6 ms·

Apple I operation manual (1976) [pdf]

128 points by reteltech 4y ago

fnord77 4y ago
> The Apple Computer Company hereby warrants each of its products, and all components therein contained, to be free from defects in materials and/or workmanship for a period of thirty (30) days f r o m date of purchase. stingy warranty!
- thoughtsimple 4y ago
  The company was two guys soldering in a garage.
  - kensai 4y ago
    I pretty doubt Steve was doing any soldering. He was the marketing guy. And of course his parents were putting the garage.
    - monocasa 4y ago
      He was a hardware tech at Atari for his day job at this point.
      - kensai 4y ago
        And he wanted to leave that job. I wonder if Woz' books say anything about Jobs regarding their time in the garage.
  - nsxwolf 4y ago
    Woz later claimed that story is a myth and that most of the soldering happened elsewhere, though he never gave any specifics as to where it was done.
  - duskwuff 4y ago
    And the product they were selling was a bare (well, populated, but not enclosed) PCB which the user was expected to wire up to power, a keyboard, and a monitor themselves. Long-term reliability was more the responsibility of the owner than the manufacturer.
- gnu8 4y ago
  All that means is it’s not broken when you get it. The 30 day window is a reasonable interval for the purchaser to have time to check it out.
webwielder2 4y ago
It just works.
andrehacker 4y ago
Now.. for those interested in this: with the KIM Uno you can actually run the Apple 1 software https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/kim-uno-apple-1 https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/kim-uno-apple-... Look on Ebay for kits, then a cheap USB-to-TTL connector and you too can run Wozniak's best from your top of the line mac/pc. The disassembler is crazy powerfull given the size of the executable. The same KIM uno (6502 emulation from Arduino Uno) runs KIM, a contemporary of Apple 1 (with much better documentation, check archive.org) and a masterpiece of engineering: Microchess from Peter Jennings (not that one). Microchess, was at the time (and arguably still is) software that is just so unbelievably brilliant thay it must have been recovered from the Roswell crash site, just like whatever Fabrice Bellard puts out these days. Not saying that the 6502 was the best thing in the computer industry, but then again, yeah maybe it was.
coin 4y ago
Warranty is only 30 days
bobleeswagger 4y ago
Ten fucking pages!
JoyfulTurkey 4y ago
A mockup version of this for the Apple II recently popped up on Antiques Roadshow. An Apple employee grabbed it out of a dumpster in the late 80s. Appraised at $10,000-15,000. https://www.pbs.org/video/appraisal-1976-apple-i-operation-manual-mock-apple-i-89fwdh/ https://www.pbs.org/video/appraisal-1976-apple-i-operation-m...
gary_0 4y ago
> thus being an educational tool for the learning of microprocessor programming Raspberry Pi started out with pretty much the same product description, 40 years later.
LordGrey 4y ago
The system is fully expandable to 65K, with the entire data and address busses, clocks, control signals ( i. e. IRQ, NMI, DMA, RDY, etc.), and power sources available at the connector. Were any of those (few) sold boards ever expanded to the maximum possible RAM? That would be a beast of a machine, for cheap, in 1976. Also: 65K of memory? Not 64K?
- osigurdson 4y ago
  65536 probably
- thought_alarm 4y ago
  64K of random access memory, plus 1K of linear access (shift register) memory. The 1K shift register was used as the 40x24 screen buffer. This is the biggest limitation of that machine; you can't modify the screen directly, you can only push characters on to the end like a serial terminal. https://www.righto.com/2022/04/inside-apple-1s-shift-register-memory.html https://www.righto.com/2022/04/inside-apple-1s-shift-registe...
  - VLM 4y ago
    I think what would surprise younger people is how in the very old days it was unclear that RAM would win over all other forms of access and there was quite a bit of non-random access hardware available such as "bubble memory" and CCDs and various delay line schemes and magnetic drums etc. Much like trying to tell young people that tape was once used as primary storage for computing not as backup-only storage. On one hand its annoying having to pump addresses and later rows and columns at memory vs "here's a stream, best of luck using it" but the program complexity and performance gains of random access are very high so RAM wiped out ideas like using CCDs as anything other than video sensors. Seeing as tech is an endless wheel of everything old is new again (see 70s programing paradigms and stuff like that) "someday" someone will try to disrupt some corner of computing with non random access memory. The experience would likely be similar to ladder logic programming where all the instructions operate repeatedly and simultaneously, well, at least as a programming model. Another analogy would be spinning rust hard disks, here's a continuous stream of bits pouring off the drive head, now write a program to simulate a block store that uses that bitstream, and that is called hard drive firmware or back in the old days that was a MFM or RLL drive controller.
totetsu 4y ago
The new Apple i. With this epoch changing new product you can replace your whole personage with a simulacrum designed by apple.
thomasjudge 4y ago
770 Welch Road? Was this on the Stanford campus?
- thomasjudge 4y ago
  Should have googled first, I guess https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5971889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5971889

128 points by reteltech 4y ago

> The Apple Computer Company hereby warrants each of its products, and all components therein contained, to be free from defects in materials and/or workmanship for a period of thirty (30) days f r o m date of purchase. stingy warranty!

thoughtsimple 4y ago
The company was two guys soldering in a garage.
- kensai 4y ago
  I pretty doubt Steve was doing any soldering. He was the marketing guy. And of course his parents were putting the garage.
  - monocasa 4y ago
    He was a hardware tech at Atari for his day job at this point.
    - kensai 4y ago
      And he wanted to leave that job. I wonder if Woz' books say anything about Jobs regarding their time in the garage.
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  Woz later claimed that story is a myth and that most of the soldering happened elsewhere, though he never gave any specifics as to where it was done.
- duskwuff 4y ago
  And the product they were selling was a bare (well, populated, but not enclosed) PCB which the user was expected to wire up to power, a keyboard, and a monitor themselves. Long-term reliability was more the responsibility of the owner than the manufacturer.
gnu8 4y ago
All that means is it’s not broken when you get it. The 30 day window is a reasonable interval for the purchaser to have time to check it out.

webwielder2 4y ago

It just works.

andrehacker 4y ago

Now.. for those interested in this: with the KIM Uno you can actually run the Apple 1 software https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/kim-uno-apple-1 https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/kim-uno-apple-... Look on Ebay for kits, then a cheap USB-to-TTL connector and you too can run Wozniak's best from your top of the line mac/pc. The disassembler is crazy powerfull given the size of the executable. The same KIM uno (6502 emulation from Arduino Uno) runs KIM, a contemporary of Apple 1 (with much better documentation, check archive.org) and a masterpiece of engineering: Microchess from Peter Jennings (not that one). Microchess, was at the time (and arguably still is) software that is just so unbelievably brilliant thay it must have been recovered from the Roswell crash site, just like whatever Fabrice Bellard puts out these days. Not saying that the 6502 was the best thing in the computer industry, but then again, yeah maybe it was.

coin 4y ago

Warranty is only 30 days

bobleeswagger 4y ago

Ten fucking pages!

JoyfulTurkey 4y ago

A mockup version of this for the Apple II recently popped up on Antiques Roadshow. An Apple employee grabbed it out of a dumpster in the late 80s. Appraised at $10,000-15,000. https://www.pbs.org/video/appraisal-1976-apple-i-operation-manual-mock-apple-i-89fwdh/ https://www.pbs.org/video/appraisal-1976-apple-i-operation-m...

gary_0 4y ago

> thus being an educational tool for the learning of microprocessor programming Raspberry Pi started out with pretty much the same product description, 40 years later.

LordGrey 4y ago

The system is fully expandable to 65K, with the entire data and address busses, clocks, control signals ( i. e. IRQ, NMI, DMA, RDY, etc.), and power sources available at the connector. Were any of those (few) sold boards ever expanded to the maximum possible RAM? That would be a beast of a machine, for cheap, in 1976. Also: 65K of memory? Not 64K?

osigurdson 4y ago
65536 probably
thought_alarm 4y ago
64K of random access memory, plus 1K of linear access (shift register) memory. The 1K shift register was used as the 40x24 screen buffer. This is the biggest limitation of that machine; you can't modify the screen directly, you can only push characters on to the end like a serial terminal. https://www.righto.com/2022/04/inside-apple-1s-shift-register-memory.html https://www.righto.com/2022/04/inside-apple-1s-shift-registe...
- VLM 4y ago
  I think what would surprise younger people is how in the very old days it was unclear that RAM would win over all other forms of access and there was quite a bit of non-random access hardware available such as "bubble memory" and CCDs and various delay line schemes and magnetic drums etc. Much like trying to tell young people that tape was once used as primary storage for computing not as backup-only storage. On one hand its annoying having to pump addresses and later rows and columns at memory vs "here's a stream, best of luck using it" but the program complexity and performance gains of random access are very high so RAM wiped out ideas like using CCDs as anything other than video sensors. Seeing as tech is an endless wheel of everything old is new again (see 70s programing paradigms and stuff like that) "someday" someone will try to disrupt some corner of computing with non random access memory. The experience would likely be similar to ladder logic programming where all the instructions operate repeatedly and simultaneously, well, at least as a programming model. Another analogy would be spinning rust hard disks, here's a continuous stream of bits pouring off the drive head, now write a program to simulate a block store that uses that bitstream, and that is called hard drive firmware or back in the old days that was a MFM or RLL drive controller.

totetsu 4y ago

The new Apple i. With this epoch changing new product you can replace your whole personage with a simulacrum designed by apple.

thomasjudge 4y ago

770 Welch Road? Was this on the Stanford campus?

thomasjudge 4y ago
Should have googled first, I guess https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5971889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5971889