Building an Apple-1 From Scratch — Just Like Woz

Lucas123 writes "This year at KansasFest, computer fans from around the world gathered to celebrate the Apple II — the computer that put Apple on the map. But the Apple-1 (a.k.a. the Apple I), the machine Steve Wozniak invented and first demonstrated at the Palo Alto Homebrew Computer Club in 1976, has always been near to my heart. In attendance at KansasFest was Vince Briel, who created an authorized reproduction the Apple-1 and showed others how to build their own. 'As a regular KansasFest attendee (and the conference's marketing director), I was one of his students. Follow along as I assemble a fully functional Apple-1 clone.'"

Comments

And next week...

[raehl]

...he will attempt to talk to women!

Authorized replica?

[MartinSchou]

It was made in 1976. That's 33 years ago. Any relevant patents should have expired about 13 years ago.

Re:Authorized replica?

[gilgoomesh]

Copyright and trademarks (particularly "Apple" referring to a computer) can last much longer.

Although in this case, the authorization may just be the annointing from Woz himself.

Re:Authorized replica?

[NormalVisual]

Yes, actually you do. A patent (in the US, anyway) gives the holder the right to keep others from "making, using, offering for sale, or selling" whatever is covered under the patent, unless it's a patented process, in which case it's "using, offering for sale or selling throughout the United States, or importing into the United States, products made by that process".

"Authorized" reproduction

[erroneus]

There's something about it that sticks in my craw.

It's "an antique" computer. It's a computer of historical significance. But to require authorization to recreate something that was essentially made of "off the shelf" components? The only thing I can imagine would require authorization would be the right to put an apple logo on it, and they give away apple logo stickers with just about everything Apple sells. Oh yeah, and the BASIC ROM, but I am sure someone could start an OSS project to create a compatible Apple ROM that doesn't infringe on the copyright.

Re:"Authorized" reproduction

[kgagne]

There are some details about the legal hurdles behind the Apple-1 replica in this 2002 article from Wired: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2002/11/56426

Re:"Authorized" reproduction

[captjc]

Not only that, but didn't Woz give the schematics away to anyone who wanted it?

Re:"Authorized" reproduction

[type40]

If I recall correctly it wasn't that Apple was forbidding him from making the Replica 1. He was just worried that Apple MIGHT sue him. So he tried to get permission from Apple but kept running into brick walls.
No one ever said no to him, they just kept saying no comment. So out of left field he calls up the Woz to see if maybe he knows who to talk to in Apple. He tells the Woz what he's up to and the Woz loves it. Woz told him to go ahead because the Apple 1 ROM is "open source". Woz made copies of the ROM code freely available to anyone who wanted it. Then Woz offered him copies of the original code and documentation.

It's not so much Apple authorized but Woz blessed.

Re:"Authorized" reproduction

[grub]

Not only that, but didn't Woz give the schematics away to anyone who wanted it?

The early Apple was a truly great company in the way it shared information. My first machine ever was an Apple ][+ I bought (with 50% of the cost from my parents) in 1981. It came with several spiral bound books, my favourite being the System Reference manual. That had an assembler dump of the ROM, schematics, etc. I cut my teeth on that machine (which I still have in working order FWIW). Replaced the resistor in a resistor/capacitor pair on a 555 timer chip with a potentiometer to have a variable repeat key speed.

Yeah, that kind of shit is all done in software nowadays, but I did this by reading the docs from Apple and some Trial & Error when I was 15.

Fast forward to today and, honest truth, I was THIS CLOSE to buying a pair of iPhones for the coolness and opted not to because of the way those NON TECHNICAL CUNTS who run things opted to SUCK THE COCK of AT&T rather than being true geeks.

Obviously, I didn't buy the phones. Have a jailbroken iPod touch for Google Voice and future cool Bluetooth stuff but I'm saddened that I have to go off the grid for coolness when, back in the day, Apple == Cool.

Now get off my fucking lawn.

.

Re:"Authorized" reproduction

[dzfoo]

Kit tested, Wozster approved.

      -dZ.

A Kit?

[maz2331]

I was hoping for something more in-depth than just soldering stuff on a prefabricated PCB. That's a no-brainer.

Now, go through the steps of doing a schematic, then translating it into artwork and etching the boards and it might be a pretty interesting article.

Re:A Kit?

[neapolitan]

Agreed. This is little more than assembling something from a recipe (IKEA, anyone?) that teaches you little. The descriptions "solder that resistor" and the fact he clearly doesn't understand the details of things makes it a less interesting experience.

I would recommend a course on digital electronics instead -- many of these courses (including mine in college) have you assemble a 6502 computer yourself from components, and then you will understand the role of the memory and data buses, counter, memory addresses, A/D converters, in addition to understanding CPU timing, latches, machine code, and elementary programming, etc., etc. We built one that displayed output on an oscilloscope and hex LEDs. It will be 10 times as much effort, but infinitely more rewarding. One of the most difficult yet fun courses that I took in my life.

There is a book

[captjc]

There is a book (linked in the article) called "Apple I Replica Creation: Back To The Garage" by Tom Owad that basically walks you through the construction of the Breil Computer kit, as well as a crash course in programming it in assembly and BASIC as well a a crash course in electronics design. It is a good read.

All-in-all, this is nothing really special. Anyone who buys the kit can solder it together. I believe he also has fully constructed boards as well. This seems more like an advertisement than an actual story.

For the true Woz experience

[Anonymous Coward]

To get the true Woz experience have your best friend steal thousands from you and then lie to you about it.

Some high schools offer this stuff

[name_already_taken]

In high school I took a class like that, except it was at a much lower level - we actually worked towards the design of a 4-bit microprocessor based on discrete logic gates and flip flops. We started with simple AND, OR, NOR, NAND gates, the different types of flip flops, moving to using Karnaugh maps to design logic, and covering simple CPU design - things like bus registers.

I remember one week's project was to design and build a hex matrix keypad - it was pretty neat to build something like that out of 74-series logic on a breadboard and actually have it work. I used a string of three inverters (1/4 each of a 7404) with the output of the last inverter feeding back into the input of the first, as my keypad's clock generator. The teacher was surprised it worked, and even more surprised that the 74-series logic was running at 24MHz (this was 1988, and the fastest computer we had in the lab ran at 6MHz).

I also remember building a 7-segment LED display driver circuit, and things like adders and shift registers.

I think the only reason our school was able to offer this class was because there was a State program that offered grants to high schools to improve their electronics labs. The total grant money available for the entire state was $150,000. We were told that the electronics teacher at the school was the only applicant for the grant program and our school had been awarded the entire $150,000. Needless to say, the electronics lab at my high school was better equipped than some university labs I've seen.