What significance does The year 1969 have?

Could it be the birth date of the person who was primarily responsible for designing the motherboard ?

The Woodstock era perhaps? Were Steve and friends hippies? Don't forget about the psychedelic 60's/70's inspired groovy FlowerPower design.

It is either:
1. The year Steve and The Woz met in high school (unlikely)

2. The year the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Project Agency funds the creation of ARPANet which eventually evolved to become what is now known as the Internet.

3. Some ridiculous,yet arbitrary date.

My old LC III goes back to August 1957 or something.

I know most UNIXes count up in seconds from January 1, 1970 on. This will of course lead to the Y2K38 bug when the 2^32 second ticks off.

Arpanet wasn't founded 1969... abouts there but not there...

<img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />

That is when the mothership landed. Where do you think we get all of this great Apple Engineering?

I think it was the birthdate Ray Montagne, one of the designers of the original Mac CUDA microcontroller that controls the PRAM.

Didn't the clock used to go back to november 1957 or something, which I believe is Woz's birthday?

[quote]Originally posted by iBook:
<strong>I just had to reset my PRAM, and noticed the date went back to the default 1969 date, which kind of leads me to the question, why 1969? What significance (if any) does 1969 have as far as Macs, and why is it the default?

Anyone know? Applenut?

I know Steve Jobs must be older than 33, that it couldn't be his birth date, could it? Hmm...</strong><hr></blockquote>

OS X is based on BSD which is compliant with some POSIX. The POSIX year follows the following rule: 69-99 is pre Y2K, 00-68 is post Y2K.

So although the first EPOCH year is 1970, the first POSIX year is 1969.

Or your clock may have its own reason for being 1969. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

[ 07-30-2002: Message edited by: MrBillData ]</p>

An interesting side point:

I tried setting my computer date past 2038 (all the way to 2210 before I got tired of clicking):



When I clicked on Save, the date flashed to some month and day in the year 2038 and then ultimately came to rest waaaaaaay back in the good ol' days before we even had airplanes:



When I decided I'd had enough of the early 1900s, I set the clock to sync through the internet, but apparently down at the apple servers they've not got past the great depression (how they had a time server up and running, I have no idea...this whole time travel thing ties my stomach in knots):



Finally, I decided to come back to the year 2002 (though I don't know why I bothered...), but I had to do it manually! The autopilot was broken...darn those 1934 computers!

Whew! What a trip!

Blueflame

Why do they even allow the OSX clock to go back farther than 2001? Noone was using it in 1969, 1957, whatever.

Two U.S. astronauts landed and explored the moon.

[ 07-31-2002: Message edited by: MacsRGood4U ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by CubeDude:
<strong>Why do they even allow the OSX clock to go back farther than 2001? Noone was using it in 1969, 1957, whatever.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Because like a cheap watch, it only does what you tell it.

You could add the Creation date of the system and not allow the clock to go back any earlier. But that would require changing circuits that have not changed in over two decades.

Would you pay a whole 5 or 10 cents more for a computer just to have a redesigned clock chip? <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

Side point if I may:
Y2k is 2000
Y2K is 2048
k and K have internationally accepted meanings.
Most of the world got this wrong.

[quote]Originally posted by MacsRGood4U:
<strong>Two U.S. astronauts landed and explored the moon.

[ 07-31-2002: Message edited by: MacsRGood4U ]</strong><hr></blockquote>

or so they want you to think.

1969

January 17

* United States attorney general Ramsey Clark charges IBM with unlawful monopolization of the computer industry, and requests the federal courts break it up. (13 years later, the US Justice Department will drop the case.) [606.10] [1149.166]

(month unknown)

* Honeywell releases the H316 "Kitchen Computer", the first home computer, priced at US$10,600 in the Neiman Marcus catalog. [1112.142]
* Bubble memory debuts. [1112.142]
* Busicom, a Japanese calculator manufacturer, asks Intel to build a custom-chip set for a new calculator. Ted Hoff suggests that instead of set of chips, they create a general-purpose programmable chip. (Intel is initially not anxious to produce processor chips to compete with their customers for memory chips, but eventually decides to take a chance in this new field.) [106.103] [900] [1038.145] [1064.240] (ETI company [266.11])
* Jerry Sanders and seven others leave Fairchild Semiconductor to form Advanced Micro Devices. [732.54]

May

* Advanced Micro Devices Incorporated is founded. [141]

(month unknown)

* Computer Terminal Corporation visits Intel, asking them to integrate about 100 TTL components of their Datapoint 2200 terminal's 8-bit CPU into a few chips. Ted Hoff says they could put it all on one chip, so Intel and CTC sign a contract for it. (The resulting chip becomes Intel's 8008 processor.) [1038.148]
* IBM builds SCAMP, probably the world's first personal computer. [606.22]
* For the Busicom project, Intel's Marcian (Ted) Hoff and Stan Mazor design a 4-bit CPU chip set architecture that could receive instructions and perform simple functions on data. The CPU becomes the 4004 microprocessor. [266.12] [556.9] [1038.146]

October

* Engineers from Japan's Busicom company meet with Intel to inspect work on their calculator IC project. They accept the Intel design for a chip set, and sign an exclusive contract for the chips. [208.67] [556.9] [606.17] (ETI company [266.13])

(month unknown)

* Intel announces a 1 kilobit RAM chip, which has a significantly larger capacity than any previously produced memory chip. [9]
* Gary Starkweather, at Xerox's research facility in Webster, New York, demonstrates using a laser beam with the xerography process to create a laser printer. [714.98]

because its the start of the unix epoch for any the computer if the time is reset it goes back to 31st dec 1969