Steve Jobs’ custom Apple I and other historic machines are on display in Seattle | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs’ custom Apple I and other historic machines are on display in Seattle

techcrunch.com

133 pointsrbanffy54 comments

The most interesting part of the Living Computer Museum in Seattle, for those of whom have not visited, is not the Apple I or any of the 1970s/1980s PCs. What's more interesting is the big room in the back full of supercomputers, the CDC6500 - the amount of work to bring that back to life far, far outweighs the amount of work to bring the Apple 1 back to life. So they connected a new power converter to the Apple 1? Big whoop. The CDC6500 weighs more than 10,000 lbs, has liquid coolant, custom cabling that they had to set up new manufacturing lines for, everything is wired by hand, etc.

In my opinion, supercomputing is a more relevant metaphor for the type of age we're living in, involving neural networks, brute force type machine learning on a big server that we all share, in a sense...the 60's are alive again man!

Definitely! Also, what I was told is the worlds only functioning PDP-7 was a highlight... and the Parc Alto.

It's not a particularly big museum, but man, what a great collection.

Yeah, was just coming here to mention the Alto. It's hard to describe the feeling of seeing one of those in-person and running. So much came from such a small machine.

If you're in Seattle the Living Computer Museum is a must-visit.

I'm a member and have visited a few times with my 5 year old son--it's a good rainy day activity for kids. The downstairs area is beautiful space for kids to run around and tinker with robots, and it never seems to be crowded (not even on weekends).

The museum is shockingly liberal with what they let kids touch, so when I take him upstairs to the historic collection I'm always terrified that he'll break something. Fortunately a lot of that gear from the 60's was built to last and is intimidating to little kids... for example, their punch card reader is bigger than a copy machine, and volunteers hand out earplugs before running it.

They even have a functioning teletype machine! I typed in the basic Unix commands I knew (cd, ls, mkdir, etc) and they all worked just as I expected. I've been using terminals for a few years, so it was amazing to see the origins of that user interface.

If any of the Living Computers folks are paying attention to this thread: you guys should set up an exhibit on phone phreaking. Blue boxes (and other boxen) should be easy to build, and it'd probably be easy to obtain historical boxes too. You could dial into Project MF [0] or set up your own vulnerable phone network to tinker with.

[0] http://projectmf.org/

Check out the Communications Museum sometime - no phreaking exhibit per se, but much more in that direction. It's closely to Living Computers, in Georgetown. http://museumofcommunications.org

I did ask one of the great docents there to explain blue boxing to me. He pulled out an blue suitcase-like box and showed me how it all worked.

For what it is worth, they can't do the 2600 line seize there, but they could patch directly into a trunk and send tones from there.

> The team at the museum read the contents of this EPROM and used it to set up a second, less historic Apple I. That one, which has had its power components modified to be a little less prone to catching fire or warping the circuit board, will now be available in this primed state for anyone to play with. Yes, anyone — the only operational Apple I on the planet right now, and your kid can type “butts” on it with fingers still greasy from the sandwich they got across the street.

While the Apple I is rare, I'm pretty sure the one described above isn't the _only_ operational Apple I on the planet. I say that because I've seen a few differently housed ones on YouTube.

That all said, it's still amazing that this museum allows anyone to play on one of theirs. That article made me want to visit America just to visit that museum.

Visiting this museum was the highlight of my SF trip. When it closed, I had only explored half of it, and decided to spend another day of my stay in there.

The museum described in the Tech Crunch article is located in Seattle.

Are you sure you aren't thinking of the Computer History museum? The CHM is much larger although much less interactive.

This is the Living Computer Museum in Seattle, WA vs. the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA (which has the crudely cut wooden case with Apple on it).

There's a little bit of 'History as told by Redmond' vs. 'History as told by Silicon Valley' but both are MUST visits if you're in their respective areas.

The LCM is right by the Starbucks HQ, which is its own weird little visit.

That clear perspex case Apple I is beautiful. Amazing how already it resembled what he wanted in the 90s iMac.

Not as beautiful but there were clear Macintosh SEs for smoke testing. http://www.cultofmac.com/165784/another-rare-vintage-mac-sur...

I always wanted a Keurig with a translucent case.

Yes it would be great if a high-pressure glass line and group head could be made so that the water, steam and extraction could all be seen happening through clear walls.

The "low fi" alternative is a glass teapot. :)

Not sure if you missed the part where I said "case".

Look into prison models.

I have quite a large collection of pre-PC 8 bit computers including an Apple II and and Apple IIc both signed by Woz.

I don't even really know exactly what I have any more because I buy them and then I don't open the boxes that arrive, I just put em in storage. I once thought "ooohh, I'd like to get a (some old 8 bit machine)" only to find later that I already have one in the boxes out the back.

I also have a large 8-bit and pre-PC collection of machines, also sitting in boxes, and I also have the desire to .. one day .. have a room big enough to set them all up, turn them on .. and .. hmm .. what .. exactly ..

Oh, I know! Run some of the new software thats being written for these old machines, even still, in the 21st Century! :)

(In my case, its the Oric machines that keep on ticking .. and new stuff pops up every year for this obscure, odd little system .. http://oric.org/ in case anyone is interested..)

I have 2 Amiga 2000s, 2 Amiga 1200s, 1 Amiga 500 and a Commodore 64.

I have 2 machines hooked up at all times attached to C= CRTs. I sometimes need to rotate the Amigas due to software buggery.

The C64 is always ready to go. > turn them on .. and .. hmm .. what .. exactly ..

Believe it or not, the BBS scene is quite large and healthy. It's run by (mostly) 40-somethings on 8-bit and 16-bit machines. Hackers have made (and sell) fantastic WiFi options that essentially let your 8-bit machines (Apple, Commodore, TRS-80, etc.) telnet into the BBS. I use it for social more than Facebook. Yes, they are technically strangers, but like-minded and into the same thing.

There's no reason these old machines need to stay in boxes like some scene from Indiana Jones. They can be used, and enjoyed, daily. My Amiga is used for gaming/productivity. My C64 is (mostly) used for social interaction. And a little gaming. :)

Preach! Totally with you, brother .. now I just have to finish that assembly-language terminal emulator for the Orics' so I can join you fancy lunchbox users ..

> Steve Wosniak and Paul Allen met — for the first time, amazingly — and chatted over an Apple II.

That's crazy to me. All this time and they just now meet!

Surprised techcrunch missed that typo of Wozniak. They got it right higher up in the article.

I love how the tools we praise are also the very tools that trip us up. That spelling of Woz's name is more common so I imagine the spellcheck 'corrected' it, essentially getting the name wrong of its creator. There's a level of irony here that's hard to miss.

Steve Jobs, thinking about his passing still makes me emotional. Damn, I miss that guy.

Yes, I too really miss how he talked police into raiding peoples homes, humiliated Apple staff, screwed over his friends, refused to acknowledge his daughter, downplayed the suicides in Apple factories, commited fraud, refused to get himself treated for his cancer and lied about it, routinely parked in the spot meant for handicapped...

I could go on but I think you get the picture. That he was worshipped is an absolute shame, he was not an asshole, but way worse. He was evil. He was the dark side of capitalism.

I find this take on Jobs fascinating because even though all your criticisms of Jobs are perhaps exaggerated in some respects they're all based in fact, but the conclusions you draw from them are outrageously false.

While all of those things were harmful and some even despicable I think evil is going way too far. A lot of people on the internet get frothing mad about this stuff, while the interviews I've read or seen with many of the actual people involved such as Woz, his daughter, ex-employees, etc put these issues in a much more forgiving and nuanced context. None of the people who actually worked with him or new him that I've seen had said he was evil, so excuse me if I don't take the word of random internet person on that.

>He was the dark side of capitalism

What the heck has any of that got to do with capitalism? Seriously. Would a Chinese or Russian Communist Steve Jobs have been a shining beacon of charity and humility? What does that even mean? Without capitalism he'd still have been a bit of an arse, but then we wouldn't have had GUI interfaces and modern smartphones until years later, and probably not as good ones either. We'd have had committee designed, party-approved People's Phones scheduled into a 5 year plan or something. But I don't really see how thats got to do with anything.

You have some very sensible remarks.

I attribute the fact that many people praise and almost worship him to capitalism. There are many elements that I somehow link with capitalism as well: Forcing people to overwork, harshly firing people for minor flaws, taking credit for things you didn't do, ridiculous overpricing, 'being creative' with paperwork, using factories with bad conditions for workers, etc. Of course these things are in no way exclusive to capitalistic countries.

Of course I am exaggerating and I don't know him. I have read his biography, some internet articles, and watched some documentaries, and this is the general picture I got. He seems to be a very charming guy when he needs you (e.g. you are his superior, or a skilled co-worker like Woz), but shits on you when he's your boss (e.g. fires you in the elevator).

I think that the reason I get so upset whenever somebody praises Jobs, is because I often see this type of persons getting a lot of success at the expense of people with a 'weaker' personality (like myself). I like Steve Wozniak a lot better and think that his personality shines through his actions. Wozniak was a teacher, financed a big festival, and tried to connect with Russia. This is in a sharp contract with Jobs and I can't stand people when they praise Jobs but don't know the guy who single-handedly built the first Apple computer.

No question Woz was a nicer guy, and he was cheated by Jobs, but without Jobs there's no way he'd be a millionaire today. Steve Jobs is one of the reasons we need employment laws and such though.

> There are many elements that I somehow link with capitalism as well:

I will absolutely accept that many alternatives to capitalism claim explicitly to solve these problems, but it seems like a very solidly demonstrated fact that none of the ones that have yet been tried actually do, and many of them exacerbated these and other problems by orders of magnitude.

Capitalism is about empowering individuals by granting them ownership rights and not reserving that right exclusively for the state, the Party, the sovereign or a religious authority, but anybody. To me Capitalism is about individual rights, it's just that some of those individuals form companies worth Billions of dollars employing hundreds of thousands of people and some don't.

All pretty trivial stuff compared to the massive positive impact the products he oversaw and introduced to the world have had. Mac and iPhone literally changed the world as we know it.

Without him, home computing would be very different today. His insistence on focusing on usability and bringing in the best of the liberal arts into a very science-centric domain was his genius.

I agree, but I think someone's actions on a personal and moral level should be more important factors for adoration than how successful he is.

I'd rather live in a world where 'poaching' agreements between employers didn't exist and factory jobs were better but we had to use a phone with buttons. I think if we had to choose, the corrupt baby boomer CEO stuff Jobs represented would be eliminated even if that meant a slightly less optimal computing experience. I won't even go into how Apple is less a computer company than a media consumption machine company, but that's an argument for another day.

I also will argue that Jobs gets credited for a non-sensical 'he's the liberal arts genius who showed us usability' argument, when in reality usability is an ancient field and, arguably, the most usable desktop was unsexy Microsoft's NT desktop which is still very usable and refined today. You can put a random grandparent in front of an NT4 machine today and have then be productive near instantly. Meanwhile, the very same grandparent is overwhelmed with apps, pop-ups, swipes, privacy agreements, notifications, etc on the more 'usable' mobile device.

Jobs deserves credit for his achievements, but if you let me trade Jobs for a better world for the actual working stiffs who bust their ass 50-70 hours a week in this industry, absolutely, I would make that trade in a heartbeat. I don't care about the cost to quarterly projections or other CEO chest-thumping. Jobs, regardless of his intentions, represents the classic heartless CEO in many respects and made almost no effort to fix these things. I hope today's SV leaders have more progressive views about work/life balance. I'd love to bury the baby boomer workaholic nonsense and factories full of suicidal people with Jobs. I hope society can progress past the 'worship our CEOs' stage.

"When the thief looks at the saint all he sees is pockets". Not to imply that Jobs was anything like a saint, but this kind of attitude is telling.

It seems he lived with an astonishingly high number of inner demons. I can understand his personal failings and respect his accomplishments.

That seems like a very balanced way to put it.

I don't think he was evil. So far as we know he didn't run underage sex trafficking rings, or flood US cities with crack.

I think he was complicated and damaged and did some evil things to people close to him. But he also had some exceptional talents, and he facilitated a lot of developments that probably wouldn't have happened without him.

Those don't necessarily cancel out, but it's reasonable to wonder where tech would have gone if he was still alive.

I wish he had a happier, more peaceful life, even if at the cost of having a phone with buttons or having to use a Thinkpad.

He used a Thinkpad: http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2209

When he came from NeXT, yes. He switched to Powerbooks as soon as he deemed them passable.

I saw the blue cased Apple I and I'd hoped it was the long lost "Bob Roth" Apple I[0] that - according to legend - Steve Jobs personally purchased for Woz from a user at a Riverside, CA store opening back in '81.

[0]: http://www.willegal.net/appleii/apple1-originals.htm#Roth

My uncle sent me some photos from this event (he's in the back row of the large group photo). I also have photos from the event four years ago... it's sad how this crowd is thinning out over time. Hope they accelerate the oral history effort! There are so many great stories of those early days.

The article mentions a custom EPROM that was used on Jobs' personal Apple I. I wonder if the contents of that EPROM are available, so someone with a replica computer could use it?

If you like tinkering with computers, and happen to be in or visiting Seattle, the Living Computer Museum is really fun. Anyone can pound away on any of the computers they have set up.

In the video, why does Lath Carlson, Executive Director of the Seattle Living Computers Museum euphemize history by saying Steve Jobs "quit" in 1985?

Correction: Steve Jobs didn't build the Apple I. Steve Wozniak did. Steve Jobs couldn't program or design hardware. He was a design/marketing guy.

>> He was a design/marketing guy.

That's wrong - he could both program and he was also extremely hardware technical, but not by a long shot to the capabilities of Woz.

Wozniak disagrees: http://tech.co/steve-wozniak-steve-jobs-did-not-know-technol.... In Jobs' biography the same thing is described.

He liked to claim that he built the Apple, or played some vital role. He probably talked some hardware guys into making what he wanted, and in that sense he played a technical role, but he didn't bother with technology himself.

Pretty sure the other claim is true. He wrote software for Atari, no?

No, he got Woz to write software for Atari claiming that he did it and pocketed the largest chunk of the pay.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/steve-wozniak-cried-jobs-kept-atari...

Welp... Goddamnit Steve you poser. And what a shitty thing to do. Fuck.

I've only read he worked on TTL logic based games, not anything microprocessor controlled.

Jobs did some wire wrapping in Apple(?) prototypes. He also managed to get chip samples for free. Source: Woz biography

For a guy that couldn't program he "got" objected oriented design more than most programmers at the time [1]. This is really why NEXT and therefore OS X had a much more consistent UI. When you compare programming with cocoa vs win32 the ease of subclassing is a huge part of the reason.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kjtQnPqq2U

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