4 ms·

Jef Raskin's Swyft Card

28 points by sizzle 13y ago

wmf 13y ago
What did the card actually do? It looks like it's mostly a ROM. Was it basically a dongle, storing the code in ROM instead of loading it from a floppy that could be copied?
- HillRat 13y ago
  Basically; it held the Cat OS and software in ROM, so it could boot immediately and run without disk access. If you recall, the Mac had most of its key OS functions held in ROM for the same reason, although it couldn't fit its entire system in firmware. As a curious aside, everything except the core Cat OS was written in Forth, though you could also script functions through AppleBASIC (itself implemented in ROM on the motherboard). Kind of a neat little historical appendage; if Jobs hadn't booted Raskin from the Mac team, the Mac might well have ended up looking like this.
  - wmf 13y ago
    I always figured the Mac toolbox was in ROM because ROM was cheaper than RAM at that time.
- smorrow 13y ago
  I don't know anything about the Swyft card, but I know something about the Cat (not much). The Swyft card implemented at least the cursor positioning stuff in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_TlE_U_X3c#t=52 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_TlE_U_X3c#t=52 Some things about the Cat that aren't in that video are interesting. The whole thing was a single-user (fine by me), single-process (fine for the time) and single-program system. When you turn it off it writes its whole memory (incl. framebuffer) out to disk, which I think is the only thing on the disk actually, and when you turn it on it reads it back in to memory. So it never had any concept of a file, of saving a file, or opening a file. Saving a document was just saving your state, which includes the document, and opening a document was leaping to that part of the screen. You could migrate your session by just carrying the disk with you. The tabulating and (re)calculating thing is slick, and I think the Swyft might have provided that feature too. If someone could figure out a way to reconcile that with the Unix notion that different programs, running in different processes, must do different things, I would be so happy.
pietrofmaggi 13y ago
Yesterday link[1] about the Swyft Card, on hack a day, includes a short video of Mr. Willegal demoing the software. [1] http://hackaday.com/2014/04/06/vcf-east-the-swyft-card/ http://hackaday.com/2014/04/06/vcf-east-the-swyft-card/
davelnewton 13y ago
True story: I was at a Boston startup conference and was talking with Steve Wozniak, which was pretty neat. I asked him about the Swyft Card, because when it was first introduced I thought it was the coolest thing ever, and I think about it once every couple of years. Woz thought I was talking about RFID and proceeded to tell me why all this personal tracking was an invasion of privacy, which I was forced to agree with, and it was interesting to hear his take on it. At the same time, I was a little bummed we didn't talk about the Swyft Card, because I like it, I like Forth, I like Raskin, and I like Woz.

28 points by sizzle 13y ago

wmf 13y ago

What did the card actually do? It looks like it's mostly a ROM. Was it basically a dongle, storing the code in ROM instead of loading it from a floppy that could be copied?

HillRat 13y ago
Basically; it held the Cat OS and software in ROM, so it could boot immediately and run without disk access. If you recall, the Mac had most of its key OS functions held in ROM for the same reason, although it couldn't fit its entire system in firmware. As a curious aside, everything except the core Cat OS was written in Forth, though you could also script functions through AppleBASIC (itself implemented in ROM on the motherboard). Kind of a neat little historical appendage; if Jobs hadn't booted Raskin from the Mac team, the Mac might well have ended up looking like this.
- wmf 13y ago
  I always figured the Mac toolbox was in ROM because ROM was cheaper than RAM at that time.
smorrow 13y ago
I don't know anything about the Swyft card, but I know something about the Cat (not much). The Swyft card implemented at least the cursor positioning stuff in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_TlE_U_X3c#t=52 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_TlE_U_X3c#t=52 Some things about the Cat that aren't in that video are interesting. The whole thing was a single-user (fine by me), single-process (fine for the time) and single-program system. When you turn it off it writes its whole memory (incl. framebuffer) out to disk, which I think is the only thing on the disk actually, and when you turn it on it reads it back in to memory. So it never had any concept of a file, of saving a file, or opening a file. Saving a document was just saving your state, which includes the document, and opening a document was leaping to that part of the screen. You could migrate your session by just carrying the disk with you. The tabulating and (re)calculating thing is slick, and I think the Swyft might have provided that feature too. If someone could figure out a way to reconcile that with the Unix notion that different programs, running in different processes, must do different things, I would be so happy.

pietrofmaggi 13y ago

Yesterday link[1] about the Swyft Card, on hack a day, includes a short video of Mr. Willegal demoing the software. [1] http://hackaday.com/2014/04/06/vcf-east-the-swyft-card/ http://hackaday.com/2014/04/06/vcf-east-the-swyft-card/

davelnewton 13y ago

True story: I was at a Boston startup conference and was talking with Steve Wozniak, which was pretty neat. I asked him about the Swyft Card, because when it was first introduced I thought it was the coolest thing ever, and I think about it once every couple of years. Woz thought I was talking about RFID and proceeded to tell me why all this personal tracking was an invasion of privacy, which I was forced to agree with, and it was interesting to hear his take on it. At the same time, I was a little bummed we didn't talk about the Swyft Card, because I like it, I like Forth, I like Raskin, and I like Woz.