ClearTwiggyProtoHoaxMacHacks™

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

With the sudden appearance of what seems to be a TwiggyMac composed of mostly original prototype parts, I figured it's time to bring these pics out of their hidey hole in my War Room Hack/Post/Project Compilation threads.

ClearShugartProtoMacHack™ was the name I chose for this design study, back when I was convinced that the Mac was originally intended to use the Shugart FDD Mechanism due to the abysmal productions yields and field performance of the Twiggy Drives. I was corrected re: that faulty assumption by a few members here. Since I posted my hypothesis on 'fritter way back when, some of the original Mac team have been documenting those crazy days of development. It's clear now that this sketch was more likely intended for the 5.25"Apple II FDD, not the 5.25" Shugart FDD . . .

. . . whatever, when I can get a vacuum forming rig set up, I'll be doing some CRT Tube Replacements right after doing the clear internal bezels to support the LCD's I've Chosen for several hacks using the aforementioned pair of CRT Sizes.

When those are complete, I'll move on to fabricating the forming bucks I'll need for creating the 5.25" FDD Design Study ClearProtoHoaxMackHack™

Reference materials:





Notice the sharper lines of this design study, that's why it's third in my vacuum forming workups, I'm planning Simple -> Complex Project Development.

ClearTwiggyDVDRWProtoMacHack™

Reference materials:














































Notes on the new TwiggyMac:

TwiggyMac Pics Link

With the appearance of this latest TwiggyMac example, it's clear to see the development process of the 128k's Bucket. I'll post pics of the new arrival for comparison.

All three examples have the short run prototype front bezel for the ethereal TwiggyMac, which appears never to have been close enough to going into production for the Injection Mold Tooling to have had any texturizing done.

Notice the hand drilled cooling holes on the 3.5" Sony MicroFloppy Drive testing unit's top, that'd be the Rev. 0 ProtoBucket.-, as I see it.
Notice the cooling vanes and smooth, untexturized surfaces of what I'll call the "Arctic Camo" Rev. 1 ProtoBucket.

Note: with no available "back edge" or "top" pics of one or the other available for inspection, I can only assume that Rev. 0 has no cooling vanes on the back edge and that Rev. 1 has them on top. This makes perfect sense to me from a tooling development standpoint. Tooling was hideously expensive back in the day, and it's still very expensive to this day.

Notice the texturized, final tooling injection molded plastics on the new "Rev. 3 ProtoBucket." I use quotes because I don't really think the new "TwiggyMac" was originally a complete unit at all. I'm theorizing that it was likely remaindered ProtoMac Parts and received, at best, an early pre-release 128k Production Bucket well after the 3.5" Sony FDDs had become the main line of development.

I'm not entirely certain that the Twiggy Drive in the TwiggyMac is operable. Take a look at the pics of the Lisa"s Twiggy Drives. None of the three Prototype bezels show any sign of the "release" button (?) having ever been installed for Twiggy Drive Testing. That's a mere hunch, it's possible that the MacTwiggys may have had other means of doing what the buttons/whatevers on the front bezel of the Lisa did.

Gotta run, I'll edit in more soon.

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Gotta post the new TwiggyMac pics as well!

Just wrote up a bit about the fabrication processes in that thread and figured it belongs in here . . . . soooo:

I've been planning to make a vacuum forming buck for doing a ProtoHoaxMacTwiggy™ in clear plexi since the Old Guard day over on 'fritter. However a DVD/CD will be popping in-n-out of the opening. Learning about the stamped aluminum "skin" on the Twiggy drive makes this just too easy!

I've got plans on the board for doing a total of five riffs on different ProtoHoaxMac™ Hacks. Vacuum forming plexi convex CRT faces and concave inner bezels to frame LCDs behind 9" and 12" CRT openings is the next development step in this ongoing project.

Old school pattern making, vacuum forming and plexi fabrication techniques trump CNC & ProtoPrinting processes when it comes to clear ProtoHoaxMac™ production in very small quantities . . . not to mention the monetary hit imposed by taking a high tech approach.

Plaster cast of positive part = female cast for positive blank -> shave down positive blank by the thickness of the plexi being formed ->
vacuum forming sections -> trimming formed blanks -> machining Snow White grooviness -> assembly

Lightly frosting the inside of the blanks, by sandblasting, covers a multitude of sins, like the (manual, not CNC) router table bit's machining marks, BTW.

[HoJoPo]

The Apple Disk ][ drive is a Shugart mechanism, it's based on the SA390 design (an SA 400 floppy mechanism without the controller board), which was made specifically for Apple, as they wanted the least expensive 5.25 drive they could get. Here's the full story:

http://apple2history.org/history/ah05/

There is an early Mac prototype (in a plexiglas case) that used a disk ][ for storage, here's a picture (supposed to be from the second run of Mac prototypes built, serial number 15, in the Computer History Museum's collection):

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/mac/ ... _%2315.jpg

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Welcome aboard, HoJoPo! How has your first month been here at the barracks?

Thanks for the new info. I guess I wasn't as far off as one of the comrades thought when I said the Mac was originally intended to use the Shugart Drive. Somebody tore me a new one for making silly assumptions without having checked out the MacMemoirs. I don't think he realized I'd done the research about ten years earlier, before they were available. The washed ink drawing from AppleDesign in the first pic above was my inspiration I added in the scaled Shugart illustration back in the day for comparison, IIRC . . . whatever . . . matters not.

Shugart once removed, first hacked and then cloned as well, really appeals to tinkerer/hacker/artistic sides of me!

The Woz ruled and still does, he and Paul Allen are my micro-computing revolution heroes, their partners, very much not so.
Could you imagine either SJ or BG having danced their joyous hearts out on national TV?

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Does anyone have a link for the balance of the pics of this ProtoMac that was linked to above? ISTR a full set of shots from all around.



General interest, I noticed how different the sheet metal chassis in that pic is from the 128k-Plus hand-me-down chassis from the TwiggyMac Design phase.

[markyb86]

That white prototype and the like, might just be configured to the point of just pulling the disk out manually? there seems to be enough room to grab at it.

[mcdermd]

So far I'm not finding any more pictures but it lives in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View:

http://www.computerhistory.org/collecti ... /102717968

[onlyonemac]

Whatever you do, just don't cut up any rare 128ks !

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

HEH!!!!!

[uniserver]

not tryin to beat a dead horse here… but do you think the twiggy drive could of been made reliable with some design changes?
obviously this is more of an engineering question. I guess apple did all they could, then gave into sony

Just like they did with the Macintosh Portable

Now that steve is gone maybe sony will buy up apple

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Actually, Apple's engineers developed the Sony MicroFloppy connection below the blindered visionary's radar. The Mac team's engineers knew the Twiggy Drive would never work, so they took care of business behind the Steve's back.

It's too bad more TwiggyMac shells never hit the streets. Those slots make great I/O ports for optical drives!

At one point Apple may have been able to buy Sony recently, but the reverse was more likely through most of the Apple/s history.