MacPaint 0.95 & MacWrite Alpha Release 1.5?

[reject902]

Maybe this should be in the software forum, so if it should be I apologize.

I was going through boxes worth of junk 800K disks that I had come across through various sources to format and make copies of any valuable software that may be on them when I came across one particularly interesting floppy. It was a 400K disk that was labeled as "Macintosh System Startup". The labeling on it looked like something of that of an enthusiast design (more about that later) and mixed in for the past year or so quite well with my hundreds of other "blanks". Anyways, I was going to just format it on my MacTV but I decided to take a look at it. I did a quick get info on the MacWrite and it reported back in System 7 as "MacWrite 1.5". MacPaint reported back as "MacPaint 0.95". Curious about MacPaint, I decided to toss the disk in my 128K to see what it's all about. Well the system loaded right away into what appears to be System 0.85. I opened the MacWrite application and went to the about box and it reported back as "MacWrite Alpha Release 1.5". MacPaint also reported back as "MacPaint 0.95". What's even more odd, is that both files have both a 1983 created and modified date. This makes MacWrite really strange, because the original Mac shipped with MacWrite 1.0 in 1984. Here, I have MacWrite 1.5 Alpha in 1983.

Soo, what I wanted to know was, are these things I'm finding on this disk something of interest? Is it possible I have a good find here or are these two applications something which are circulating around wildly on the internet that some enthusiast I got the lot of disks from decided to bundle together.

Thanks guys!

[edit: photos added]

 

[Rasmus]

A MacWrite alpha version 1.5 is not inconsistent with a later release version 1.0, so that doesn't mean anything. It just shows how Wigginton numbered his builds. Atkinson and Apple were using a different system at that time. [i've always wondered what they planned to do if the pre-release builds reached 0.99 -- would they then go to 0.991, and so on?]

Someone needs to check what versions of MW/MP are on the Tour disk that came with the pre-May 1984 software bundle. I know the System file was version 0.85, but I forget the Finder information. What is the Finder information on your disk?

My instinct is that your disk was somehow cobbled from the first Tour disk, but I don't know if that is possible to do. If it is not possible, then you may have a significant bit of ephemera -- a pre-release Macintosh test disk. Can you show us the label on the disk?

What do you see when you select the disk itself in the Finder and do Get Info?

 

[JDW]

In the greater scheme of things, none of this really matters. The whole purpose of searching out "lost" or "previously unknown" versions of MacPaint is to find something no one has seen before. But you won't find anything shockingly different from between those earliest of versions. No, for that you would need to lay your hands on the special version of MacPaint that Bill Atkinson wrote to allow editable text:

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=MacPaint_Evolution.txt

You can even see my comment at the very bottom of that story. I really wanted a copy of that version of MacPaint! So I wrote to Bill Atkinson himself a year ago to ask about it. To my delight, he wrote me back. But to my dismay, he said he didn't have a copy of that version nor did he seem inspired to guess where one might be. Knowing how odd programmers can be, he might have deleted it back in the 1980's, for the reasons given in Andy Hertzfeld's article.

So when I see threads about folks searching out different versions of MacPaint, I am always reminded of that one special version with "editable text." Find that, and you have found a treasure indeed.

 

[reject902]

A MacWrite alpha version 1.5 is not inconsistent with a later release version 1.0, so that doesn't mean anything. It just shows how Wigginton numbered his builds. Atkinson and Apple were using a different system at that time. [i've always wondered what they planned to do if the pre-release builds reached 0.99 -- would they then go to 0.991, and so on?]
Someone needs to check what versions of MW/MP are on the Tour disk that came with the pre-May 1984 software bundle. I know the System file was version 0.85, but I forget the Finder information. What is the Finder information on your disk?

My instinct is that your disk was somehow cobbled from the first Tour disk, but I don't know if that is possible to do. If it is not possible, then you may have a significant bit of ephemera -- a pre-release Macintosh test disk. Can you show us the label on the disk?

What do you see when you select the disk itself in the Finder and do Get Info?

How would I go about finding out more Finder information? When I go to the about screen, it says "Finder 1.0 (4 Dec 83)". If I do a get info on it, it says "Created: Wednesday, 07 December, 1983" and "Modified: Thursday, 08 December, 1983".

Here's what the disk looks like. It's super sketchy and fake looking. It looks like something someone just through together to create attention, which I guess it did for me ha. I have no doubt that the disk itself is insignificant and is most likely someones own personal disk (it's blue) and label (as I see no references to Apple). I'm more interested in these application versions that are on the disk, and if they have any significance. I've just never seen these versions of MacWrite and MacPaint on the internet for download let alone even mentioned. I was just wanting to have some light shed on them.



If I do a get info on the Disk, I get "Created: Wednesday, 07 December, 1983" and "Modified Friday, 01 January, 1904".

In the greater scheme of things, none of this really matters. The whole purpose of searching out "lost" or "previously unknown" versions of MacPaint is to find something no one has seen before. But you won't find anything shockingly different from between those earliest of versions..

I never meant to imply that there was something special or important to these versions. I was checking to see if they were something commonly floating around the community. Or to see if maybe they were possibly of interest to anyone else. I never saw any reference to them before on the internet, hence my post.

Thanks.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Here's what the disk looks like. It's super sketchy and fake looking. It looks like something someone just through together to create attention, which I guess it did for me ha. I have no doubt that the disk itself is insignificant and is most likely someones own personal disk (it's blue) and label (as I see no references to Apple). I'm more interested in these application versions that are on the disk, and if they have any significance. I've just never seen these versions of MacWrite and MacPaint on the internet for download let alone even mentioned. I was just wanting to have some light shed on them.

Based on its incredible similarity to the confirmed pre-release disks on this system, I'd say it's legit.

 

[Rasmus]

I checked and those are the same versions that are on the Write/Paint Tour disk. The System and Finder on that disk are also the same, except that they were both last modified on December 15, 1983. The creation date for the disk itself, however, is December 14, 1983.

I tend to think that bodes fairly well for your disk. It would not be impossible to take the Tour disk and make this disk, but getting those various "Last Modified" dates would be tricky and somewhat pointless, especially the Finder, not mention setting the creation date of the disk itself back. And you would have to have knowledge of what the stamp used on Mac test disks looked like. Seems like something that might appear as a fraud on eBay next month (now that what these things are supposed to look like is common knowledge), but not yet, and not buried in a pile of other disks! I don't have a problem with it being a blue disk or not having the Apple-logo label -- making it look like those MacRumors disks is what the fraudster will do...

 

[Rasmus]

I don't have a problem with it being a blue disk or not having the Apple-logo label

Thinking about it some more -- if you look at the dates on those disks from Marcia Babcock, they are from late January and February 1984 -- an earlier disk like yours might well have been on a blue disk, presumably supplied by Sony -- they probably would not have had all those Apple-logo labels and Macintosh-color production disks available at that point...

 

[Dog Cow]

I too have have pre-release disks that were stamped just like the one in that photo and the ones in the other photos on MacRumors.

(Mine is MacWorks, in case anyone is curious)

 

[reject902]

Oh wow. Hmm. :beige:

I'm gonna have to play around with this a bit more then. Is there anything I should be looking for in the system or anything anyone wants me to check?

Also, how do I get the system version again? There was a little app I remember but I thought there was also another way.

Thanks

 

[Mac128]

First make backup copies, and the use ResEdit on the copies to check the resources of the System and applications. In particular size of various resources will be a good indicator as to what has changed from the release versions. Mini vMac is an especially helpful tool for this kind of spelunking, once you have your disk images.

 

[reject902]

Anyone know of a good ResEdit tutorial or something similar online? I've never really played in it before and after some quick googling nothing really seems to come up that's all that helpful. I see a lot of talk about using templates to read things? Do I need those?

Thanks guys.

 

[Dog Cow]

As long as you're using the newest (2.1.3) version of ResEdit, then you don't need to worry about templates, since the ones that you'll need are built in.

I wrote a tutorial on using ResEdit an age ago (back in 2004) but I don't know if it's any good: http://macgui.com/kb/article/12

 

[reject902]

Thanks for the info. Where in ResEdit do I look to find the version numbers of the files? Where would I look to tell if it's just a modified version of the Finder, as in, where do I look to see if someone hacked away the quit menu that was found on the guided tour floppy?

I did make a few copies of the disk. For whatever reason Apple Disk Copy wouldn't work (error code -42 i think it said) so I used CopyIIMac and that appeared fine.

Now something I did notice though is a pain: I have a whole of 32K avail on this disk. Between MacWrite, MacPaint and FontMover, they sure didn't leave much room to play around. I also noticed a big size culprit is a system file called "SystemOld". It's weighing in at 68K. I'm going to see if this is a usable system file in itself that just needs to be on it's own on the disk and report back.

Another thing I noticed, the "Unknown Disk" that floats on the desktop on all the System 0.85 pictures that circulate around is here as well. However, on this particular disk it is shown labeled as "Alternate Disk".

What I may just do since I'm not all that sure about resedit, is put that sysversion app onto one of copies and see what it comes back as.

[EDIT]: I already loaded and tried the sysversion on the disk. With the system file that was active all along on the disk it reports back as "Version .85 07-Dec-83". Now, I did what I said I was going to try and renamed "SystemOld" to just "System" and changed the name of the current "System" to junk and restarted the computer. That system file in sysversion app reports back as "Version 14-Nov-83". So now I'm puzzled. The other thing is there's fewer items in the apple menu on that other system version. It only shows Clock, Calculator, Puzzle and Control Panel.

 

[Dog Cow]

Yeah, that's probably quite likely an early, pre-release System. If I were you, I'd lock the disk and work on getting a copy of it made.

 

[Mac128]

Another thing I noticed, the "Unknown Disk" that floats on the desktop on all the System 0.85 pictures that circulate around is here as well. However, on this particular disk it is shown labeled as "Alternate Disk".
That system file in sysversion app reports back as "Version 14-Nov-83". So now I'm puzzled. The other thing is there's fewer items in the apple menu on that other system version. It only shows Clock, Calculator, Puzzle and Control Panel.

Yes you definitely have an early copy of the System there. So now we have the first known copy of the System to predate .85

The "Aternate Disk" is what the "Unknown Disk" was called originally, and appears throughout the first edition manual which had to be written and sent to press well before the final system was locked - obviously using this system or another early version. As a result Apple included this insert which corrects certain aspects of the manual, and this change in particular: http://homepage.mac.com/chinesemac/earlymacs/PDFs/032-0001.pdf

One thing I will point out is that the Finder on the Guided Tour Disk is labeled 1.0, but it is clearly quite different than the Finder on the original "1.0" System Disk, which is also labeled 1.0. From what I recall when I was snooping around in the Guided Tour's System and Finder, was that the Finder is pretty much responsible for things like the "Alternate Disk" icon, meaning that you should take the About the Finder reporting 1.0 on these disks with a grain of salt. Definitely check out this Pre-release Finder with ResEdit ... You may find yet another early version of the Finder as well.

As for using ResEdit, just start looking around the resources, and you'll get the hang of what's what. A lot of it is just code, but a lot of it will have the lines of code annotated, and of course there's the icons. But the only way to really tell if there are differences is to compare the resource sizes from one System and Finder to another. Once you find discrepancies in resource sizes, then you pretty much confirm you are looking at different versions, despite what About the Finder may report, and you have a starting point as to which resources deserve additional scrutiny.