If I remember correctly, you could dock a sleeping Duo, that was one of the great selling features since HP make docks for their laptops but you have to be powered off at the time to dock. I had a Due and would never shut it down, just put it to sleep and dock it and undock. Not it kicking it out completely was rear as well. It has motor inside that slowly pull it in and release it so it would not come flying out.
True, and besides the Docking station was more than just a box, it actually carried additional RAM, HD, CD, and processing power. I remember I had a co-processor in my dock, so the computer was way faster docked than on the road, which is exactly what I needed.
If Apple would bring the DuoDock back, it would not only have additional RAM, DVD, but additional processors too.
Ever seen the documentary "Welcome to Macintosh"? They interviewed someone who has a horde of old Apple and Mac hardware in pretty good (i.e. working) condition, and from nearly every era. He could sell them if he wanted to.
I wonder if the whole collection could be donated to the Smithsonian?
If I remember correctly, you could dock a sleeping Duo, that was one of the great selling features since HP make docks for their laptops but you have to be powered off at the time to dock. I had a Due and would never shut it down, just put it to sleep and dock it and undock. Not it kicking it out completely was rear as well. It has motor inside that slowly pull it in and release it so it would not come flying out.
My mistake. Hey, it's been 12 years! Yes, the Duo would dock sleeping, but the lid on the Duo could also be shut WITHOUT sleeping the Duo. That's what ejected the Duos from those docks, trying to dock a Duo that was on, not off or sleeping.
And, ok, no the dock didn't actually throw it out, but once released, there wasn't really anything keeping it there, and if the dock was tilted forward even slightly, it would fall to the floor. I had to order up a few screen replacements for those!
I have this crazy idea that Apple hardware designs from the 80s look better than most other companies? hardware from the 90s and 2000s!
That server, sitting on a shelf or rack today, would not look outdated! I guess the same goes for some Macs of the time, as well. (In fact, I often see bug clunky PC laptops from today that look to be the same design ?generation? as ancient 90s PowerBooks.)
The Apple ][ card looks like a card that was used to burn ROMS...
The Server is interesting...
With a Mac II case it, likely, is a prototype shared-file server (too early in time for an XServe type server).
In the early -mid 1980's, Apple had next to nothing in the way of HDDs... and nothing at all in the way of shared file servers.
There were several 3rd-parties offering "shared-file server" solutions.
-- 3-Com
-- Nestar
-- IBM Token Ring
-- Novell
-- Corvus Onninet
3-Com, purportedly, had the fastest and most reliable solution (collision detection/recovery) but it was quite expensive -- and required co-ax cable, and custom (difficult/expensive) installation.
Nestar and IBM were ring topology (each computer had a card that was wired to the preceding and following computer... Impractical to install and any failure would bring down the entire network.
Novell had a fast and inexpensive two-wire star topology (collision avoidance) offering, but relied on others for packaging parts of the solution -- so it was difficult to get support.
Corvus had a solution similar to Novel (Two-wire Star topology) and supplied all the components.
In the era when that file server shown was built, we were a reseller of Corvus networks. We installed 7 different Omninet networks at various Apple Headquarters buildings... Except for a few departments like CR, Apple wouldn't share with us what they were used for
We also installed a couple of Corvus networks at the IBM plant in San Jose.
...So, likely, the "Multiserver" was a prototype shared-file server that never saw the light of day -- because there were better solutions on the market.
I worked at Apple between 1988-1990 in the field and I don't remember this product ever being discussed as a possibility for sales.
If I had to guess, this looks like a 1987-circa box for a few reasons. First, the overall box has many styling similarities to the Mac II which would debut in March 1987. The color is gun-metal gray (not white) which was the standard used first on the Mac II and SE and wasn't retired until 1997. The status lights are curiously based on lights I'd see on a Laserwriter of that era, not the Mac II.
The back of the device is more intriguing. Built in Ethernet (10-base-2) "thin" was unheard of back then. There was an Ethernet card for the Mac II that ran about $1000 back then. There are two 50-pin SCSI ports using the peripheral standard connection, not the version seen on Macs back then. One port is marked for hard drives, the other for a tape drive(!). It's unlikely there are two different SCSI controllers...more than likely it's just a common 7 device SCSI chain. The bizarre thing is the other side which are printer hookups. One is a standard RS-432 port found in all Macs of the era and probably supported Localtalk. The other two are old fashioned RS-232 ports. Steve Jobs hated the RS-232 standard so this was likely done after he was gone in 1985. A machine like this could more easily interface to devices like line printers or HP Laserjets...which would be a weird thing to support since Apple was selling Laserwriters (that used Localtalk connectivity).
My guess is that this was supposed to be a small office server which would make sense considering that Apple was trying to sell office systems since the failure of the Mac XL (Lisa) Office solution. The size of the device implies that you might mount a 5.25" full height hard drive for server duty in it (or maybe two). It's likely this device would have been positioned as a headless server in a Mac centric environment. In fact, I would guess that this would have been a vehicle for the first version of Appleshare, which debuted in February 1987.
In the end, the product never shipped. Perhaps it was too expensive or customers just didn't show enough interest. Appleshare would debut anyway and would run on all Macs of the day, especially the Mac II. And you'd still need a Mac to administer it. Two years later Apple would introduce the SE/30 which was basically the guts of a Mac II smashed in a shell of a classic Mac. We sold a lot of those machines as servers since they could easily sit in closets or under desks and perform server duty. Since it had a built-in screen, it was easy to manage. And Ethernet was a third party upgrade. I still have an old SE/30 that still works. It was the best Mac of its era.
As for the Apple ][ board, I agree with the others commentators that it looked like a ROM prototyping board used by peripheral board makers to test code. The shipping version would be a version with a switch that could be retrofitted to early 1977-era Apple ][s. The early Apple ][ used an Integer Basic (4K) and this card replaced it with a 12K floating point basic from Microsoft called Applesoft (and probably coded by Bill Gates himself but ported and expanded by Randy Wigginton). Without the card, the original Apple ][ would boot and drop to a monitor prompt. With the card, the machine would look for expansion card to boot from before giving up to a prompt.
The Apple ][ was an 8-bit world and had 8 expansion slots. Slot 0 could address up to 16K of memory and the classic Pascal "Language" card was a popular option back then. The other slots could address 256 bytes of information (I think) each which would be used to operate the card. If memory serves me correctly, one of the most elegant implementations of the slot system was the Disk ][ interface card by Steve Wozniak himself. The board had just enough program memory to skip the drive head to track 0, read the first sector and decode it in memory. Then the card would run the decoded sector in RAM. The next code was just enough to load the rest of the entire track (13 sectors total in 1978, 16 sectors later) which had the rest of the disk operating system. From there, the code would shift the head to the middle of the disk where the disk directory was, read the file list, print it and return to a prompt. It was a righteous piece of code crammed into a tiny tiny boot function.
There are two 50-pin SCSI ports using the peripheral standard connection, not the version seen on Macs back then. One port is marked for hard drives, the other for a tape drive(!). It's unlikely there are two different SCSI controllers...more than likely it's just a common 7 device SCSI chain. The bizarre thing is the other side which are printer hookups.
this is bizarre indeed, these are the wrong side of the SCSI interface. Moreover, the color of the case should've aged by now, even if it was preserved in a closet, and became yellowish in color.
There were also available a whole variety of, both, Apple and 3rd party "mini-docks" that you could just pop onto the back connecter that would enable you to connect everything from a single particular peripheral to "multi-mini-dock" for a full keyboard, floppy/hard disk, monitor, ethernet, etc.
I still get that "First Mac excitement feel" when I think back on it. Oooh! dialing up to AOL on 14.4k modem. Sweet!
14.4K? Man, that was like a Ferrari! I remember the 2800 BAUD modem on my Apple II... The text letters appeared one at a time. lol It was like watching paint dry.
The reason the Duo fail in the market place is because Apple at the time did not market the product right.
Well, at the time, people viewed Apple products differently. They had NuBus cards in them, ADB, etc.. Everything, and I mean everything was more expensive for a Mac. There was a big push, back then, to settle on a standard, and that standard was the cheaper PC with Windows. Macs were ungodly expensive. When OS 9 launched, Macs were using more standardized USB bus and PCI cards. I remember feeling sad that OS 9 wouldn't work on my Mac clone because I had ADB and NuBus. My PowerComputing clone was something on the order of $4K. Yes, I got a high-end system, but justified it because it wouldn't feel slow as soon. Never considered Apple would just make it obsolete with an OS upgrade.
I just remember full and well that Apple stock was dropping like a lead balloon and people constantly asked me why I was using a Mac because Macs were obsolete. But I never found the joy in my Dell or the one's I've built that even compared to the joy I felt owning Apple products over the years.
Comments
If I remember correctly, you could dock a sleeping Duo, that was one of the great selling features since HP make docks for their laptops but you have to be powered off at the time to dock. I had a Due and would never shut it down, just put it to sleep and dock it and undock. Not it kicking it out completely was rear as well. It has motor inside that slowly pull it in and release it so it would not come flying out.
True, and besides the Docking station was more than just a box, it actually carried additional RAM, HD, CD, and processing power. I remember I had a co-processor in my dock, so the computer was way faster docked than on the road, which is exactly what I needed.
If Apple would bring the DuoDock back, it would not only have additional RAM, DVD, but additional processors too.
Ever seen the documentary "Welcome to Macintosh"? They interviewed someone who has a horde of old Apple and Mac hardware in pretty good (i.e. working) condition, and from nearly every era. He could sell them if he wanted to.
I wonder if the whole collection could be donated to the Smithsonian?
If I remember correctly, you could dock a sleeping Duo, that was one of the great selling features since HP make docks for their laptops but you have to be powered off at the time to dock. I had a Due and would never shut it down, just put it to sleep and dock it and undock. Not it kicking it out completely was rear as well. It has motor inside that slowly pull it in and release it so it would not come flying out.
My mistake. Hey, it's been 12 years! Yes, the Duo would dock sleeping, but the lid on the Duo could also be shut WITHOUT sleeping the Duo. That's what ejected the Duos from those docks, trying to dock a Duo that was on, not off or sleeping.
And, ok, no the dock didn't actually throw it out, but once released, there wasn't really anything keeping it there, and if the dock was tilted forward even slightly, it would fall to the floor. I had to order up a few screen replacements for those!
That server, sitting on a shelf or rack today, would not look outdated! I guess the same goes for some Macs of the time, as well. (In fact, I often see bug clunky PC laptops from today that look to be the same design ?generation? as ancient 90s PowerBooks.)
I wonder if the whole collection could be donated to the Smithsonian?
Well, that stuff isn't getting any newer!
The Server is interesting...
With a Mac II case it, likely, is a prototype shared-file server (too early in time for an XServe type server).
In the early -mid 1980's, Apple had next to nothing in the way of HDDs... and nothing at all in the way of shared file servers.
There were several 3rd-parties offering "shared-file server" solutions.
-- 3-Com
-- Nestar
-- IBM Token Ring
-- Novell
-- Corvus Onninet
3-Com, purportedly, had the fastest and most reliable solution (collision detection/recovery) but it was quite expensive -- and required co-ax cable, and custom (difficult/expensive) installation.
Nestar and IBM were ring topology (each computer had a card that was wired to the preceding and following computer... Impractical to install and any failure would bring down the entire network.
Novell had a fast and inexpensive two-wire star topology (collision avoidance) offering, but relied on others for packaging parts of the solution -- so it was difficult to get support.
Corvus had a solution similar to Novel (Two-wire Star topology) and supplied all the components.
In the era when that file server shown was built, we were a reseller of Corvus networks. We installed 7 different Omninet networks at various Apple Headquarters buildings... Except for a few departments like CR, Apple wouldn't share with us what they were used for
We also installed a couple of Corvus networks at the IBM plant in San Jose.
...So, likely, the "Multiserver" was a prototype shared-file server that never saw the light of day -- because there were better solutions on the market.
If I had to guess, this looks like a 1987-circa box for a few reasons. First, the overall box has many styling similarities to the Mac II which would debut in March 1987. The color is gun-metal gray (not white) which was the standard used first on the Mac II and SE and wasn't retired until 1997. The status lights are curiously based on lights I'd see on a Laserwriter of that era, not the Mac II.
The back of the device is more intriguing. Built in Ethernet (10-base-2) "thin" was unheard of back then. There was an Ethernet card for the Mac II that ran about $1000 back then. There are two 50-pin SCSI ports using the peripheral standard connection, not the version seen on Macs back then. One port is marked for hard drives, the other for a tape drive(!). It's unlikely there are two different SCSI controllers...more than likely it's just a common 7 device SCSI chain. The bizarre thing is the other side which are printer hookups. One is a standard RS-432 port found in all Macs of the era and probably supported Localtalk. The other two are old fashioned RS-232 ports. Steve Jobs hated the RS-232 standard so this was likely done after he was gone in 1985. A machine like this could more easily interface to devices like line printers or HP Laserjets...which would be a weird thing to support since Apple was selling Laserwriters (that used Localtalk connectivity).
My guess is that this was supposed to be a small office server which would make sense considering that Apple was trying to sell office systems since the failure of the Mac XL (Lisa) Office solution. The size of the device implies that you might mount a 5.25" full height hard drive for server duty in it (or maybe two). It's likely this device would have been positioned as a headless server in a Mac centric environment. In fact, I would guess that this would have been a vehicle for the first version of Appleshare, which debuted in February 1987.
In the end, the product never shipped. Perhaps it was too expensive or customers just didn't show enough interest. Appleshare would debut anyway and would run on all Macs of the day, especially the Mac II. And you'd still need a Mac to administer it. Two years later Apple would introduce the SE/30 which was basically the guts of a Mac II smashed in a shell of a classic Mac. We sold a lot of those machines as servers since they could easily sit in closets or under desks and perform server duty. Since it had a built-in screen, it was easy to manage. And Ethernet was a third party upgrade. I still have an old SE/30 that still works. It was the best Mac of its era.
As for the Apple ][ board, I agree with the others commentators that it looked like a ROM prototyping board used by peripheral board makers to test code. The shipping version would be a version with a switch that could be retrofitted to early 1977-era Apple ][s. The early Apple ][ used an Integer Basic (4K) and this card replaced it with a 12K floating point basic from Microsoft called Applesoft (and probably coded by Bill Gates himself but ported and expanded by Randy Wigginton). Without the card, the original Apple ][ would boot and drop to a monitor prompt. With the card, the machine would look for expansion card to boot from before giving up to a prompt.
The Apple ][ was an 8-bit world and had 8 expansion slots. Slot 0 could address up to 16K of memory and the classic Pascal "Language" card was a popular option back then. The other slots could address 256 bytes of information (I think) each which would be used to operate the card. If memory serves me correctly, one of the most elegant implementations of the slot system was the Disk ][ interface card by Steve Wozniak himself. The board had just enough program memory to skip the drive head to track 0, read the first sector and decode it in memory. Then the card would run the decoded sector in RAM. The next code was just enough to load the rest of the entire track (13 sectors total in 1978, 16 sectors later) which had the rest of the disk operating system. From there, the code would shift the head to the middle of the disk where the disk directory was, read the file list, print it and return to a prompt. It was a righteous piece of code crammed into a tiny tiny boot function.
There are two 50-pin SCSI ports using the peripheral standard connection, not the version seen on Macs back then. One port is marked for hard drives, the other for a tape drive(!). It's unlikely there are two different SCSI controllers...more than likely it's just a common 7 device SCSI chain. The bizarre thing is the other side which are printer hookups.
this is bizarre indeed, these are the wrong side of the SCSI interface. Moreover, the color of the case should've aged by now, even if it was preserved in a closet, and became yellowish in color.
I loved the Duos. The 230 was my first Mac.
There were also available a whole variety of, both, Apple and 3rd party "mini-docks" that you could just pop onto the back connecter that would enable you to connect everything from a single particular peripheral to "multi-mini-dock" for a full keyboard, floppy/hard disk, monitor, ethernet, etc.
I still get that "First Mac excitement feel" when I think back on it. Oooh! dialing up to AOL on 14.4k modem. Sweet!
14.4K? Man, that was like a Ferrari! I remember the 2800 BAUD modem on my Apple II... The text letters appeared one at a time. lol It was like watching paint dry.
The reason the Duo fail in the market place is because Apple at the time did not market the product right.
Well, at the time, people viewed Apple products differently. They had NuBus cards in them, ADB, etc.. Everything, and I mean everything was more expensive for a Mac. There was a big push, back then, to settle on a standard, and that standard was the cheaper PC with Windows. Macs were ungodly expensive. When OS 9 launched, Macs were using more standardized USB bus and PCI cards. I remember feeling sad that OS 9 wouldn't work on my Mac clone because I had ADB and NuBus. My PowerComputing clone was something on the order of $4K. Yes, I got a high-end system, but justified it because it wouldn't feel slow as soon. Never considered Apple would just make it obsolete with an OS upgrade.
I just remember full and well that Apple stock was dropping like a lead balloon and people constantly asked me why I was using a Mac because Macs were obsolete. But I never found the joy in my Dell or the one's I've built that even compared to the joy I felt owning Apple products over the years.
I hope someone ultimately makes a museum of Apple products and the prototypes that led up to those products.
Digibarn, in Santa Cruz, has a pretty interesting collection of 'vintage' Apple products:
http://www.digibarn.com/collections/...all/index.html