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Ghosts in the rom
- damian2000 14y agoAccording to this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/damianward/3300112470/ 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 14y agoYes, I remember doing this circa 1990, now. There's some neuron in my brain that recognizes that address. Thanks for looking that up.
- daeken 14y agoIf you're interested in this sort of digital archaeology, check out The Cutting Room Floor: http://tcrf.net/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 http://pagetable.com
- voltagex_ 14y agopagetable.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 14y agoSorry, fixed; it's pagetable.com.
- shashwatak 14y agoIt 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 14y agoI am pretty sure this is not the first time it has been shown.
- threeio 14y agoThey 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 14y agoPreviously: "The Joy of Dumping" -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4150668 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4150668
- cpeterso 14y agoWhere's Steve?
- damian2000 14y agoWhere's Woz?
- vidarh 14y agoNo 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 14y agoReading 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.
- mechanical_fish 14y agoIn 1986? Buying Pixar and founding NeXT. He had been fired by Apple in 1985.
- DanBC 14y agoSee also the "stolen from Apple" icon hidden in the rom for the first Mac. (http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Stolen_From_Apple.txt http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...)
- josteink 14y agoFunny 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.
- tedunangst 14y agoDoesn't your conclusion need an example of long way back Apple being a pot?
- joezydeco 14y agoDirect copying of a computer's firmware is a way different type of "theft" than what you are alluding to.
- rprasad 14y agoNo, it's really not, unless you are arguing that what was copied from Apple (designs) is not something that should be subject to protection.
- joezydeco 14y agoBack 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 http://www.digitpress.com/eastereggs/arcaderobotron.htm