Twiggy 128K prototype, again.

[Mac128]

Barana, If all one wants to do is play with a Twiggy Mac, then yes those are the only differences. For a collector however, the rear bucket is notably different from production models too - no top vents, the apple logo is stamped into the back of the case and the square apple logo is on the right side, it's stamped prototype inside, the front bezel is also missing a bottom vent. The logicboard is a completely different configuration, the analogue board shows some differences, and who knows what else ...

Personally, I'd love to have that thing in my collection, working or not ...

 

[tt]

When I saw those flipped photos, it made me think, the amount of attention this machine is getting is actually kind of silly. It is a good reference point in the evolution of the design, but it has not really added much more info on what has already been seen from old photos. It's just a shame it did not end up in a place like the computer history museum where proper research and documentation could go into it. I hope the guy selling it does not get rewarded for his profit seeking in this particular case. If he paid $5-10k it's still low enough to do a kickstarter to get his money back and donate it. If he's a true Woz fan, that would be the thing to do.

 

[Mac128]

Relisted for half-price $49,995 with a BIN of $74,995.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160794146416

Just noticed the external floppy drive port. Did this icon change? It can't be clearly seen in the photos posted on eBay, but looking at my 128K, it appears to be a Twiggy drive. In other words, the Icon represents the front of the external floppy case, with a Centered floppy slot that goes all the way across, with an oversized thumb/finger grab-hole (I know ... High level techno speak), whereas the actual 400k external slot was offset to the upper left (with a sleeker grab-hole). In contrast, the Mac Plus depicts an external floppy drive that almost exactly mirrors the front of the 800K Macintosh external drive.

It would appear the icon was never modified. This is surprising considering many other minor (and major) changes to the prototype case from the production, considering Jobs meticulous attention to detail.

 

[Mk.558]

I saw a Sony 3.5" sized external fdd that hooked up to a standard Mac floppy port. I'm assuming it would be for the //?

 

[LCGuy]

For the IIgs, and the Mac. Yeah, all Compact Macs (and some II series) had a floppy drive port so that you could attach another 3.5" Sony drive. Given that the early Macs had no HDDs, and 400k was nowhere near enough, an external drive was virtually a neccessity. Heck, mine has been upgraded to 512ke with an 800k drive, and I still prefer using it with the external.

 

[Mac128]

Apple's first 3.5" fdd was 400K and exclusively for the 128K/512K Mac. It was incompatible with any other Apple product.

Apple's first 800K external 3.5" drive was the UniDisk exclusively for the Apple II, though the internal circuitry could be bypassed and used with a Mac.

Apple then released an 800K 3.5" external exclusively for the Mac. And later introduced a cross platform drive for both Apple IIs and Macs. Apple again updated this drive to a 1.44MB external, again for both IIs and Macs.

No 5.25" drive is compatible with the Mac (excluding the specialized PC drive, which is not compatible with the Apple II), except of course the Twiggy drive used with this Mac prototype.

This site has an excellent history of the Apple drives and their compatibility.

http://vintagemacworld.com/drives.html

An interesting note, the release of the SE marked the third update of the external disk icon for the Mac, which I believe was the universal disk icon used on all Apple products - instead of a representation of the actual external drive, it became a 5.25 disk icon. Ironic that the Apple II line won out with their preferred 5.25" disk format rather than the 3.5" disk standard (which was never widely adopted by II users). Just goes to show how influential the Apple II was at Apple in 1987.

 

[Charlieman]

Gorgonops: HOWEVER, if you look at the photos of the Twiggy mechanism inside the prototype Mac it appears that is only has 20 wires, and the circuit board on the drive appears to be different compared to the Lisa version of the mechanism. So... this seems to be solid evidence that this prototype is using genuine intended-for-the-Macintosh parts rather than being fraudulently thrown together using a Lisa 1 Fileware drive and a Twiggy faceplate. Whether the use of the 20 pin connector indicates that the drive is directly compatible with the 3.5 inch drive is another question; the PWM signals are obviously incompatible between a *Lisa* Twiggy and a Sony drive, but since the Mac Twiggy uses a different circuit board all bets are off.

I'm intervening late in this thread but I'll say thanks to Gorgonops and Trash for their thoughts.

In order to understand or reverse engineer how a Twiggy 128K might work, you need to have a workshop like the one that existed at Apple at the time. To recreate it, you need a selection of hardware: Lisa 1, Lisa 2, 64KB ROM Mac, Apple II with 68000 co-processor card etc. Real hardware, not emulators, but emulators are a great *additional* tool. Then you need the software that was used to transfer the OS from the source device to something that wrote a bootable disk. Finding the software or recreating it is more difficult than finding the hardware. Until we have an example of the boot blocks on a Mac Twiggy disk or code that read them, they are hard to replicate.

 

[Cosmo]

Am i seing the twiggy drive on this? I think i am.

http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Apple/Apple.Macintosh.1984.102646178.pdf

 

[Brooklyn]

Definitely is. I wonder who ended up with the twiggy Mac? Anyone here?

 

[uniserver]

I offered him 50 bucks, no response.

 

[CelGen]

Definitely is. I wonder who ended up with the twiggy Mac? Anyone here?

I know who has it and I know it's in private but safe hands with someone who is working with several others on both documenting it and booting it.

 

[uniserver]

it's in private but safe hands

Humm quite hush hush... this guy is on the DL,

does he carry it around in a Macintosh Bag, With handcuffs :-D

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Has anyone else noticed that in both pics posted in the thread of someone using the Mac, they're hunching over just to see anything on that %%$@$# 9" Periscope?

The one above on this page was in Apple's Macintosh ad campaign for goodness sake!

As a side note:

Does anyone have a Twiggy Lisa? I'd like to get a modeling clay impression of the Twiggy slot.

No harm done, just overlay saran wrap, squoosh it in, remove it and then let it harden before returning it to me in a prepaid, self addressed mailing box. ;D

 

[uniserver]

trying to figure out what aspects of the twiggy drive made it somewhat unreliable.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Manufacturing tolerances were critical and couldn't be met, leading to a miserable yield of good drives. Dunno about performance or failure rates in the field, but losses in manufacturing will put a stake through the heart of any product.

From what I've read, Jobs appears to have had too much of his ego invested in the Twiggy for Mac, which was different than Twiggy for Lisa . . . variable speed?

 

[Gorgonops]

From what I've read, Jobs appears to have had too much of his ego invested in the Twiggy for Mac, which was different than Twiggy for Lisa . . . variable speed?

Twiggy for both Lisa and Mac were variable speed. (And it's one of the biggest reasons for the Twiggy's overall failure; the inertia of the 5 1/4 disk meant that there was a significant delay encountered when spinning up or slowing down the rotation before a track could be reliably read or written after a long seek. Even when Twiggy worked this problem made it *very* slow.)

The only thing we know from the pictures of the prototype that's different between the Mac and Lisa mechanisms was the Mac ones used a 20 pin connector instead of the Lisa's 26 pin. The reason for that *could* be as simple as the Mac logic board was laid out with a 20 pin connector on the assumption that it would be using Apple Disk ][-style drives before the decision to go with Twiggy was made. (Folklore.org refers to Apple ][ style floppies being used well into the basic development period.)

As for why Steve Jobs was so hot on the Twiggy, well... knowing him he probably liked the idea of his baby using a disk drive which required media that Apple owned the patents to and had to be licensed, thus giving Apple a piece of the action for every disk sold. (Can anyone deny based on the evidence that he rather liked the idea of vendor lock-in?)

 

[Ike]

if this video IS real... it would mean that the macintosh indeed did have a larger format disk system in its early prototyping days

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmz6yLwS_nw

judging by the cut out hole in the upper right corner of the disk icon it is indeed a twiggy disk... so there must have been System (and ROM?) versions that supported it :S?

 

[barana]

So! This looks good, granted it didnt have a system folder on the desktop disk....

Ive been to and one needs to donate 2.5 pounds or more to gain access to it. And even then if he finds you talking or leaking, instant kick. Id leak it, no problems...

If you noticed, he's running it on minivmac. look at the very end of the clip.

since im not aware of mini vmac having a twiggy driver and in the vid, him displaying info on the disk icon and it reporting something close to 400kb capacity, I think its a mfs 3.5 image. Having said that, it could quite possibly have twiggy drivers onboard. Tho im guessing he used an early publically available 128 Rom.

Edted by LCGuy - We don't do that here

 

[Anonymous Freak]

if this video IS real... it would mean that the macintosh indeed did have a larger format disk system in its early prototyping dayshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmz6yLwS_nw

judging by the cut out hole in the upper right corner of the disk icon it is indeed a twiggy disk... so there must have been System (and ROM?) versions that supported it :S?

A few telltale giveaways that it's fake:

1. Twiggy had two oval read/write head cutouts, not just one like a conventional 5.25" disk. (The launch "Tour" 128k disk, aka "System 0.85", still used a PROPER Twiggy disk icon.)

2. In the earliest betas, the "Special" menu was called "Aids". It was changed directly to "Special". There was no "Tools" menu.

3. I can't find any reference that the Trash was *EVER* called "The Wastebin"

4. The menus are a strange mix - some items seem to be newer-than-Lisa, while others seem older, or even "with no knowledge of" Lisa.

Sorry, looks like someone took an early Macintosh System and RedEdited it to be different.

 

[slomacuser]

Fake, Anonymous Freak has good points, as I recall I downloaded this from macintosh garden and opened with resedit and found out it is modified as Anonymous Freak noted.