apple I and other historic machines are on display at Seattle museum
Long before the iPhone or even the Mac, Apple was a handful of people working in an industry that was only just beginning to take the idea of personal computing seriously. In the earliest days of those early days, Steves Wozniak and Jobs made their first device together: the Apple I. Few of these were sold, and fewer still survive — but the Living Computers museum in Seattle managed to get three. And one of them was Jobs’ personal machine.
Paul Allen, the museum’s founder and patron, has caused to be assembled quite an impressive collection of devices from Apple’s history, many of which have been restored to working condition. The public will be able to tinker with a NeXT Cube as well as early Macs, but the pride and joy of the collection must be the Apple Is.
The new exhibit, which highlights the collaboration and competition between Apple and Microsoft over the years as the companies grew, is open today.
The Apple I, you may or may not remember, wasn’t much of a hit. Only 200 were made — by hand — and it wasn’t long before the company put its hopes in the Apple II, which would go on to be more popular by far. One of the Is, however, Jobs kept in his office as a demo machine for industry people.
When Jobs left in 1985 he left in a hurry, and this I was left behind on a shelf. Don Hutmacher, one of the company’s first employees, grabbed it and it stayed in his possession until he passed away last year. His wife generously allowed the museum to take care of it, and you can imagine their gratitude.
The team had their suspicious, but a tag inside the metal chassis — and the fact that it had a chassis at all, since Apple Is came just as boards — suggested it was more than a rare Apple I; it was the rarest. It’s signed “BF,” which would have been employee number one, Bill Fernandez. This was definitely, the team decided, Jobs’ custom machine.
Because the Apple I didn’t have a ROM, and Jobs didn’t want to have to program it from scratch any time someone wanted to see it in action, he had a custom EPROM attached to it that initialized the computer with BASIC when it started up. Its RAM, the engineering team suspects, was also augmented so it didn’t run out and crash during the demo.

The team at the museum read the contents of this EPROM and used it to set up a second, less historic Apple I. That one, which has had its power components modified to be a little less prone to catching fire or warping the circuit board, will now be available in this primed state for anyone to play with. Yes, anyone — the only operational Apple I on the planet right now, and your kid can type “butts” on it with fingers still greasy from the sandwich they got across the street.
That’s the mission of the museum, though: the Apple I, along with dozens of other ancient computers, from Altairs to mainframes from the 60’s, are deliberately there to be touched and, if not truly understood (few kids know BASIC these days), at least experienced.
Ahead of the exhibit’s opening, a small reunion was held for a handful of people who had a hand in the early days of Apple, Microsoft, and the home computer industry. Steve Wozniak and Paul Allen met — for the first time, amazingly — and chatted over an Apple II. And it wasn’t until someone took stock of the situation that they realized that the entire original team that built the Apple I in Steve Jobs’ garage — minus the departed Steve — were together again for the first time in decades:
The museum has also been working with the University of Washington to compile an oral history of this era of computing, and many of the people who figured in the creation of the Apple I.
Now that the exhibit is open, feel free to drop by the museum and touch a few pieces of computing history — though you may need to brush up on your BASIC."

Notified of this article by Fred McCann

==========================================
 (per John Calande)- Unfortunately, this article is plastered all over the internet now.  Anyway, there are some good pics here  (Living Computer Museum + Labs) I'm extremely surprised that the museum is going to allow the general public to play with such a delicate piece of Apple history.  This computer belongs in the Smithsonian.

Some of us know that parts of the above article are completely false. I've done my best on my BLOG to correct false statements about about Apple history by going directly to the horses mouth (Woz), yet false information continues to appear, to this day, as above.

1. This is not the only original, functional Apple-1 in existence.  After checking the Living Computers website, I think what the author meant to say, the only functional Apple-1 that would be available for use by the general public. 

2. Apple-1 PCB assembly that took place in Steve Jobs' garage - Per Woz:

"The Apple I boards were manufactured and populated with components (sockets for the chips) and wave soldered at some company in Santa Clara. Those boards were driven to the house, and later the garage, where we inserted the chips and tested them. We did no soldering there.



3. The very first hand-wired Apple-1, per Woz:
My development work was all done in my apartment in the Villa Serra complex on Homestead Road, between Mary and Stelling. Also, much was done in my cubicle at HP's calculator division (APD) which was then in Cupertino, on Pruneridge Avenue (19925?) slightly East of Wolfe Road."


 At some point, Woz told me that Steve Jobs didn't know about the Apple-1 until after Woz started his design for the Apple II

3. I didn't know that an EPROM existed for an Apple-1 until seeing this article, I thought I was the first one in the world to design and build a peripheral card for The BASIC. My schematic and pics are here on my BLOG, and I have a video to show that it works.

Here is the schematic for my design, and other info (note that I found a bug in one of the BASIC files, so be careful which file you download if you are going to take on this project) 


4. The events that took place in Steve Jobs' garage were "stuffing" the printed circuit boards with chips, and debugging bad boards - according to Woz, the most common problem was bent pins.



Monday, January 2, 2017


I donated my best Apple-1 replica to the University of Connecticut, School of Engineering where I used work.  I used very hard to find (and expensive!) gold and ceramic chips to get as close as possible to the original Apple-1.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Apple WOZPACK book reproduction.

Reproduction of the book containing Woz's hand written notes and other technical stuff, from the Apple-1 and Apple II days.


Assembled Apple-1 clone for sale

Clone of the "NTI" run.
For sale - 2,500.00 USD

Friday, April 4, 2014

Apple 1 blog update

Hi Everyone,

Just to let everyone know, I have been in transition lately - relocating, exploring new work options, etc.  I will pick up again when I get settled.

John

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Steve Job's "childhood" home to become Historic Designation (and comments from Woz)

"The Silicon Valley home where Apple co-founder Steve Jobs grew up and built some of his first computers is now on the city's list of historic properties.
The historical commission in the city of Los Altos voted unanimously for the historic designation on Monday night, the Palo Alto Daily News reported. Any proposed renovations to the modest, ranch-style home now require additional review.
The home, where Jobs and his foster parents moved in 1968, is currently owned by Patricia Jobs, Steve Jobs' sister. The commission didn't need her permission for the designation, although she could appeal it to the city council.
Zachary Dahl, a senior planner with the city, said Patricia Jobs requested corrections to the city's evaluation of the property, but then didn't respond when it was sent to her for review.
"So I'm assuming that was an affirmative because I have had multiple communications with her over the past several weeks," Dahl said.
Steve Jobs, with help from his sister and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, built the first 100 Apple 1 computers at the home, according to the city's evaluation. Fifty were sold to a shop in neighboring Mountain View for $500 each.
Steve Jobs also wooed some of Apple's first investors and in 1976, established the first partnership for Apple at the home. The company later relocated to nearby Cupertino."
© 2013 The Associated Press.

Image Credit - Mercury News. 




John's comment: 

A snip of the above is false --  the computer(s) were designed and built by Steve Wozniak in his apartment, not far away.  They were not designed and built by Woz and Jobs... Woz did this ON HIS OWN.

After Printed Circuit Boards were fabricated (in 2 runs), based on Steve Wozniaks hand-wired design (after several iterations); Legend holds that Patricia, and a couple of her friends were paid $1.00 per board, to "stuff" components, in the "garage".   Jobs and Woz would then test each board, and pull components and re-stuff when pins were bent.

"I'd get yelled at if I bent a prong," Patricia Jobs told The Daily News in an interview last month.
(source, Mercury News, Sept 2013)

  So this whole bit, about Job's designing and building the Apple-1 in the garage, is completely FALSE.   Steve Wozniak did this on his own.  The prefabricated printed circuit boards (PCBs) were then stuffed with components, by Jobs, sis, and friends, in the "garage", afterwards.


So I pinged the Woz, and here is what he had to say:

Thanks.

In fact, both the Apple I and Apple ][ had been created and shown off at the Homebrew computer club before Steve Jobs knew they existed. I had given the Apple I design away for free to everyone there. At least one other club member had built one too.

No design ever took place in the garage. Nor did the manufacturing. The business took place in Steve Jobs’ bedroom, at least in the early days. He got parts and sales and publicity on his phone.

ʞɐıuzoʍ ǝʌǝʇs 

tv is wake zone

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

6800 Info from the Woz per Lionel Theunissen's Rig up and running the 6800

Woz's comments on Lionel Theunissen's A-1 rig running the 6800 cpu --



"I designed the computer for the 6800. The Apple I board even has an area for a dozen parts labelled "for 6800"…it also had to have these parts for the 6501, which was a barely cheaper version of the 6502. What these parts did was supply a faster harder clock signal to the chip. Otherwise, the pinouts of the 6800 and 6052 were compatible.

I could buy a 6800 for $40 as an HP employee. That's why I designed the computer for it. Then the 6502 got introduced for $25 ($20 for the 6501). I switched because it was better (in my judgment, with more addressing modes) and cheaper.

The Apple I ran on a 256-byte program, burned into 2 PROMs. We didn't have much memory density back then for these programmable chips. All you'd have have to do is to read my program (given away publicly) with the comments, and translate it to 6800 code. Tight, but doable.

The cassette board, for using a cassette tape drive to store programs, had a 256-byte program of its own on the board. In this case it was in one chip, as I recall. That too would have to be converted to 6800 language for a more complete project.

The next step would be to find some public domain 6800 BASIC and convert it to run in the memory addresses of this computer.


All-in-all, not too hard. But it's a special project worthy of commendation."

ʞɐıuzoʍ ǝʌǝʇs 

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Another white ceramic 6502 and an 6820


Wow!  you can get both the 6502 and 6802s AMI for just $2500.00 USD (Again, amazingly enough, free shipping [economy])

6502 = 1975 Date Code
6820 = 1976 Date Code

Pretty cool (but I have to wonder if they are still functional)


6502 CPU white ceramic (1976 Date Code)



Ebay   Only 1250.00 USD  (Or best offer, and who can beat "Free Shipping!!!!")