Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made by Andy Hertzfeld Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Andy Hertzfeld
Pineapple Pizza."
Steve knew that Pineapple Pizzas had recently replaced Bulgarian Beef as Burrell's current food obsession (which, as a staunch vegetarian, he thought was a positive development) and that Burrell wanted a Pineapple Pizza pretty much every chance he could get. Burrell looked at Brian Howard and shrugged. "OK, we may as well give it a shot now. But I don't think we'll be able to get it working before the restaurants close."
So Burrell and Brian got busy, selecting a board and stuffing it with sockets, carefully soldering them in place, while five or six of the rest of us, including Steve, sat around and kibitzed. Burrell seemed a little tense and impatient, since he didn't like the pressure of bringing up a board in front of so many spectators. Every five minutes or so, he referred to the awaiting Pineapple Pizza, speculating about how good it was going to taste.
Finally, around 8pm or so, the board was assembled enough to try to power it on for the very first time. The prototype was hooked up to an Apple II power supply and a small monitor, and fired up as we held our breath. The screen should have been filled with 'hellos', but instead all that was there was a checkerboard pattern.
We were all disappointed, except for Burrell. "That's not too bad", he commented, "It means the RAM and the video generation are more or less working. The processor isn't resetting, but it looks like we're pretty close." He turned to look directly at Steve. "But I'm too hungry to keep working - I think it's time for some Pineapple Pizza."
Steve smiled and agreed that it was good enough for the first night, and it was time to celebrate. The seven or eight of us who stayed late drove in three cars to Burrell's favorite Italian restaurant, Frankie, Johnny and Luigi's in Mountain View, ordering three large Pineapple Pizzas, which tasted great.
I Invented Burrell
by Andy Hertzfeld in 1981
Burrell had a great sense of humor, and he was capable of performing devastating impersonations of everybody else on the Mac team, especially the authority figures.
Whatever idea that you came up with, Jef Raskin had a tendency to claim that he invented it at some earlier point. That trait was the basis of Burrell's impersonation of Jef.
Jef had a slight stammer, which Burrell nailed perfectly. Burrell began by folding his fingers together like Jef and then exclaiming in a soft, Jef-like voice, "Why, why, why, I invented the Macintosh!"
Then Burrell would shift to his radio announcer voice, playing the part of an imaginary interviewer. "No, I thought that Burrell invented the Macintosh", the interviewer would object.
He'd shift back to his Jef voice for the punch line.
"Why, why, why, I invented Burrell!"
Macintosh Prototypes
by Daniel Kottke in June 1981
Macintosh wire-wrap #5
When I started with the Mac team in Jan ’81 there was just one wire-wrapped 68000 prototype, so my first job was to start making more protos along with Brian (‘Uncle Dougie’) Howard – who technically was a writer working under Jef but had been handling many of the hardware build-and-debug tasks for Burrell. Between the two of us Brian and I built another 4 or 5 prototypes for use by the programmers. These were built using some generic 8” x 9” printed circuit cards we found. One of these wire-wrap protos could be built in a couple of days if you had all the parts on hand, and they had the advantage of being readily modifiable. Actually, these protos were undergoing fairly continual modification and the one I that I held on to, #5, had been updated in 1982 with the Z8530 SCC (Serial Comm Controller), the IWM (Integrated Woz Machine) disk controller, and the STF (Special Task Force) clock, which were improvements over the original design.
The basic Mac architecture was very spare, ( „TIGHT!” as the teenagers now say): about 32 ICs not counting the 68000 and the 16 RAM chips. There was the Timing State Machine (TSM), made out of a PAL and some
Steve knew that Pineapple Pizzas had recently replaced Bulgarian Beef as Burrell's current food obsession (which, as a staunch vegetarian, he thought was a positive development) and that Burrell wanted a Pineapple Pizza pretty much every chance he could get. Burrell looked at Brian Howard and shrugged. "OK, we may as well give it a shot now. But I don't think we'll be able to get it working before the restaurants close."
So Burrell and Brian got busy, selecting a board and stuffing it with sockets, carefully soldering them in place, while five or six of the rest of us, including Steve, sat around and kibitzed. Burrell seemed a little tense and impatient, since he didn't like the pressure of bringing up a board in front of so many spectators. Every five minutes or so, he referred to the awaiting Pineapple Pizza, speculating about how good it was going to taste.
Finally, around 8pm or so, the board was assembled enough to try to power it on for the very first time. The prototype was hooked up to an Apple II power supply and a small monitor, and fired up as we held our breath. The screen should have been filled with 'hellos', but instead all that was there was a checkerboard pattern.
We were all disappointed, except for Burrell. "That's not too bad", he commented, "It means the RAM and the video generation are more or less working. The processor isn't resetting, but it looks like we're pretty close." He turned to look directly at Steve. "But I'm too hungry to keep working - I think it's time for some Pineapple Pizza."
Steve smiled and agreed that it was good enough for the first night, and it was time to celebrate. The seven or eight of us who stayed late drove in three cars to Burrell's favorite Italian restaurant, Frankie, Johnny and Luigi's in Mountain View, ordering three large Pineapple Pizzas, which tasted great.
I Invented Burrell
by Andy Hertzfeld in 1981
Burrell had a great sense of humor, and he was capable of performing devastating impersonations of everybody else on the Mac team, especially the authority figures.
Whatever idea that you came up with, Jef Raskin had a tendency to claim that he invented it at some earlier point. That trait was the basis of Burrell's impersonation of Jef.
Jef had a slight stammer, which Burrell nailed perfectly. Burrell began by folding his fingers together like Jef and then exclaiming in a soft, Jef-like voice, "Why, why, why, I invented the Macintosh!"
Then Burrell would shift to his radio announcer voice, playing the part of an imaginary interviewer. "No, I thought that Burrell invented the Macintosh", the interviewer would object.
He'd shift back to his Jef voice for the punch line.
"Why, why, why, I invented Burrell!"
Macintosh Prototypes
by Daniel Kottke in June 1981
Macintosh wire-wrap #5
When I started with the Mac team in Jan ’81 there was just one wire-wrapped 68000 prototype, so my first job was to start making more protos along with Brian (‘Uncle Dougie’) Howard – who technically was a writer working under Jef but had been handling many of the hardware build-and-debug tasks for Burrell. Between the two of us Brian and I built another 4 or 5 prototypes for use by the programmers. These were built using some generic 8” x 9” printed circuit cards we found. One of these wire-wrap protos could be built in a couple of days if you had all the parts on hand, and they had the advantage of being readily modifiable. Actually, these protos were undergoing fairly continual modification and the one I that I held on to, #5, had been updated in 1982 with the Z8530 SCC (Serial Comm Controller), the IWM (Integrated Woz Machine) disk controller, and the STF (Special Task Force) clock, which were improvements over the original design.
The basic Mac architecture was very spare, ( „TIGHT!” as the teenagers now say): about 32 ICs not counting the 68000 and the 16 RAM chips. There was the Timing State Machine (TSM), made out of a PAL and some
Similar Books
Orient Fevre
Lizzie Lynn Lee
Love and Muddy Puddles
Cecily Anne Paterson
The Pleasure of Memory
Welcome Cole
Zack (In the Company of Snipers Book 3)
Irish Winters
Letters Home
Rebecca Brooke
Just for Fun
Erin Nicholas
Grinder (Seattle Sharks Book 1)
Samantha Whiskey
Last Call
David Lee
Tanner's War
Amber Morgan
The Warrior Laird
Margo Maguire