NeXT
Veteran Member
You read the post and you obviously read the warning, yet you did it anyways??
WHY?! What did you expect to accomplish??
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Got two old Macs, need help
- Thread starter oldmacuser99
- Start date
You read the post and you obviously read the warning, yet you did it anyways??
WHY?! What did you expect to accomplish??
Al Kossow
Documentation Wizard
Do not enter the current date if you are trying to boot a mac prototype!
Do not enter the current date if you are trying to boot a mac prototype!
The boot disk is probably corrupted now. The other twiggy mac guys told me when they showed their
machine at the museum that they managed to break their boot disk the same way
by entering the current date.
I didn't see this posted anywhere else, so...
DO NOT ENTER THE CURRENT DATE (ie. Nov, 2013) IF YOU ARE TRYING TO BOOT A MAC PROTOTYPE!
Do not enter the current date if you are trying to boot a mac prototype!
The boot disk is probably corrupted now. The other twiggy mac guys told me when they showed their
machine at the museum that they managed to break their boot disk the same way
by entering the current date.
I didn't see this posted anywhere else, so...
DO NOT ENTER THE CURRENT DATE (ie. Nov, 2013) IF YOU ARE TRYING TO BOOT A MAC PROTOTYPE!
iCollectMacintoshes
Member
Well remember his original post he said it had the same message. The floppy was probably already corrupt when he got it. I'm sure there are still good floppies around, but probably very expensive. I wonder if the twiggy mac supports the smaller floppy external drive. He could try to boot from that but I'm not sure if you can even boot a standard mac using the external.
NeXT
Veteran Member
SomeGuy
Veteran Member
Regardless of any damage or if it is borked:
POST PICS! PICS! PICS! :jumping4:
Hold it up like the prize fish of the day and take a picture with it. There will be bouncy big busted blond Swedish babes pounding at your door and geeks with wads of cash in hand wanting to buy it! :evilgrin5:
Everybody has a camera in their cell phone these days, or at least knows someone that does. So take some pictures and post them here!
You were lucky it even powered on. Like the other one, capacitors often wear out and short.
Your best bet with this is just to document it as well as possible and pass it on to someone with the proper technical experience to restore it. I'd also suggest going back to that flea market and seeing if you can find any information as to where they obtained it - or if they have any other goodies.
BTW, where about are you located? Somewhere around California I would guess?
POST PICS! PICS! PICS! :jumping4:
Hold it up like the prize fish of the day and take a picture with it. There will be bouncy big busted blond Swedish babes pounding at your door and geeks with wads of cash in hand wanting to buy it! :evilgrin5:
Everybody has a camera in their cell phone these days, or at least knows someone that does. So take some pictures and post them here!
You were lucky it even powered on. Like the other one, capacitors often wear out and short.
Your best bet with this is just to document it as well as possible and pass it on to someone with the proper technical experience to restore it. I'd also suggest going back to that flea market and seeing if you can find any information as to where they obtained it - or if they have any other goodies.
BTW, where about are you located? Somewhere around California I would guess?
Al Kossow
Documentation Wizard
It wouldn't surprise me if a deep pockets lurking collector already bought it.
We'll see if there is ever another message about it here again.
Something about the good stuff always turning up on the other coast? I've been on the west coast and I'm telling you, all the good stuff is on the east coast.
I'm banking on a troll for this one. He saw the news of the Twiggy 128Ks and he wanted to tease someone for the first time in his life. Same said individual might have logged out of his account, then reads all the posts in his basement in Romania just laughing. Did you know? He also has a prototype of the Apple II Ethernet card and a clear Macintosh Portable.
evildragon
Veteran Member
Same here. I'm also going for troll, because anyone who needs to ask if smoke coming out is normal, must well, you know.
Paralel
Experienced Member
If I'm reading those dates correctly, try the following:
May 30, 1983
I think that will allow it to boot.
May 30, 1983
I think that will allow it to boot.
k2x4b524[
Veteran Member
it says he's been a member since 2012, so maybe not troll, inept user, perhaps, but not troll. I would like to see pics of this prototype mac, from what he is describing, it should look very fascinating.
dorkbert
Veteran Member
Too many people that knows exactly what to look for lives in the west coast. Once a piece enters someone's collection, it ain't leaving for a very long time...
Al Kossow
Documentation Wizard
Join Date
November 8th, 2013
The curious thing is where he would have come up with that bootup information
if he doesn't have a prototype. The system the twiggy mac guys got working doesn't
come up that way (the version they have was one of the last ones that still supported
twiggies) and what he typed makes sense for an earlier rev of the system. This was most
likely a dealer beta unit that was never returned.
dorkbert
Veteran Member
Or a seeding developer system.
Paralel
Experienced Member
It sounds like it is booting off of some kind of internal Boot-ROM, that's why it is different from the other ones.
iCollectMacintoshes
Member
NeXT said that the software is timebombed, so it deactivates after a certain date. So I think the internal boot ROM is what deactivates, not a floppy boot disk.
Paralel
Experienced Member
The floppies are indeed timebombed, but I don't think it's possible to do that to a ROM, since it is in fact Read Only.
dorkbert
Veteran Member
I don't see how that's possible, since the machine predates FLASH, so other than NVRAM (which lives and dies by the battery) there is no non-volatile storage to store activation state.
snuci
Veteran Member
Think different (where have I heard that before). Maybe it was alive through powered static ram that held some binary values until a certain date or the battery died. It was mentioned that it booted from a ROM-based OS. This could have checked an SRAM chip. If those values are gone because the date is too new (wipes out the value) or the battery dies (wipes out the value anutomatically), Mac defaults to "This Macintosh personal computer is not fit for use by the general public.".
This can only be determined by looking at the board and seeing what's on it. The ROMs need to be read and decompiled to figure out what it's looking for. Unfortunately, this probably isn't possible with the current owner. Not because he isn't sophisticated enough but he probably has no interest other than having a vintage Mac
This needs to be explored and documented.
This can only be determined by looking at the board and seeing what's on it. The ROMs need to be read and decompiled to figure out what it's looking for. Unfortunately, this probably isn't possible with the current owner. Not because he isn't sophisticated enough but he probably has no interest other than having a vintage Mac
This needs to be explored and documented.k2x4b524[
Veteran Member
My bad, thank you for pointing that out, sometimes the fingers go faster than the eyes do.
NeXT
Veteran Member
He said that he couldn't see an eject button. The twiggy macs don't have any form of hardware eject mechanism. It's possible that there is a disk in it still and it's never tried to eject it.
Also, yeah, my NVRAM theory went out the window when I found how old System 2 was. I must of mixed my facts between the Classic which you can ROM boot.