My web site doesn’t draw the number of hits that many more popular sites do, but my site occasionally attracts some emails that turn into very interesting stories. The discovery of John Draper’s Apple II is one of them, and I need to put together a few more posts in order to describe his system and it’s history. However, right on the heels of the discovery of Draper’s Apple II, another very interesting system has just surfaced which is housed in this enclosure.

Apple Case

The story is that it was taken out of Steve Jobs office by Apple employee and manufacturing engineer, Don Hutmacher, after Steve was fired in the mid 80s. The story goes that Don was allowed by his boss to go into Steve Job’s office take anything that was left over. It had been picked clean by the time that he got there. He noticed this computer and a bag of Starbucks coffee, and that is how he ended up with it.

More to come…

This update is way past due, I had knowledge of some of the new units since last fall. Three new Apple 1’s are listed. The most interesting is number 1-0052,owned by James Coble. His story seems to shatter the myth that the Byte Shop, not Apple, added the serial numbers on the units in the first batch. There were some issues with that story before, but this information seems to completely shatter it. I have a sent a query out to some experts to see if they can comment on what James has to say. Stay tuned for an update.

Another interesting note is that the unit that was sold on ebay is reported to be going to Germany. The world-wide market for Apple 1 continues to be stronger than the domestic US market. I think the Ford Museum purchase might have been an anomaly.

Lastly, I’m pretty skeptical about the report from the bay area about an Apple 1 being given to a recycler. That unit is not going to get mention in the registry until far more concrete details (like a picture) are revealed.

Apple 1 6502, cheat sheet, v.98

I fixed the definition of the ROL and ROR instructions.

One of the more popular programs that I’ve written is this 6502 memory test. One person using this test to checkout his Mimeo, recently discovered that it doesn’t work with his early white 6502. Turns out that that particular 6502 is a nice collectors piece, without a functioning ROR instruction. I used the ROR instruction at the end of the third test, so the program hangs when run on an early 6502 with the missing ROR functionality.

;
;
; all test 2 passes complete – prepase for test 3
;
LDA #$7F
BNE NX_TEST ;always branch

CHK_TEST3 ;floating zeros in progress or done
CPY #3
BNE CHK_TEST4
;
; pass of test 3 complete – 8 passes in all with 0 in each bit position
;
SEC
ROR TEST_PATRN ; rotate right – Carry to MSB, LSB to Carry
BCS NX_PASS2 ; keep going until zero bit reaches carry

I haven’t checked it, but I think the following code will accomplish the same basic test without using the ROR instruction.

;
;
; all test 2 passes complete – prepase for test 3
;
LDA #$FE
BNE NX_TEST ;always branch

CHK_TEST3 ;floating zeros in progress or done
CPY #3
BNE CHK_TEST4
;
; pass of test 3 complete – 8 passes in all with 0 in each bit position
;
SEC
ROL TEST_PATRN ; rotate left – MSB TO Carry, LSB = Carry
BCS NX_PASS2 ; keep going until zero bit reaches carry

I recently discovered that my 6502 cheat sheet has an egregious error. The ROL and ROR instructions move the Carry bit into the LSB and MSB (respectively), not the MSB and LSB. In other words the instructions are rotate through carry instructions.

I’m not sure how I managed to mess this one up or why it took so long for me to notice this or why no one else noticed it. Perhaps the functionality of these instructions are so well known that most people don’t need to refer to a cheat sheet to understand functionality. Clearly, I knew how they worked (or were supposed to work in the case of the early chips) when I wrote the 6502 memory test.

Apple 1 and Apple II programmer, Bob Bishop recently passed away. Though I didn’t know Bob Bishop, I did exchange a few emails with him in June of 2013. From the few emails I exchanged with him, I got the impression that Bob was a good guy, and I feel it’s unfortunate that I never got to meet him in person.

Back in June of 2013, while refining the Apple 1 Registry, I noticed that at one time, that Bob had an Apple 1. I sent him an email, asking if he still had his unit. Bob replied, saying that he had traded it in. This was about the time that Fred Hatfield’s Apple 1 was sold at auction. There was much in the press about Fred’s Apple 1, which included a letter from Jobs, offering a trade in deal. This was a deal which Fred had refused. Bob was a little concerned that the trade he made, wasn’t as good as what Fred and others were offered.

Here is the story of that trade in, in Bob’s words. The article he mentions, was a New York Times article that included some mention about how aggressively Apple pursued the Apple 1 trade in program.

When I read that article, I was a little upset (and said so on my weekly radio show) to discover that the company had “an aggressive trade-in program, offering Apple II’s and sometimes cash incentives in exchange for Apple-1’s.” When I wanted to do MY trade-in, I had to go to apple and ask THEM if they would be willing to do it. They said YES… but only if I paid THEM some additional money! But I guess that was before they had fully started their trade-in program. So it may be that I have the dubious distinction of having been the very first person to trade-in my Apple-I for an Apple-II (since the serial no. of the Apple-II that I got was 0013). 🙂

But now that you’ve showed me the original letter from Fred, It looks like the NY Times article may have gotten their information a little mixed up. According to the letter, it appears that Fred had to pay THEM the $400 — and not the other way around (just as in my case).

I don’t remember exactly how much I had to pay when I made my trade-in, but I think it was about the same amount ($400). And I made the trade-in around late June of 1977, but Apple didn’t ship the computer to me until July. (I remember that they said it would be delivered to my home in the next few days. So on July third, I sat around anxiously waiting for delivey. The next day was going to be the Fourth of July, and if it didn’t come today, I would have to wait two more days to get it! Well, it didn’t come… so I had a very miserable Fourth of July that year. But around 10AM on July fifth, it finally arrived! 🙂

– Bob –

By the way, surviving evidence indicates that though Apple 1 trade ins occurred, it wasn’t a real great deal. Several surviving Apple 1’s that came through the hands of early Apple employees, were probably trade-in’s, but there aren’t that many of them. The only person that I know of, that actually acknowledged that he traded in an Apple 1, was Bob Bishop.