Folklore.org: Scrooge McDuck
Burrell Smith favored to do intensive design work over the Christmas break, so the very first prototype of the very first Macintosh sprung to life early within the first month of the brand new decade, in January 1980. It wasn’t actually a stand-alone laptop but, because the prototype resided on an Apple II peripheral card, but it surely already contained the important {hardware} components of Jef Raskin’s Macintosh dream: a Motorola 6809E microprocessor, 64K of reminiscence, and a 256 by 256 bit-mapped graphic body buffer, which was hooked as much as a cute, tiny 7 inch black and white show. Burrell used the Apple II host to poke values into the reminiscence of the prototype, so he might initialize the management registers and run small packages with the 6809.
I went out to lunch with Burrell just a few weeks later and, understanding my appreciation for Woz-like {hardware} hacks, he defined the loopy manner that he contrived for the Apple II to speak with the prototype. He did not need to waste time designing and wiring up {hardware} to synchronize the reminiscence of the 2 machines, since that would not be wanted by the actual product. As an alternative, he delegated the reminiscence synchronization to the software program, requiring the Apple II to hit a particular reminiscence tackle to inform the prototype what number of microseconds later to seize knowledge off of the widespread knowledge bus. It was bizarre sufficient to make me excited about seeing if it actually labored.
By now, Burrell thought that he had the graphics working correctly, however he wasn’t actually positive; he nonetheless wanted to put in writing some software program to attempt it out. I instructed him that I might look into it once I had a while. He gave me a duplicate of a handwritten web page that contained the magic addresses that I might have to make use of, hoping that I might get round to it quickly.
I used to be used to coming again to the lab at Apple after dinner, to see if something attention-grabbing was occurring and dealing on varied extra-curricular initiatives. I had some spare time that evening, so I obtained out Burrell’s directions and wrote an Apple II (6502) meeting language routine to do the mandatory bit-twiddling to switch no matter was on the Apple II’s hi-res graphic show to the Mac prototype’s frame-buffer, utilizing Burrell’s uncommon synchronization scheme.
One in all my current aspect initiatives concerned utilizing Woz’s new, one-to-one interleave floppy disk routines to make very quick slideshow disks on the Apple II. I had simply made one filled with Disney cartoon characters, that have been scanned by Bob Bishop, one of many early Apple software program magicians. Bob adored the work of Carl Barks, the Disney artist who specialised in Donald Duck, and he had scanned dozens of Barks’ Donald Duck photos for the Apple II. I chosen a picture of Scrooge McDuck sitting on high of an enormous pile of cash luggage, blithely taking part in his fiddle, with a giant grin on his beak. I am unsure why I picked that one, but it surely appeared to be applicable for some purpose.
Regardless that it was beginning to get late, I used to be dying to see if my routine was working correctly, and it could be very cool to shock Burrell when he got here within the subsequent day with an in depth picture on the prototype show. However once I went to attempt it, I observed that Burrell’s Apple did not have a disk controller card, so there was no technique to load my program. Rattling! I could not shut the pc right down to insert the cardboard, as a result of I did not know reinitialize the Macintosh board after power-up; Burrell hadn’t left the magic incantation for that. I believed I used to be caught, and must wait till Burrell got here in tomorrow.
The one different individual within the lab that night was Cliff Huston, who noticed the difficulty I used to be having. Cliff was one other early Apple worker, who was Dick Huston’s (the heroic programmer who wrote the 256-byte Apple II floppy disc boot ROM) older brother and an skilled, considerably cynical technician. I defined the scenario to him and was stunned when he began to smile.
Cliff instructed me that he might insert a disk controller card into Burrell’s Apple II with the ability nonetheless on, with out glitching it out, a feat that I believed was miraculous – you’d must be extremely fast and regular to not short-circuit any of the contacts when you have been inserting it, working the danger of burning out each the Apple II and the cardboard. However Cliff mentioned he’d executed it many occasions earlier than: all that was required was the arrogance that you possibly can really do it. So I crossed my fingers as he approached Burrell’s Apple like a samurai warrior, concentrating for just a few seconds earlier than holding his breath and slamming the disk card into the slot with a fast, stacatto thrust.
I might barely make myself look, however amazingly sufficient Burrell’s machine was nonetheless working, and the disk booted up so I might load the Scrooge McDuck picture and my new conversion routine. And much more suprising, my routine really labored the primary time, displaying a crisp rendition of Uncle Scrooge fiddling away on the Mac’s tiny monitor. The Apple II solely had 192 scan-lines, whereas the embryonic Macintosh had 256, so I had some further room on the backside the place I rendered the message “Hello Burrell!” in a nice-looking twenty-four level, proportional font.
By the point I got here within the subsequent morning, an excited Burrell had already confirmed the picture to everybody he might discover, however then he by accident reset the prototype someway, and did not know get the picture again on the display screen. I loaded it once more so he might present it to Tom Whitney, the engineering VP. I believe Jef was fairly happy to see his new laptop begin to come alive, however I do not assume he was very completely satisfied about me giving the demo, since he thought I used to be an excessive amount of of a hacker, and I wasn’t speculated to be concerned together with his pet undertaking.