Ghosts in the rom

damian2000 13 years ago |

According to this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/damianward/3300112470/

"The ROM used only 89 KB of the available 256 KB. So to fill the chip, Apple put the photos of the development team into the ROM. To see these photos, press the debug button then type: G 41D89A"

mechanical_fish 13 years ago | |

Yes, I remember doing this circa 1990, now. There's some neuron in my brain that recognizes that address.

Thanks for looking that up.

daeken 13 years ago |

If you're interested in this sort of digital archaeology, check out The Cutting Room Floor: http://tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor It's focused on unearthing this sort of thing in games.

There's also a lot of this sort of thing on http://pagetable.com

voltagex_ 13 years ago | |

pagetable.net and www.pagetable.net don't seem to resolve.

    <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> pagetable.net
    ;; global options: +cmd
    ;; Got answer:
    ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 32690
    ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1,     ADDITIONAL: 0

    ;; QUESTION SECTION:
    ;pagetable.net.                 IN      A

daeken 13 years ago | | |

Sorry, fixed; it's pagetable.com.

shashwatak 13 years ago |

It blows my mind that those photos was taken over a quarter century ago, hidden by some playful programmers, and are only now unearthed by an entirely different generation of playful programmers. Cool stuff.

megablast 13 years ago | |

I am pretty sure this is not the first time it has been shown.

dalke 13 years ago | | |

Indeed, it's been known for a long time.

joezydeco 13 years ago | | |

Here's an archived Usenet post with a load of PC easter eggs. It's twenty years old. The Mac SE team picture is listed in here.

http://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/Easter-Eggs

DanBC 13 years ago |

See also the "stolen from Apple" icon hidden in the rom for the first Mac.

(http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...)

josteink 13 years ago | |

Funny how Apple seems to endorse theft when they are doing it, but somehow sees it as wrong if others are taking stuff from them.

Pot calling kettle evidently goes a long way back as far as Apple is concerned.

joezydeco 13 years ago | | |

Direct copying of a computer's firmware is a way different type of "theft" than what you are alluding to.

rprasad 13 years ago | | |

No, it's really not, unless you are arguing that what was copied from Apple (designs) is not something that should be subject to protection.

tedunangst 13 years ago | | |

Doesn't your conclusion need an example of long way back Apple being a pot?

joezydeco 13 years ago |

Back in the heyday of arcade video games, a lot of manufacturers would hide things like this in the code to prevent counterfeiting of the games. PC boards are easy to copy (the schematics were in the service manual), but counterfeiters would just duplicate the ROMs and change a few strings or sprites to give the appearance of a new game. The Easter eggs were triggerable by a certain sequence of moves to show the real authors of the code on-screen.

Here's one example: http://www.digitpress.com/eastereggs/arcaderobotron.htm

threeio 13 years ago |

They were known about back in the day as well.. we all saw them because of fantastic mac shareware mags, macworld, etc.. they just haven't been seen in a while.

mgunes 13 years ago |

Previously: "The Joy of Dumping" -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4150668

cpeterso 13 years ago |

Where's Steve?

mechanical_fish 13 years ago | |

In 1986? Buying Pixar and founding NeXT. He had been fired by Apple in 1985.

damian2000 13 years ago | |

Where's Woz?

vidarh 13 years ago | | |

No idea if he's in any of the pics, but wouldn't be surprising if he isn't. Woz wasn't part of the Mac team, and was pretty much only an Apple employee on paper at the point those photos were taken.

thornofmight 13 years ago | | |

Reading Steve Job's biography right now, and it was really surprising to me how little (almost insignificant) of a role Woz played at Apple after the first couple years there.