Ghosts in the ROM (2012)

kalleboo 1 year ago |

I checked out the comments where some of the original engineers who put this into the ROM commented. Right smack in the middle is a comment from Terry A Davis as well. Damn.

Aerbil313 1 year ago | |

Wow. I didn't know he died in 2018 either. Always thought he was from pre-2000s, maybe it's because I thought nobody can create an OS this recently.

hackmiester 1 year ago | | |

That's why people found his work so amazing.

HeckFeck 1 year ago | |

Surreal indeed. Here he is: https://www.nycresistor.com/2012/08/21/ghosts-in-the-rom/com...

As early as 2012 he was sharing the gospel of what was to become TempleOS.

3abiton 1 year ago | | |

Terry Davis is an easter egg by himself.

sircastor 1 year ago |

I don't remember how I learned it, but back when my family had a IIci I remember there was a startup key command you could press to display an image of the developers in the ROM. I kind of miss the days when that sort of thing was done.

spogbiper 1 year ago | |

similar on my childhood radio shack computer - https://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/CoCo3_Easter_Egg

ASalazarMX 1 year ago | | |

As a kid I didn't have Internet yet, but somehow had a CoCo3. Many times I pressed Ctrl+Alt+Reset and wondered what was the purpose of this image, I even made a BASIC program to dump it on tape from the ROM. Didn't learn the answer to that mystery for many years.

wkjagt 1 year ago | |

Computers were still something special back then. I miss that too.

wslh 1 year ago | |

In the Commodore Amiga you can turn off and on the power light. Weird for these times.

kevindamm 1 year ago | | |

On the Sega Master System there was an entire game in the ROM -- Snail Maze (the walls and floor reminiscent of the company's logo). Pressing up-left and both buttons while turning on the console with no cartridge in the slot would start the game.

kalleboo 1 year ago | | |

On the Macintosh Classic, there's a whole OS boot disk image in ROM that can be activated by booting with the keys "command option X O" held down (X-O was the code name for the machine). These are the remains of a prototype for making a diskless terminal Macintosh. It comes in handy if you've hosed your boot disk somehow.

unwind 1 year ago | | |

That is because the power indicator LED also serves as an indicator of the audio low-pass filter. Rather quirky, yes.

MontagFTB 1 year ago |

Lots of great 90s Apple Easter Eggs are listed here (the PDF): https://www.macintoshrepository.org/226-apple-easter-eggs

My favorite one is the story of an engineer who hid an image of Paula Abdul on a CD-ROM (another version I heard was a ROM chip) without anyone’s knowledge. When the image was finally discovered production had already begun, making for a very expensive Easter egg to remove.

kevindamm 1 year ago | |

I think perhaps the best side effect of the OSS movement is that software developers now are more likely to consider the impact of licensing.

dang 1 year ago |

Discussed at the time (of the article):

Ghosts in the rom - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4416032 - Aug 2012 (22 comments)

whoopdedo 1 year ago |

The resource type 'SERD' is a driver for the SCC IO processor.

https://archive.org/details/SWIMDesignDocs/IOP%20serial%20dr...

grvbck 1 year ago |

This brings back fond memories of the various Blue Meanies easter eggs in System 7.0.1 on my first Mac (actually my dad's LC).

"Help! Help! We're being held prisoner in a system software factory!"

duskwuff 1 year ago | |

System 7.0: "Help! Help! We're being held prisoner in a system software factory!"

System 7.1: "Help! Help! We're still being held prisoner in a system software factory!"

System 7.5: "Help! Help! He's STILL being held prisoner in a system software factory!"

System 7.5.3: "Mercenaries hit the software factory and freed the prisoners."

082349872349872 1 year ago | |

!ɿɘƨwoɿd dɘw ɒ ni bɘnoƨiɿqmi nɘɘd ɘv'I !qlɘH

joezydeco 1 year ago |

I always got a chuckle out of the guy in sunglasses in the second image. It looks like it was hand-edited to make the shades completely black.

jMyles 1 year ago |

So uhhh... does anyone know all the people? I'd love to know each person's nane.

officeplant 1 year ago | |

Some links in the comments from ex-engineers and people who knew about the easter egg apparently documented for over a decade when this was published.

>https://www.nycresistor.com/2012/08/21/ghosts-in-the-rom/com...

>https://discussions.apple.com/thread/122367?sortBy=best