Remembering Tony Diaz

Tony Diaz passed away recently. He was a very fervent Apple enthusiast, particularly a fan of the Apple ][. I never met him in real life, but over the past few years we talked quite a bit on IRC—where he alternated between the handles “amd” and “tdiaz”—about his involvement with the final few weeks of Apple’s Pippin project.

A few weeks ago, in one of the last conversations I had with Tony, he gave me permission to share his story and assorted photos of various Pippin-related ephemera. Rather than editorialize his own words myself, I think it makes the most sense to simply share word-for-word what he in turn shared on IRC. I have however edited out system messages, typical irrelevant IRC side chatter, and replaced now-dead links to the Internet Archive where available and photo links with the images themselves. Without further ado…

12:38 < blitter> hey dougg3 maybe i asked this before-- how hard would it be to do a pippin rom simm?
12:39 < blitter> in the absence of schematics, i've got access to an original dev ROM. the programmable one from apple
12:39 < blitter> no programmer for it though. i think only apple has/had that
12:40 < koshii> blitter: Whoa, what's your idea with that? :)
12:41 < blitter> bypass the authentication check so I can run whatever
12:41 < blitter> s/run/boot
12:41 < blitter> the dev ROM can do that iirc, and the 1.3 ROM can. however i don't think the 1.3 ROM has surfaced online
12:41 < blitter> they're rarer than hen's teeth
12:42 < blitter> but using this dev ROM makes me really nervous, as it's the only one i've ever come across and i'd hate for something to happen to it if i'm careless
13:00 < koshii> Wow this is neat http://www.vintagemacworld.com/pip1.html
13:01 < koshii> I didn't know about any of this
17:51 < Lord_Nightmare> blitter: iirc the dumps of one of the pippin roms the powerpc boot part in the last 1mb has a bad checksum and may or may not work
18:45 < dougg3> blitter: i'm only here for a few minutes and then i have to go afk again...but i dunno. is it a SIMM or a DIMM? DIMM is more complicated to do. no idea of the pinout of the pippin socket either
18:46 < dougg3> http://thinkclassic.org/viewtopic.php?id=325&p=3 --- ClassicHasClass was doing something with this on ThinkClassic, I think? or is the apple interactive television set top box something else?
18:48 < blitter> not sure, is there a way to tell visually?
18:48 < bbraun> pippen and interactive television box are different afaik
18:49 < blitter> correct
18:49 < blitter> STB predates pippin too i think by 3 or 4 years
18:49 < dougg3> ah, ok
18:49 < dougg3> well, one thing that would be helpful is the number of pins
18:49 < bbraun> and yes, this has come up before, and the same basic questions were asked, and nobody knew or looked into it. :)
18:50 < dougg3> also, if you can see traces going to connectors on both sides of the pcb, that would probably indicate a dimm
18:50 < blitter>
18:50 < blitter> here's a picture
18:50 < dougg3> what i mean is a trace going to essentially each pin
18:50 < blitter> if you can see it (hope you can)
18:50 < dougg3> ok, i can already tell it's not a normal mac rom simm from that, so either way, would require new hardware work :)
18:50 < blitter> right
18:50 < dougg3> i don't know anything about the pinouts. that would be what we'd need to know
18:51 < blitter> the pippin had a special slot for this that i haven't seen elsewhere
18:51 < dougg3> yeah, it's a weird card edge connector instead of a simm/dimm slot it looks like
18:51 < dougg3> like closer to a pci connector
21:52 < blitter> there are traces to contacts on both sides
21:52 < blitter> i guess that means it's a dimm
22:03 < dougg3> yeah, if most contacts have traces on both sides it's probably a dimm
22:03 < dougg3> just means it probably has to be at least 4 layers
22:07 < blitter> in the absence of a pinout, would datasheets of the flash chips help? they're just generic intel chips, i think i have a part #
22:08 < blitter> N28F020-90
22:08 < blitter> 8 of them per side, 262144 bytes each
22:17 < dougg3> if you traced the flash chips out to the pins, that would help
22:17 < dougg3> is that all that's on the board? I see a chip in the middle too
22:26 < balrog> blitter: how many pins are the DIMMs?
22:26 < balrog> these are probably the same as the PPC Performas
22:26 < balrog> and possibly all the way up to the Beige G3
22:26 < balrog> a reprogrammable ROM DIMM for those would be neat.
22:28 < blitter> the chip in the middle says P52AB 74F86 on it and has a tiny national semiconductor logo on it
22:30 < blitter> does the beige g3 use a similar card in it? i have one handy, i can look and compare it
22:30 < blitter> never thought to check
22:31 < blitter> hmm the rom dimm on my beige g3 is longer than the pippin card
22:31 < blitter> there's a slot next to it labeled "sgram only" though which is closer
22:31 < balrog> hmm, it is.
22:32 < balrog> SGRAM is for graphics memory
22:32 < blitter> yeah
22:32 < blitter> idk if the pins are similar, i don't have anything in that slot
22:32 < balrog> how many pins is the beige g3 rom dimm?
22:32 < balrog> and do you have one of those crappy mid-era performas?
22:32 < balrog> like the 6200
22:35 < blitter> unfortunately the only performas i have are LC040s
22:35 < balrog> http://lowendmac.com/2014/power-mac-and-performa-x200-road-apples/
22:35 < blitter> here are some closeup pics
22:35 < blitter>
22:35 < blitter>
22:35 < balrog> that's the one for the Pippin, right?
22:36 < blitter> front and back respectively
22:36 < blitter> yes, pippin
22:39 < tdiaz> That's interesting.
22:40 < tdiaz> Don't think I've seen one with Intel Flash.
22:40 < blitter> i wonder if amelio was still at natl semi when these were made :P
22:41 < balrog> what is that natsemi chip?
22:41 < blitter> i'm guessing some kind of memory controller?
22:41 < blitter> like the MMC chips found in some NES carts maybe? idk
22:42 < blitter> i'm a bit of a noob when it comes to this
22:42 < blitter> the hardware side
22:48 < tdiaz> PiPPiN shizzle..
22:48 < tdiaz>
22:49 < blitter> that's a lot of 1.3 boards... :D
22:50 < blitter> or 1.0 boards
23:07 < dougg3> that's definitely a dimm
23:08 < dougg3> 74F86 is a set of four XOR gates
23:09 < tdiaz> I have some of the STB units too.
23:11 < Lord_Nightmare> STP?
23:12 < Lord_Nightmare> the accelerator?
23:12 < balrog> Lord_Nightmare: set top boxes
23:12 < Lord_Nightmare> oh yeah
23:12 < balrog> Apple Pippin
23:12 < Lord_Nightmare> those.
23:13 < tdiaz> No, the STB is a different thing, '040 based. Elongated pizza box form factor, uses the same SCSI as the Powerbook.
23:13 < blitter> yeah. circa-'93
23:13 < balrog> oh, those things
23:13 < blitter> older cousin of the pippin

23:27 <blitter> Bandai wasn't in the best of shape back then
23:27 <tdiaz> Yeah. It was a mess. ;-)
23:27 <tdiaz> I don't have very many extererior plastic cases- they shipped some in plastic cases like the Sega CD.
23:28 <tdiaz> Others in the cardboard based jewel case clone.
23:28 <tdiaz> Trying to locate the stack of plastic cased ones.
23:34 <tdiaz> A fair amount of whats been listed on various sites for titles never actually shipped, or even existed.
23:36 <tdiaz> I was supposed to get the authoring system from them, in the end. But they pretty much disappeared.
23:36 <tdiaz> The bits on sites about how they shipped them back to Japan and converted them ...
23:36 <tdiaz> It's bull.
23:37 <blitter> hmm, interesting
23:37 <blitter> i thought all the authoring had to go through apple
23:38 <tdiaz> Because we sold close to 40,000 Matsushita/Panasonic SCSI CD drives .. that we extracted from 40,000 boxed PiPPiN units.
23:39 <tdiaz> In a nutshell, BDE was exploring what to do with them.
23:39 <tdiaz> Niche, kiosk unit, something.
23:40 <blitter> yeah and i presume that's where the kmp 2000 sprung from?
23:42 <tdiaz> I had been looking into making larger RAM modules, swapping the SCSI ribbon cables to have a connector on the back, which would have meant a custom metal die to stamp the chassis hole. Disassemble each one, make the hole, put it back together.
23:42 <tdiaz> In the end. BDE decided to just write it off- and we had to scrap them all.
23:43 <tdiaz> The "proof" of the scrapping? - The ROM simm with a hole drilled through the middle of it.
23:44 <tdiaz> The Katz units are ATMark based as far as I knew.
23:46 <tdiaz> Close to 40,000 keyboards, AppleJack controllers,.. mostly ground up.
23:46 <tdiaz> The SCSI drives and external 2400 modems went out our shipping dept. over a few years.
23:46 <blitter> what a shame
23:46 <blitter> the applejack controller was pretty neat
23:47 <tdiaz> Sucked.
23:47 <blitter> Do you have a Super Marathon package?
23:47 <tdiaz> I squirreled away 10 or so boxes, most have the CD drive removed, but were all dumped back in.
23:47 <tdiaz> No package.
23:47 <blitter> just the cd?
23:48 <tdiaz> Yes.
23:48 <blitter> ah ok
23:49 <tdiaz> The KMP 2000 has the SCSI connector.
23:50 <tdiaz> Though I've got several ADB dongles that override the boot check, and adapters to use standard ADB devices.
23:51 <blitter> those are probably harder to recreate than a rom simm though
23:51 <tdiaz> Authoring was intended to be done by Apple, yes- with each licensee having a sub-station and then that would communicate to Apple.
23:51 <tdiaz> Nearing the end, BDE had the whole thing in house.
23:52 <tdiaz> It was a stickered up, modded Mac IIsi.
23:52 <blitter> hah!
23:52 <blitter> i take it you worked for BDE during that time
23:52 <blitter> ;)
23:53 <tdiaz> No, actually.
23:53 <blitter> i wonder otherwise how you know all of this
23:53 <tdiaz> Yeah. I know. ;-)
23:53 <tdiaz> (Or have CDs marked as BDEC corporate portfolio, etc. .
23:54 <tdiaz> I was with a computer/electronics surplus place.
23:54 <blitter> ah
23:54 <tdiaz> They came to us ..
23:54 <blitter> my first guess was going to be maybe you jumped on some kind of auction or office raid when they closed up shop
23:56 <tdiaz> When I got into what else they had, I ended up with a couple wireless (RF) AppleJack, 13MB RAM module, Floppy Dock, EtherDock, a box of CDs..
23:56 <tdiaz> Worked for about two months to market/find a need and make the thing 'fit'.
23:56 <blitter> do you have the blue case for racing days?
23:57 <blitter> it used the same template as super marathon
23:57 <blitter> that RAM module.... yeah. hang onto that :)
23:57 <tdiaz> I'm not sure. That's a box I can't find right now.
23:58 <tdiaz> I got a lot of discs just dumped in a box, and 15 or so packaged ones in the larger case.
23:58 <tdiaz> It was clear they were not going to make anymore - it turned to "what can we get for them" ..
23:58 <tdiaz> and the bean counters ultimately decided the write off was a better option.
23:59 <tdiaz> They didn't care what happened with the stuff, as long as the ROM SIMMs were accounted for, with a certificate of destruction.
--- Day changed Tue Nov 17 2015
00:00 <tdiaz> The CD drives and modems were in demand, as Apple had the custom firmware only recognized by MacOS .. and these were basically CD 600i
00:01 <tdiaz> The power supplies, many got sold as a raw power supply for bench screwing around./
00:02 <tdiaz> Local trash hauler .. "you need a roll-off for cardboard?" .. "no, actually. I need a couple, and they need to be swapped a few times."
00:02 <tdiaz> Lots of cardboard. Each unit was in the outer brown carton with the inner white package inside.
00:03 <tdiaz> I could do an "unboxing" video .. ;-)
00:04 <tdiaz> Crap. I don't know why I did that.
00:04 <tdiaz> (Fake Mac) .. has a weird issue with the optical drive.
00:05 <tdiaz> If a disc is mounted for "too long" (how long, don't know) idle, it will not come out, unmount, the drive goes off line and a restart is required.
00:06 <tdiaz> I had just done that earlier. I was going to poke around one of their corporate marked discs.
00:06 <tdiaz> As for the authoring, I'
00:07 <tdiaz> ve got some discs that boot into 7.5.5/Finder, using OpenTransport to connect for internet- SlIP, PPP, Ethernet or MacIP.
00:07 <tdiaz> One that boots to 7.6, and a few others with HyperStudio / HyperCard
00:08 <tdiaz> Authenticated - mastered, to boot on any unit.
00:09 <tdiaz> I've not uploaded them anywhere because they've got some stuff I never intended to distribute externally.
00:09 <blitter> huh, interesting
00:10 <tdiaz> If perhaps- take a sector editor to an ISO and blast specific file entries to smithereens ..
00:10 <tdiaz> See if it would still pass since it's otherwise got the key'ed boot sector.
00:10 <blitter> Just the boot sector is keyed?
00:10 <blitter> I thought it was the whole disc. then i wondered how the check was done at boot since the boot time is far too short to read the whole disc
00:11 <tdiaz> The disc is checksummed, and that, plus the key is put into the boot sector.
00:12 <tdiaz> That's it. No other protection. You could copy titles as a whole. When I was getting stuff authored - I brought a 650MB external SCSI drive to them. Left with the drive and a CD.
00:12 <tdiaz> ..and interestingly, the drive itself;f would actually boot as an authenticated volume until it was screwed with.
00:15 <tdiaz> The order to scrap the stuff came from Tokyo ultimately. Even the locals were hoping they would just dump them as surplus, as is.
00:16 <tdiaz> If not find a niche to market them towards.
00:27 <tdiaz> This stuff all happened from about March 1998, and it was late October when they decided.
00:29 <tdiaz> The scuttlebutt was the inventory had been sitting since 2Q 1997, untouched except for returned, un-opened stock placed back with it.
00:31 <tdiaz> So it sounds like to me, the latter half of 1997, the thing petered out- and early 1998 they were trying to regroup, ultimately calling it a year later.
00:31 <tdiaz> My stuff is date July & Sept. 1998.

00:32 < tdiaz> I've got a System 7.5.5 and 7.6 signed disc for PiPPiN.
00:33 < tdiaz> Problem is, release wise- it'
00:33 < tdiaz> s got stuff on it I never intended to spread around.
00:34 < tdiaz> Always figured I'd be able to make "all I wanted", back when. As I was supposed to end up with the authoring system.
00:35 < Lord_Nightmare> tdiaz: is the entire disk checked during sig check, or only the header?
00:35 < tdiaz> The bean counters ultimately decided, "write it off", scrap 40K units, by removing the ROM SIMM, which is accessible from, underneath.
00:35 < tdiaz> Drill a hole it, certificate of destruction.
00:35 < tdiaz> Just the boot sector.
00:35 < tdiaz> That makes me wonder ..
00:35 < Lord_Nightmare> since even if we can't alter the file system itself (if that part is signed), we can very easily null out any data you don't want released on the disk
00:35 < tdiaz> H,mmm..
00:36 < tdiaz> Yeah, that'
00:36 < Lord_Nightmare> and while the files may appear on the disk they'd be blank
00:36 < tdiaz> s what I'd thought of figuring a way of.
00:36 < Lord_Nightmare> or "ThisFileIntentionallyBlankedOut" over and over and over
00:36 < Lord_Nightmare> hex editor :)
00:37 < tdiaz> I probably should try it. Make an image, burn it back, see if it boots.
00:37 < Lord_Nightmare> also what is the signature means?
00:37 < Lord_Nightmare> is it rsa-128?
00:37 < tdiaz> If it does, whack some data and see if it still boots.
00:37 < Lord_Nightmare> if its 128 bit rsa that can be cracked extremely easily
00:37 < tdiaz> It's a keypair, I believe 64 bit, and involves a checksum of the volume at the time of mastering.
00:38 < tdiaz> At worse, it's 128.
00:38 < Lord_Nightmare> 64 bit, if we knew the algorithm could be cracked in probably less than a minute
00:38 < Lord_Nightmare> 128 bit in a few hours or days
00:38 < Lord_Nightmare> on an AWS cluster, less
00:39 < blitter> for a second i thought AWS meant Apple Workgroup Server :P
00:39 < tdiaz> LOL ;-)
00:39 < blitter> i didn't think they were *that* powerful
00:39 < blitter> :P
00:39 < tdiaz> I know a generic boot disc with OpenTransport would be nice to have.
00:39 < tdiaz> Though that also is partially an issue.
00:40 < tdiaz> The dialup information - is written to the disc.
00:40 < tdiaz> I have several ones for different ISPs, back in the day.
00:40 < Lord_Nightmare> the AWS bootroms are dumped
00:40 < tdiaz> netcom, netzero, juno .. etc.
00:41 < Lord_Nightmare> balrog found 2 boards somewhere and we dumped both of them
00:41 < Lord_Nightmare> whats NOT dumped is the ANS/"shiner" roms
00:41 < Lord_Nightmare> those i'd really love to see

20:33 < blitter> huh, well that's new
20:34 < blitter> i got the rom copier to copy my pippin's rom
20:34 < blitter> at the end it complains the checksum doesn't match
20:36 < koshii> How would it even know the checksum
20:38 < blitter> it verifies after the copy
20:38 < blitter> i wonder if it's because i only gave it 3000K?
20:39 < blitter> maybe it needs more RAM when verifying and just fails if it runs out
20:39 < blitter> also, i have a pippin prototype now
20:39 < blitter> so will be dumping its ROM next
20:39 < blitter> i suspect its ROM may just be 1.0, since it says "GM Flash" on it
20:40 < koshii> Crazy, how did you get your paws on that?
20:41 < blitter> friend of mine has one
20:41 < koshii> Are you all ex-Apple employees or something?
20:41 < blitter> he's letting me borrow it for the next couple weeks
20:41 < blitter> no
20:41 < blitter> ex-pippin developers ;)
20:42 < koshii> ahh
20:42 < koshii> A small group of folks I guess :)
20:42 < blitter> yup
20:42 < blitter> who knows how many pippin protos are left
20:42 < blitter> i imagine tdiaz probably has one
20:42 < koshii> Was the Pippin ever commercially produced?
20:42 < blitter> oh yah
20:42 < koshii> At all, in any number?
20:42 < blitter> mostly in japan
20:42 < koshii> I see
20:42 < blitter> they're pretty available on ebay
20:43 < koshii> Can they boot bog-standard OS7?
20:43 < blitter> the japanese model anyway. the black US version is rarer
20:43 < blitter> mine boots into 7.5.3
20:43 < blitter> 7.6 kinda works
20:43 < blitter> 8 doesn't
20:43 < blitter> http://www.vintagemacworld.com/pip1.html
20:44 < koshii> Pippin can only do LocalTalk?
20:48 < blitter> a stock one, yeah
20:49 < blitter> there might have been an ethernet dock but i haven't seen one nor do i have one
20:54 < blitter> in any case, both times i launched the rom copier and ran it, it generated the same md5 at startup
20:54 < blitter> so maybe the dump is fine?
21:22 < jjuran> blitter: Yeah, sha256sum is a separate binary, so it could fail to run.
21:22 < jjuran> Er, md5sum.
21:23 < jjuran> Good to hear you got it working. :-)
21:26 < blitter> ah ok, that explains things
21:26 < blitter> i just also dumped the rom from my prototype, it has the same checksum as the "kinka dev" rom that's floating on the internet
21:26 < blitter> so i'm going to assume that's also a good dump
21:37 < blitter> jjuran: i do have some mem usage numbers for you if you want :)
21:38 < blitter> 111K launching, 1657K while calculating checksums, 1565K while waiting to click Copy/Quit, 2812K used when copying
21:38 < blitter> don't have numbers for verification since it didn't get very far into that process
23:33 < tdiaz> 50,000 of them were sitting in Orange County for a few years. I think it sold more than the Sony eVilla. Barely.
23:34 < tdiaz> But in the end, 40K of them were written off and scrapped.
23:34 < blitter> :(
23:34 < tdiaz> No, they didn't get "sent back to Japan" and re-badged.
23:35 < tdiaz> Because we (where I worked at the time) actually did the scrapping.
23:36 < tdiaz> After some earnest attempts at getting them sold in various niche markets, Bandai ultimately decided to take the write off and we had to return the ROM SIMMs as 'proof'.
23:37 < tdiaz> The edge connectors were chopped off the SIMMs for gold reclaimation.
23:39 < tdiaz> I have several boxed units still, though they had their ROMs yanked as well. I was able to take what I could put in the trunk that day.
23:40 < tdiaz> Units opened, ROMs removed, placed back in the original packaging, carried out back. ;-)
23:42 < tdiaz> We ended up selling the modems and SCSI CD readers into the end user market.
23:49 < tdiaz> The controllers, keyboards didn't seem to strike up much interest. The ruggedized ADB connector is probably the biggest reason, as the 'batarang' controller worked fully with MacOS (Game sprockets).
23:50 < tdiaz> Changing the cables or even just making an adapter wasn't economical.
23:52 < tdiaz> Though .. if the connectors from the motherboard had not been right angle PCB mount ... as we considered removing them and using it to make an adapter. But finding a hood that would cover the thing the way it was, was the big problem. If they had pins straight back, the whole thing would have fit nicely into a 15 pin D-sub hood. (PC Gameport sized) with a female MiniDin 4 in the hole.
23:54 < tdiaz> At the time, costs to get an injection mold made to make a custom hood was about $200K just by itself.
23:56 < tdiaz> I've got an EtherDock and FloppyDock, 13MB RAM expansion card, a few of the wireless controllers, some 1200 baud modems that are actually styled to go along with the thing, that never shipped because they went with an off the shelf Motorola 2400 external with PiPPiN silkscreened onto it, and it
23:57 < tdiaz> 's case was black plastic instead of the beige, tan, white, whatever that the same modem had in it's retail packaged iteration.
23:59 < tdiaz> All this about the various ROMs and how there was one that had the authentication check removed.. I've never encountered one. The two ROM sets that I have many SIMMs of, have been dumped, and required the authenticated disc or the developer dongle will override that.
--- Day changed Sun Mar 05 2017
00:01 < tdiaz> Otherwise the only other way to override it was to attach a SCSI HD in line with CD drive. It would boot un-authenticated from the HD only, with it being SCSI 0 or 6 only. I can't recall. The CD ROM was configured as ID 4 and had the parity jumper on it, unlike the ones in the computers.
00:02 < tdiaz> "AppleJack" controller - though I called it the batarang, batwing, boomerang, two ended banana..

16:27 < blitter> did anyone in here win this auction? https://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-Bandai-Pippin-ROM-Update-Disc-/323641812449
16:27 < blitter> tdiaz: do you have this ROM 1.1 disc?
17:54 < tdiaz> blitter: I have a disc that looks like that, I cant say for sure what the title is off hand, the PiPPiN stuff isnt accessible at the moment, though I'll see if I can get to it..
18:18 < blitter> tdiaz: if you could locate that disc, i'd love to get a copy of it. supposedly it updates the firmware/ROM on dev units? but i would be really surprised if devs were trusted to do that. still, want to examine the disc to find out what's on it
18:18 < blitter> would be further surprised if pippins are even wired to write to the ROM board
18:19 < blitter> (pleasantly surprised, mind :) )
18:24 < tdiaz> I keep hesring about these ROM upgrades, or these ROM versions that don't require thr disc autherntication..
18:24 < blitter> the only ones of *those* I know of are dev ROMs and the 1.3
18:25 < blitter> I've never seen a ROM version 1.1, so curious if that's on the ROM upgrade disc as well
18:25 < tdiaz> I've got some ADB dongles that override the check.
18:25 < blitter> would love to reverse engineer those
18:25 < tdiaz> Rainbow Sentinel.
18:25 < blitter> only thing I know about them is that they have an ADB "type" of 43 or something
18:26 < tdiaz> Standard Mac issue .. with a second dongle cable, rugged ADB to standard.
18:26 < blitter> i've seen another dongle from i think MicroGuard?
18:26 < tdiaz> Maybe it's MicroGuard.
18:27 < tdiaz> It's got a triangular-ish piece of plastic with the logo on the top, it's nearly squared cylinder shaped. About the size of a lipstick.
18:28 < tdiaz> With the cable hanging off an addition 3 inches or so.
18:28 < blitter>
18:28 < blitter> that?
18:28 < tdiaz> The last time I read the wikipedia site on PiPPiN, it was mostly total bullshit, as were most of the blog sites, none actualy had the real story.
18:29 < tdiaz> Yes, that.
18:29 < blitter> the pippin page on wikipedia is full of crap, yeah
18:29 < blitter> the pippin wikia is more accurate (i'm friends with the admin)
18:29 < tdiaz> None of them were "sent back", repackaged, or anything of the sort.
18:30 < blitter> the dongles?
18:30 < tdiaz> The units in north America.
18:30 < blitter> i believe that
18:30 < blitter> apple probably didn't care :P
18:30 < tdiaz> I know .. because I had to oversee just under 50,000 of them get disassembled and scrapped.
18:30 < blitter> :'(
18:31 < tdiaz> While retaining the ROM SIMMs.
18:31 < blitter> were those dev units? or retail?
18:31 < blitter> (both?)
18:32 < tdiaz> Retail. Packagesd.
18:32 < tdiaz> That was -the- initial shipment for North America.
18:32 < blitter> losing the 1.2 SIMMs is no huge loss imo
18:32 < blitter> they were mask ROMs anyway and have the auth check
18:32 < tdiaz> Exactly.
18:33 < blitter> kinda sucks the units themselves were scrapped because i really like the dark case
18:33 < blitter> but oh well, i have one, i'm good :)
18:33 < tdiaz> The product launch was so shitty ..
18:33 < tdiaz> Piss poorly done, too much cost, though you were actually getting something that -could- be a real computer at least, unlike that Sony eVilla..
18:34 < tdiaz> Which they just took those all back.
18:34 < tdiaz> The PiPPiNs were each individually packed, with an exterior box over the white box.
18:34 < blitter> never heard of the eVilla... wow. looks like it was waaaaay late on that boat
18:34 < tdiaz> Oh, yeah. Way. Late. :)
18:35 < tdiaz> The whole IA thing .. totally fucked over Be.
18:35 < tdiaz> I was trying to find a niche market for those PiPPiNs..
18:36 < tdiaz> Kioks, school network multi-unit installs, etc.
18:36 < blitter> kiosk makes a lot of sense
18:36 < tdiaz> But in the end, the Bandai America corporate people just threw in the towel, and decided to write it off .. as the best, and quick plan of action.
18:37 < tdiaz> Which meant certificate of destruction, so they told us we could keep / do whatever we wanted with everything except the ROM SIMM.
18:38 < tdiaz> Which they wanted back, as a physical count, to be destroyed.
18:39 < tdiaz> "Oh, we can do that for you, too" .. so we got the whole thing, and provided certified documentation that the ROM SIMMs were shredded.
18:40 < tdiaz> We ended up chopping the edge connectors off just about a few mm under the ROM so that the ROM chip itself would also have damage and be most lilely ripped off the PCB, rip up traces..
18:41 < tdiaz> So there was a flood of Matsushita/Panasonic CD 504-L's on the market for $19 bucks.
18:41 < blitter> hahaha!
18:41 < blitter> makes sense
18:42 < blitter> wonder what happened to the applejack controllers
18:42 < tdiaz> For $29, if you wanted the "right" bezel, 'cause I got some made.
18:42 < blitter> the black ones are hard to come by
18:42 < tdiaz> The controllers, keyboards.. tried to sell them invidivually, but without the ADB connector adapter..
18:42 < tdiaz> They ended up gettig scrapped.
18:43 < blitter> :'(
18:43 < blitter> the keyboards are even harder to find
18:43 < tdiaz> The metal chassis, the plastic shells, the papers, cardboard, packaged CDs, all of it, went into separate gaylords and scrapped.
18:43 < blitter> especially with the stylus
18:44 < tdiaz> I kept approx 15 units for myself.
18:44 < tdiaz> Though I got most of those from when they were opening them and taking the SIMM out.
18:45 < tdiaz> What I was supposed to get, but the contact at Bandai disappeared shortly after that, was their mastering system.
18:45 < blitter> !!
18:45 < blitter> that would have saved me a hell of a lot of trouble :P
18:46 < tdiaz> Which was just an SE/30 with software / burner attached.
18:46 < blitter> i heard it was a IIsi
18:46 < blitter> in a safe
18:46 < blitter> or maybe that was just the signing machine
18:46 < blitter> was the mastering system essentially a Mac loaded up with Toast?
18:47 < tdiaz> Yeah, the sigining machine was a IIsi, but the SE/30 had the same stuff on it becauise it was more compact.
18:47 < blitter> that's how i mastered the pegasus prime disc, albeit it's unsigned, obviously
18:48 < tdiaz> Basically, Toast and the sigining utility that would write to the hard drive before you ran Toast on it and made an image of the drive.
18:48 < blitter> ohhhh yeah that would be valuable
18:48 < tdiaz> I have a couple signed discs that boot into 7.6
18:48 < blitter> 7.6 runs but not well
18:48 < tdiaz> Because I have the 13MB RAM card, it works quite well.
18:49 < tdiaz> But without it, OMG. Forgetaboutit.
18:49 < blitter> when i run 7.6 on my pippin i get video issues
18:49 < tdiaz> OpenTransport worked so much nicer on pippin.
18:49 < blitter> Mac OS 8 runs as well, but it's even more broken-- if you do anything with sound, the whole machine pukes
18:49 < blitter> 8.1 too
18:49 < blitter> I only have 13MB of RAM so I haven't tested 8.5
18:50 < tdiaz> What I found out later, the developer models were basically a 6100, and most of those were prototype 6100 motherboards adapted.
18:50 < blitter> yep
18:50 < blitter> can confirm that
18:50 < tdiaz> The ones that say PDM Macintosh.
18:51 < blitter> apple recommended devs use a 6100 for dev and debugging on
18:51 < tdiaz> Piltdown Man, Butt Head Astronomer.
18:51 < blitter> since you couldn't really debug on the pippin itself
18:51 < blitter> the pippin *does* run MacsBug though, but that needs the extra RAM
18:51 < tdiaz> I have the motherboard from one.
18:51 < tdiaz> Yeah, with that extra RAM..
18:52 < tdiaz> I have a couple EtherDocks, and a wireless AppleJack controller.
18:52 < blitter> the wireless applejacks can still be found on ebay from time to time
18:52 < blitter> never saw an official dock
18:52 < jjuran> IA thing?
18:53 < tdiaz> Oh, the modems, too- The modems, were ultimately Motorola 56K.
18:53 < blitter> oh yeah the modems are rebadged
18:53 < blitter> those are common
18:54 < tdiaz> Well, in this case, they werne't even re-badged. Just they were black Motorolas, bulk packaged, plastic bagged, with a set of stickers, was supposed to put the sticker, one on the bottom of the PiPPiN, the other on the modem and one on the external packaging.
18:54 < blitter> yeah there we go
18:54 < blitter> it's curious that the pippin prototypes would be a 6100 prototype board, because Pippin is a PCI system, and the 6100 is NuBus
18:54 < tdiaz> ..pull out that cheese block shapped square 2400 that was originally packaged with the thing.
18:55 < tdiaz> Well, I think they re-purposed those PDM prototype boards.
18:55 < tdiaz> Because they were housed in a generic bookshelf PC style case.
18:56 < tdiaz> Typical large metropolitain sized Yellw Pages sized with the CD drive at the front using it's OEM bezel.
18:56 < blitter> this thing?
18:56 < tdiaz> The PDM boards were hand modded to put the 6100 A/V card in there sideways, hand-wired instead of the slot.
18:57 < tdiaz> Yes, that.
18:57 < tdiaz> Inside there is just that brown PDM Macintosh board with wiremods and presumably a different ROM.
18:59 < blitter> the undocumented ROM I have might have come from an EVT unit with the PDM board, but i'm not sure because an Open Firmware ROM shouldn't be able to boot a NuBus Mac
18:59 < blitter> so unless the PDM board was retrofitted with PCI...
18:59 < tdiaz> This whole episode was, I want to say, about Summer 1998 through just after COMDEX that year.
19:00 < tdiaz> They made the decision to write it all off for the end of the calendar year.
19:00 < blitter> i suspect the undocumented ROM I have was an experiment with Apple trying to branch out the pippin platform to other areas like kiosks, because it's dated *after* the retail release
19:00 < blitter> also sound doesn't work
19:01 < tdiaz> I have some pictures from a couple years ago, inside one of those prototypes.
19:01 < blitter> those would be great to get!
19:03 < blitter> http://pippin.wikia.com/wiki/Pippin_prototypes
19:03 < tdiaz> All I have left is the PDM board itself. There were a few of the prototypes in the lot of stuff, and another guy used the cases for PC clones.
19:03 < tdiaz> I've never seen anything but the dark cased ones. I'd actually like to get the white one.
19:03 < blitter> white ones are commonly found on ebay :P
19:03 < tdiaz> I have extra plastics..
19:04 < tdiaz> Yeah.
19:04 < blitter> i have no interest in the white ones
19:04 < blitter> just the black ones
19:04 < blitter> i currently have custody of a "jet black" pippin
19:04 < blitter> that just says "PowerPC" on it in front, no bandai markings at all
19:04 < blitter> it's a 1.2 though, nothing special
19:04 < blitter> just looks neat
19:05 < tdiaz> When I actually get my podcast started, I think I'm gonna do an unboxing of the North American one, since I've hardly even seen themn, and never seen the retail packaging.
19:05 < tdiaz> The way they added the silkscreened text on the front of the unit always looked ghetto to me.
19:05 < blitter> i've got custody of a boxed north american unit
19:05 < tdiaz> Like an afterthought.
19:06 < blitter> it's where my keyboard is from. would like one of my own someday
19:06 < tdiaz> Thats what I grabbed several of, boxed with outer box as well.
19:06 < blitter> yeah those
19:06 < tdiaz> A 1958 Dodge trunk and backseat full of them.
19:08 < tdiaz> I saw where someone put the PCB for the floppy drive on OSH Park, so I'm gonna make some of those.
19:08 < tdiaz> I have so danged many Sony drive mechanisms.. I'll never run out.
19:09 < tdiaz> The EtherDock is a re-made Floppy Dock, it's got an off the shelf DEC PCI NIC in it.
19:10 < blitter> he's trying to sell them on eBay. PCB + floppy drive + some burned game for $200
19:10 < blitter> no thanks to that
19:10 < tdiaz> Yeah, no thanks to that.
19:10 < blitter> i have enough sony drives myself
19:10 < tdiaz> I have the games and drives. I'd sell 'em for $75-100 if I were gonna do it as a package.
19:11 < blitter> throw in a 3D printed enclosure and i'll give you the $200 ;)
19:11 < tdiaz> But I'd lose money on that because I'd want it to be in a nice box.
19:11 < tdiaz> Oh, so he's wanting without the enclosure? Thats the only way I'd do it.
19:12 < blitter> same, otherwise how the heck am I going to set up the base unit?
19:13 < tdiaz> $200 is a fair price for that, but a lot more would sell for half that.. but yeah, how else to set it up? Bah.
19:13 < tdiaz> I'd be willing to make some kind of adapter that goes from the inside of the unit and has a 19 pin connector for an external drive ;-)
19:14 < tdiaz> But thats when there's plenty of time to kill.
19:14 < blitter> or modify that adapter to provide a floppy interface *and* PCI
19:14 < blitter> that PCB just routes the floppy lines
19:14 < blitter> you give up the PCI slot
19:14 < tdiaz> Yes, basically.
19:15 < tdiaz> That was my intention. Return that PCI slot, so you can put the NIC in there.
19:15 < blitter> or whatever :D
19:15 < tdiaz> The SCSI CD drives were $19 and the modems, we sold for $29.
19:15 < blitter> external PCI video card, go :D
19:16 < tdiaz> Heh. Put some of those Apple ATI PCI cards in there, or the Matrox..
19:16 < tdiaz> The Matrox 128..
19:17 < blitter> I have a Voodoo5 5500 in my beige G3, but that's overkill even for that system
19:17 < tdiaz> The whole PiPPiN story sucked. :(
19:17 < blitter> it'd be ridiculous in a pippin
19:17 < tdiaz> LOL, yeah.
19:18 < blitter> the voodoo would pack more power than the entire system :P
19:18 < tdiaz> Thats for sure.
19:18 < blitter> I did discover the other day that the Power Mac 7500 uses the same display driver in ROM as the pippin does :)
19:19 < tdiaz> Oh? .. thats interesting.
19:19 < blitter> so I wonder if the final pippin hardware was more closely modeled after the 7500
19:19 < blitter> which *is* PCI
19:19 < blitter> one of the first, in fact
19:19 < tdiaz> It is, basically, so that makes a lot of sense now.
19:20 < tdiaz> Wow, that ..yeah, that totally links the era then.
19:25 < blitter> was right about the same time :)
19:25 < blitter> if only apple had put a 603e in it :(

22:50 < tdiaz> I'd still like to get the authentication mastering software... the contact I had was going to give it to me but I think he got cut loose earlier than expected, too.
22:51 < blitter> well who knows. maybe i'll write my own auth software first :P
22:51 < tdiaz> Or that would be just as good ;-)
22:51 < tdiaz> Any PCBs for RAM more than 13MB?
22:51 < blitter> having the official one would probably speed up such an effort, though ;)
22:52 < blitter> i got a 16MB RAM board off eBay a couple months ago
22:52 < blitter> had it shipped to a friend of mine in the UK, need to get it from him
22:52 < tdiaz> I've got a 12MB board, I think.
22:52 < blitter> it's the standard size, not one of those giant hobbyist ones
22:53 < tdiaz> I need to check what size it is, It's something oddball I keep thinking.
22:54 < tdiaz> The machine came with 6MB, IIRC.
22:54 < blitter> yes
22:54 < blitter> 1MB for video, 5MB for system
22:54 < blitter> shared, IIci-style
22:56 < blitter> i seem to recall though that the memory controller puts an upper bound on the total RAM
22:56 < blitter> sometimes weird like 36MB or 30MB
22:56 < tdiaz> I don't remember the PCB heing enclosed in a plastic housing, though I might be visualizing Powerbook RAM modules in my head.
22:56 < blitter> so even if a large board surfaces, official or (likely) unofficial, it can't be used to its full capacity
22:57 < blitter> yeah, my 16 meg module looks like this
22:58 < tdiaz> It's at the bottom of a poorly piled onto shelf of stuff. Touching it could become a bigger chore than I desire.
23:00 < tdiaz> That wasn't so bad.
23:01 < tdiaz> Its an 8MB card.
23:01 < blitter> ah. I'm not even sure the 16 meg one shipped
23:01 < blitter> or if it did, likely in extremely limited quantities
23:02 < tdiaz> The 13MB is a 12MB card I got for a small Windows XP Pen era tablet PC, plus the 1MB onboard.
23:03 < tdiaz> At the time I could only find a RAM module for it from Japan, they wanted some close to 4 figure amount for it.
23:04 < tdiaz> Wasn't anywhere near worth it.
23:04 < blitter> yeah tell me about it-- i find similar offers in the states for pippin stuff
23:04 < blitter> $90 for an applejack controller? no thanks
23:05 < tdiaz> Crack smokers.
23:07 < tdiaz> Nothing popping up open source wise for PCBs to make your own, that I can find..
23:08 < tdiaz> for RAM modules, anyway. I've got so dang many Auto Inject floppy drives, I cuold make a few FloppyDocks if the housing were not so complicated.
23:09 < blitter> https://web.archive.org/web/20070203031235/http://www.catkicking.com/pippin/lets2memory2.html
23:09 < tdiaz> Or look for some PCI NICs that have that particular Digital chipset that is supported in MacOS.
23:09 < blitter> there's what i know about custom memory modules
23:09 < blitter> it's in japanese... but there's a pinout there
23:11 < tdiaz> catkicking.. totally forgot about that one. Probably why I never found it again, didn't know what to look for on archive.org ..
23:16 < tdiaz> Hmmm.. I could fit a pippin next to the PC-98 ... with a monitor switch.
23:16 < tdiaz> Though it would be the North American one.
23:17 < tdiaz> When I get the classic console game stuff setup.. thats probably where it will go anyway.
23:17 < blitter> same, but not until i've cracked it ;)
23:17 < blitter> super marathon isn't *that* compelling
23:22 < tdiaz> LOMOMG. Looking through completed pippin listings on eBay. Someone paid $600 for super marathon on eBay. WTF.
23:22 < blitter> somebody else paid $900+ a few weeks ago
23:23 < tdiaz> I had no idea they would fetch that much.
23:26 < tdiaz> I look every once in a while to see if there's a run on boxed/complete units. If so, it's totally worth putting a ROM SIMM back into one and posting it..
23:26 < tdiaz> But there hasn't been, though I've also seen way more boxed Japanese units than US by far.
23:34 < tdiaz> Hmmm.. wonder what the deal with this is, https://www.ebay.com/itm/333135936890
23:34 < tdiaz> the printer port is taped over.
23:35 < blitter> somebody probably thinks they have something more valuable than it really is
23:35 < blitter> i got my @world for $200
23:37 < tdiaz> https://www.ebay.com/itm/183762036719 this got bid up crazy.
23:38 < tdiaz> No pen, 'very' used, listed as non working. $622? Come on.
23:38 < tdiaz> Thats got to be a money laundering deal.
23:39 < tdiaz> That thing is a -mess-
23:51 < tdiaz> LOL, Another "it's been documented" that the US models were repackaged for Japan.
23:53 < tdiaz> Well, okay. They might have done a few. But just under 50,000 got disassembled in our back lot. The metal scrap yard was wondering WTF we were doing with several roll-off's full of metal chassis.
23:54 < blitter> i'm mostly curious where the black atMarks are from
23:54 < blitter> i've only ever seen one. it's the one i have in my custody
23:54 < blitter> and it's got one of those "sample for evaluation only" labels on the bottom of it
23:55 < blitter> so i don't even know if black pippins shipped
23:55 < tdiaz> There's one on eBay with the box. It claims it's for "business use".
23:56 < tdiaz> It's got a fair amount of printed materials with it.
23:56 < tdiaz> I like that Apple styled manual.
23:57 < tdiaz> https://www.ebay.com/itm/232882908310
23:58 < tdiaz> Nevermind, that's a black box. But looks to be platinum unit.
23:59 < blitter> yep. dev units shipped that way also
23:59 < blitter> maybe this is a dev unit
23:59 < blitter> "professional" use only
--- Day changed Sat Apr 20 2019
00:00 < blitter> might mean for professional development
00:00 < tdiaz> If it says that, I'd say it is.
00:00 < blitter> the auction says that
00:01 < blitter> but otherwise, except for the lack of "GM Flash" label on the CD tray, this one looks identical to a dev unit i've used
00:01 < blitter> packaging, labeling, and all
00:01 < tdiaz> Like I mentioned, though, I've seen way more AtMark models than @World listed, ever.
00:02 < blitter> oh i totally believe that
00:02 < blitter> a number of my friends have urged me to visit akihabara
00:02 < blitter> apparently there's a glut of pippin crap there
00:02 < blitter> in varying degrees of condition. mostly rough
00:02 < tdiaz> "was" probably, that area got redeveloped it seems, from what I've read.
00:03 < blitter> it's just more spread out now from what i hear
00:03 < tdiaz> Though I suppose you couldn't really chase away nich vendors, so they're probbaly all still going somewhere.
00:04 < tdiaz> So suffice to say, I'd guess that the @World units are far less in existence than the ATMark.
00:05 < tdiaz> Perhaps had we been able to simply sell those things at whatever price, there would be a glut of them still around.. BDE took the write off.
00:06 < tdiaz> But thats what I've got, several boxed sets of the @World with an outer box, so the retail box is protected.
00:09 < tdiaz> They've been opened/handled because the ROM SIMMs were removed, and I just grabbed them from the line right where they were opening the boxes and taking out the consoles. In the end, I ended up with enough ROM SIMMs for what I've got.
00:09 < blitter> i thought all the ROM SIMMs had to be shredded?
00:09 < blitter> and they counted them up
00:09 < tdiaz> They did.
00:10 < blitter> then how did you get some?
00:10 < tdiaz> Anything I had from before the decision was made .. was mine.
00:10 < blitter> unless they... ahem... miscounted ;)
00:10 < tdiaz> ..and then there is that ;-)
00:11 < tdiaz> They wanted holes drilled in them, we chose to chop off the edge connector.
00:11 < tdiaz> That usually damaged the ROMs anyway. But yeah, a few fell on the floor. ;-)
00:13 < tdiaz> I don't think they cared, we sold a few units here and there. I think once they saw that there was some number in the high 49,000's they were happy with it.
00:14 < tdiaz> The lot was 50,000 units, but they'd been dipping into it for samples, employees, gifts, etc.
00:17 < tdiaz> I'd like to get the hard drive contents from a prototype.
00:18 < tdiaz> Since I apparently have the right motherboard. Just need to add the video card to it, from a production Mac, IIRC.
00:19 < tdiaz> There's something sandwiched onto it, but otherwise it's a PDM Mac motherboard.
00:20 < tdiaz> Piltdown Man 6100, brown prototype. The chassis is a generic metal bookshelf style PC case with the back cut out enough for the motherbnoard ports to all be accessible.
00:20 < tdiaz> So I wouldn't be surprised if they were each one offs.
00:21 < tdiaz> Though the 6100 of course, has the 601..
00:21 < tdiaz> Still a 66MHz.
00:22 < blitter> i'd be curious to see if it boots the 7.5.2a3 disc that boots the "Disco" ROM I played with a while ago
00:22 < blitter> but if you have one of those early boards, I'd love for you to dump the ROM from it
00:23 < blitter> at the very least, to confirm it is or is not the same ROM as a PDM
00:23 < blitter> i suspect it's not
00:24 < tdiaz> I'd have to figure that the production was total probably about 100K with a split between Japan and the US models.
00:24 < tdiaz> Appears that the Japanese inventory eventually sold, where as what didn't sell was recalled/written off in the US.
00:28 < tdiaz> The prototype I'm sure lacks the authentication. I don't see why it shouldn't boot whatever MacOS that runs from the era.
00:28 < blitter> depends on what ROM is inside
00:28 < blitter> the "Disco" ROM lacks authentication too, but only boots the 7.5.2a3 disc
00:29 < tdiaz> I've got ADB dongles to skip the authentication, but I want to say also, that if the thing booted from a hard drive with SCSI ID 0, I think it also skipped authentication.
00:29 < blitter> everything else either bombs or hangs at the Welcome screen
00:30 < tdiaz> I had to attach different SCSI ribbon cables in them, so I could have a 50 pin centronics hanging out of the back.
00:30 < blitter> yeah i just went and ordered a ribbon cable with extra headers on it. i have a scsi header dangling out the back that i just attach directly to a bare drive :P
00:32 < tdiaz> I took the nibbling tool and cut out the rectangular boxed area in the center top, and bolted in the 50 pin connector on some, others it's just hanging over the back.
00:33 < tdiaz> We also had plenty of those 1/2 AA batteries ;-) "Bulk, $2 each"..
00:34 < tdiaz> EVT-1 PiPPiN: https://pippin.fandom.com/wiki/Pippin_prototypes
00:35 < tdiaz> That looks like the A/V card from a 61/71/8100..
00:36 < tdiaz> Never saw the TV box prototype before.
00:37 < tdiaz> Thats basically an LC III motherboard stacked on the PCB with the SCART stuff.
00:37 < blitter> yeah slightly modified so the PDS slot faced the other way
00:38 < tdiaz> Looks like they built in a modem and RF/Video interfaces and integrated the LC III to it.
00:38 < tdiaz> I have 3 of the TV boxes. Never touched 'em.
00:39 < blitter> i just have one. it lights up and that's it
00:39 < blitter> that's all i can get it to do
00:39 < tdiaz> One sits on the stack of A/C stuff next to the TV..
00:39 < tdiaz> The other two, came in a brown generic flip top box.
00:39 < blitter> yeah mine came in a brown box
00:41 < tdiaz> With what looked like photocopies of the draft manual with crop marks, for some of the docs, a thin Apple styled manual, teardrop ADB mouse, Powerbook packaged HDI-30 SCSI cable and a clear PlainTalk microphone.
00:41 < blitter> i didn't get any of that, but i did get a remote
00:42 < blitter> which looks to me like a powercd remote
00:42 < tdiaz> I don't remember seeing a remote. The only Apple remote that comes to mind is the PowerCD one.. which I have a few of.
00:42 < blitter> i have three 90s Apple remotes, haha
00:43 < blitter> the Mac TV "credit card" remote, the Apple TV/Video system remote, and my STB/PowerCD remote
00:43 < tdiaz> Ah.. that may be why I have them, then. I've got two PowerCDs and 4 remotes.
00:43 < tdiaz> The front end has that round spot with the trianglur like dip in it.
00:43 < blitter> yah
00:44 < tdiaz> I think I plugged in the one, like you, got a blinking light, no video and say "Pththt".
00:50 < tdiaz> I'd like to get an ATMark unit at some point, but I'm not going to go stupid on it or anything. It's not like I don't have any. For that matter, the shell is really all I 'need'. Though matching accessories would be a plus.

20:16 < tdiaz> I got to the stashed NIoB PiPPiN units last week.

20:19 < tdiaz> What's always been amusing to me is the thing is basically a retail packaged PowerMac 6100.
20:19 < dtm> ho ho ho they were doin good to make it all the way to ppc
20:20 < dtm> except... not quite CHRP huh lol
20:20 < dtm> tdiaz: that's what i'm puzzling over... how custom did any of the OEMs get? i was thinking they're a mac.
20:21 < dtm> i thought the closest they got to cloning a mac was .... new case and a mouse with many buttons lol
20:21 < tdiaz> ..and if it hadn't have been so proprietary with connectors and designed around aboslute turnkey presentation - you'd have probably seen a bit more of OS hacking and such.
20:21 < dtm> but isn't it all based on DRM too? wicked pippin app signing?
20:21 < tdiaz> The PiPPiN is a Mac, for all intends.
20:21 < tdiaz> intents.
20:21 < dtm> *intensive
20:22 < dtm> it's a very intensively purpled mac
20:22 < tdiaz> Apple wasn't a strong marketer in that sector and chose to go with a partner.
20:22 < tdiaz> The intent was to license that stuff out to whomever. Bandai was just the first, and the only that actually made it to market.

20:26 < tdiaz> The Last Ditch PiPPiN effort that I lead was quite fun. It's just too bad that in then, Bandai ultimately opted for the write off.
20:26 < dtm> yeah
20:27 < dtm> tdiaz: did Bandai have a pretty good position? lots of cash for such diverse ventures, blow it off if it doesn't work?
20:27 < dtm> i dont really remember what they were doing
20:27 < dtm> in general
20:28 < tdiaz> I suspect it was partially related to product / name exposure and continued 'obligations' for support.
20:29 < tdiaz> After all, the market was not used to technology / computing vendors dropping products like a rotten egg over night ..
20:30 < tdiaz> At the same time, they really didn't want it to actually be a Macintosh competitor. Contractually that was forbidden, too.
20:32 < tdiaz> I kinda suspect that was one of the reasons for disc authentication requirements, but the enforcement of that was so lax, as in purposely easy to override in the delivered product..
20:35 < tdiaz> As for resources that Bandai had available to it, I wouldn't say it was a free spirit venture. The whole 'division', if you will, was very few people with the core of the technical support done via back channel with Apple.
20:36 < tdiaz> Technical support on the OEM side, not the consumer side.
20:37 < tdiaz> But Apple DTS did initialy distribute PiPPiN related information to registered Mac developers.
20:39 < tdiaz> It could be thought of as the Mac Mini of then, price wise.

17:13 < defor> what we really need is a 3d printable expansion module...
17:13 < defor> because floppy modules are expensive as hell
17:13 < defor> but since the expansion bus has scsi....
17:15 < blitter> defor: you sure about that? afaik it's just PCI and floppy lines
17:16 < blitter> the deltis 230 MO docking station has its own scsi controller exposed over PCI it looks like
17:16 < blitter> there's definitely a SCSI controller on its adapter board
17:19 < defor> reallllly
17:19 < defor> also do you have the mo drive? I've yet to find one even listed
17:20 < defor> hmm
17:20 < blitter> i'm going off this photo
17:20 < defor> oh nice
17:20 < blitter> that's a 53c8x chip. dead ringer for scsi
17:20 < defor> also that's pretty crazy
17:20 < defor> yep
17:20 < defor> i assumed the undocumented pins were for scsi
17:20 < defor> hmm
17:21 < defor> well damn
17:21 < defor> so can the 1.3 bios boot off pci? :P
17:21 < blitter> don't know, i don't have a 1.3 to test
17:21 < defor> yep
17:21 < defor> also dont have a pci adapter either right?
17:22 < blitter> i don't have one of those either, right
17:22 < blitter> i do have a floppy adapter though, finally
17:22 < blitter> would like to test whether it can boot from floppy
17:23 < defor> yeah i have a prototype floppy (the only one i have)
17:31 < defor> damn pippin prices have gone through the roof recently
17:38 < tdiaz> MrBIOS: In the US, we had to scrap just under 50K units. They didn't even sell that many.
17:39 < tdiaz> From what I was able to deduce, that was a good chunk of the product run for the US.
17:40 < MrBIOS> ok
17:40 < tdiaz> They decided to write it off rather than let them go to a niche. Sucked. Like we've said before. Most of that wikipedia article is bullshit :)
17:41 < tdiaz> That said.. PiPPiN... prices.. Hmmm.. ;-)
17:44 < tdiaz> Let's find some DEC chipset PCI NICs..
17:44 < defor> ?
17:44 < defor> what for?
17:44 < tdiaz> They work with System 7.5
17:44 < tdiaz> .. EtherDock.
17:44 < defor> ok
17:45 < defor> is this related to pippin or something else?
17:45 < tdiaz> PiPPiN..
17:45 < defor> oh i see
17:45 < defor> i mean... realtek works in 7.5 if you really want
17:45 < defor> just have to add the extension
17:46 < tdiaz> DEC works out of the box, which for PiPPiN ... when you needed to authenticate :) ..
17:47 < defor> well thats nice at least
17:47 < defor> although i wonder if the pippin out of the box can even use it on anything- i dont recall chooser on many games i've booted...
17:47 < defor> but.. i dunno
17:48 < blitter> defor: why would games need the chooser? ;)
17:48 < defor> to print?
17:48 < defor> or whatever else you'd use it for
17:48 < blitter> to print what?
17:48 < blitter> it's a game...
17:48 < defor> ok .. software..
17:48 < defor> better?
17:48 < blitter> i think pease has the chooser
17:49 < defor> well that;s a start
17:49 < blitter> one issue is the titles that do feature printing only support the printers for which drivers are on the disc
17:50 < defor> hm
17:51 < MrBIOS> blitter I want to see ucLinux boot on the Pippin
17:51 < MrBIOS> ;)
17:51 < MrBIOS> JUST BECAUSE
17:52 < blitter> why uCLinux? what's wrong with ppc debian :)
17:52 < blitter> the pippin is a pci machine
17:52 < MrBIOS> MMU
17:52 < blitter> oh good point. hm
17:53 < defor> why not osx 1.x :P
17:53 < MrBIOS> heh
17:53 < MrBIOS> RAM? :)
17:54 < defor> 16gb or whatever is enough right?
17:54 < MrBIOS> It's too bad the ROM slot in the Pippin can't be abused to add more RAM that way
17:54 < defor> i think there's a 32mb expansion that was made
17:54 < defor> i guess... someone should investigate the ram modules :D
17:54 < blitter> the pinout to those is known too
17:55 < defor> is it?
17:55 < defor> i havent seen that one
17:55 < blitter> some japanese hackers long ago built a homemade 16 meg module
17:55 < tdiaz> There is a larger RAM module. Someone made it, I think the PCB is posted somewhere.
17:55 < MrBIOS> blitter, tdiaz where?
17:55 < defor> oooooh
17:55 < blitter> the pippin itself supports no more than 37 megs of system RAM total, though
17:55 < blitter> so, OS X is out
17:56 < tdiaz> Yeah, onboard RAM plus 32MB.
17:57 < blitter> I own a bandai-produced 16 meg module, but it's sitting in scotland right now since i had to have it shipped to a friend, and he has yet to send it to me
17:57 < blitter> the 37 meg limitation is due to how aspen works. it's not something you can fix with a "we'll just build a better module!" nope
17:58 < MrBIOS> 37 megabytes was a shit-ton of RAM for a console in 1996
17:59 < blitter> it's already a shit-ton of RAM for a ppc603 :P
17:59 < MrBIOS> yep
17:59 < blitter> anyway, when I get that 16 meg module, i'll attempt to boot os 8.5 on it
17:59 < blitter> I have successfully booted all the way up to 8.1 to the finder on the pippin
18:00 < blitter> but caveat: when i say "booted" that's all i mean
18:00 < tdiaz> I've got 8MB modules only.
18:00 < MrBIOS> tdiaz how many?
18:00 < tdiaz> 2.
18:00 < blitter> the pippin gets really ornery past system 7.5
18:00 < tdiaz> Yeah, I put 8.1 on.. and ... well. Yeah, I did that. Nothing else.
18:01 < defor> how do we know the 32mb limit?
18:01 < blitter> i'm telling you :)
18:01 < tdiaz> Because there'a a 32MB limit :)
18:01 < tdiaz> What he says.
18:01 < defor> ok...
18:02 < MrBIOS> defor it's a limitation of the glue logic itself.
18:02 < tdiaz> They told me that too, back in the day. 32MB on that connector, that's it. I wanted to get larger RAM.
18:02 < blitter> yah the memory controller has three banks wired for RAM. the first bank is hardwired to 6 megs (1 VRAM + 5 system), and the other two are 16 meg banks exposed to the module connector
18:03 < MrBIOS> tdiaz to date, I've had no luck finding a modern supplier of the RAM-module-side high density board-to-board connector used in the Pippin RAM module. Do you know anything about it?
18:04 < tdiaz> Back then, I did find some. They weren't that available then though. Vendor wanted $4/each and I just laughed.
18:08 < tdiaz> https://retrostuff.org/2019/11/24/pippin-atmark-adb-adapter-dongles/
18:08 < tdiaz> ... wonder what OSX would see that as..
18:09 < tdiaz> Probably get masked by the ADB adapter as a USB HID away.
18:09 < blitter> the applejack controller speaks its own protocol
18:10 < blitter> os x wouldn't know what to do with it other than use it as a mouse
18:10 < tdiaz> I'd like to get a white shell set. I've got several black ones..
18:19 < MrBIOS> tdiaz external plastics?
18:25 < tdiaz> Yes, external plastics.
18:29 < tdiaz> The prototype PiPPiN is basically a 6100 with a video card soldered on the board. It's got the PDM Mac board in it.
18:29 < tdiaz> I have the motherboard, though it's in 6100 configuration.
18:31 < MrBIOS> tdiaz are there photos of that anywhere?
18:32 < tdiaz> Should be.. it's in a desktop PC generic like mini chassis.
18:32 < tdiaz> https://pippin.fandom.com/wiki/Pippin_Concept_Prototype
18:34 < MrBIOS> tdiaz thanks. do you know why they decided to have audio in on the production Pippin?
18:34 < MrBIOS> there has to have been some rationale
18:37 < defor> fore recording
18:37 < defor> iirc you can record messages with one of the email things
18:37 < tdiaz> The PlainTalk mic.. I believe, fits in there.
18:38 < tdiaz> Yeah, something let you attach audio bits.

19:23 < blitter> Pippin Kickstart 1.1 has been seeded to beta testers :D
19:23 < blitter> If all goes well, I have a release candidate in the chamber ready to close out 2020 :)
--- Day changed Fri Jan 01 2021
00:46 < tdiaz> PiPPiN kickstart? Whats this? ;-)
01:48 < tdiaz> blitter: Whatcha PiP'ing?
01:49 < tdiaz> I'm trying to gather all the PiPPiN stuff in one place so I can figure out how many complete ones I have and what other accessories.
01:51 < tdiaz> Kind of curious, how someone decided to call that disc 'TUCSON'.. Pretty sure there's not a mention of Tucson on it..

18:54 < tdiaz> blitter: The reason for the chuckle about the "tucson" disc is because .. .
18:55 < blitter> well for one, "Tuscon" is misspelled :P
18:55 < tdiaz> I didn't realize it was so "famous". spread far and wide, debated, discussed and speculated over ..
18:55 < tdiaz> Because it's my disc.
18:55 < tdiaz> I'm the one that made it.
18:55 < blitter> oh really?
18:55 < blitter> how?
18:55 < blitter> and how did you sign it?
18:55 < tdiaz> I put it together, and got it authenticated back then.
18:56 < blitter> how did it get onto the internet?
18:56 < tdiaz> That's .. what I'm kinda curious about :)
18:56 < blitter> can you prove you're the author beyond just saying so?
18:57 < tdiaz> Absoluty.
18:57 < blitter> how were you able to get it authenticated?
18:57 < blitter> where were you at the time such that you had that ability?
18:57 < blitter> is there anything on the disc that says "yep, that's tony diaz all right"
18:57 < tdiaz> All those photos on the splash screen.. I have more of the same aircraft. I can tell you where each one was, I was flying that plane.
18:58 < tdiaz> They're 35 mm prints. I have those prints, too.
18:58 < tdiaz> I just must have not put that exact set back in the drawer at some point because I was looking for them a few nights ago.
18:58 < tdiaz> But that screenshot, tjers
18:59 < tdiaz> 's also another rendtion that does not have the PiPPiN stuff on it.
18:59 < tdiaz> I believe it says KFEst Adventure 98..
18:59 < tdiaz> Lets see if that's still buried on a web site.
18:59 < blitter> If you can furnish that, I can get that wiki article updated (I don't maintain it, but I know who does)
19:00 < tdiaz> I got that authenticated because when Bandai was trying to unload the remaining machines..
19:00 < tdiaz> I was trying to market them as kiosk / special use things, in a VAR environment.
19:01 < tdiaz> So I threw that disc together to show that it's basically very easy to setup something like Hypercard, HyperStudio, etc.
19:02 < tdiaz> Using standard System 7.6 and 7.5.3, with just the PiPPiN enabler.
19:02 < tdiaz> Then I have a picture of me outside of FedEx with about 20 of them on a flat to be brought in, as I was sending units to various places as samples.
19:03 < tdiaz> In the end, Bandai decided to write it off and we had to disassemble / get a certificate of destruction for them.
19:03 < tdiaz> ..and retain the ROM cards, give them back, with holes drilled through them.
19:04 < tdiaz> The Wikipedia stuff about the stock going back to Japan, etc ..
19:04 < tdiaz> It's all bullshit. It was about 47,500 or so units, out of a 50,000 run for North America.
19:05 < tdiaz> We sold the SCSI drives and reclaimed chips off the motherboards.
19:05 < blitter> just wanna nitpick, but Tuscon runs System 7.5.2 with the 7.5.3 Finder
19:05 < tdiaz> The koala pad keyboard thing and the AppleJacks, sadly, they ended up mostly getting chewed up. People were not buying thing.
19:05 < blitter> System 7.6 doesn't run well on Pippin really at all
19:06 < tdiaz> I know it doesn't. But I did get a volume authenticated .. to see just how bad.
19:06 < blitter> oh I see
19:07 < blitter> yeah I've booted up to OS 8.1. They all boot, but the experience gets worse the more you got past 7.5.2
19:09 < tdiaz> ..and yes, you can nitpick. It's my disc. I know, it sounds like a pie in the sky claim... I'm not sure how it got out, I do know I have given it in the past to a few people, and I just hope it's the "right" one that got out ..
19:09 < tdiaz> But even then, I don't think it matters anymore. ;-)
19:09 < tdiaz> Right one, meaning I went and edited the ISO raw and whacked some bytes.
19:10 < tdiaz> But it should be setup to do a dialup PPP connection in the 760 area code.
19:11 < tdiaz> Using OpenTransport, IIRC. I'm gonna get the PiPPiN stuff out..
19:11 < tdiaz> Set one up on the desk now that I have a free VGA port on a monitor.
19:11 < tdiaz> Have a look here:
19:11 < tdiaz>

19:12 < blitter> does mainstreet.net mean anything to you?
19:13 < tdiaz> There's some random stuff in there too, but a fair amount of PiPPiN stuff, and of a tray of CDs..
19:14 < tdiaz> Mainstreet.net, Right off, I can't say for absolute, but there was a guy in town here that had a BBS called Mainstreet Data and evolved it to the web pack in the PageMill era, as a seller of hardware and modems.
19:14 < tdiaz> So I'm kinda muddy on the thought, because of the similarity.
19:15 < tdiaz> I don't think that was the PPP dialup I set up on there, but I think that might be a ConnectNet or SBC/Prodigy pre Y! era dialup.
19:16 < blitter> yeah there's no PPP on here but there are some files for the @WORLD Dialer
19:16 < tdiaz> Of course, the old website won't connect..
19:16 < blitter> does alltech electronics mean anything to you?
19:16 < tdiaz> Yes.
19:16 < tdiaz> allelec.com
19:17 < blitter> it's in the netscape bookmarks ;)
19:17 < tdiaz> Of course it is..
19:17 < tdiaz> That was where I was when I did that stuff, though the name was changed by then to be CCC, Computer Circulation Center, but still had a dba for Alltech Electronics.
19:18 < blitter> allelec.com is a parked domain nowadays
19:18 < tdiaz> Yeah, it was some other company for a little while.. it's parked now? Hmmm,..
19:19 < tdiaz> Maybe try to snag it again .. I used to have it on a register.com account but when I quit there, they let all the domain names lapse.
19:19 < tdiaz> The two partners split, our end got renamed, but we kept the dba because we did Apple II mail order under that name, had ads in InCider/A+, Nuts 'n Volts..
19:20 < tdiaz> the different volumes are like mostly the same, but one of them I left out a whole bunch of stuff ... for a bunch of other stuff, about half the content.
19:20 < tdiaz> The Chrystar Demo was of particular amusement.. People were like, "wow" .. (Yeah, I know. Dots. LOL)
19:21 < blitter> where did the "Apple R&P Lib Reseller" files come from?
19:22 < blitter> fwiw the @WORLD Dialer attempts to dial 273-4213 locally
19:23 < tdiaz> The Apple Resource and Publications Library CD, Reseller edition.
19:23 < tdiaz> IT's an early era disc from around the time when they did the movie name knockoffs.
19:24 < tdiaz> Pretty bland, red and black printing, Apple garamond typeface..
19:24 < tdiaz> er, Reference and Presentation Library.
19:27 < tdiaz> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RPBnIMIfUwpQFdhxy04YY7QHicrW45rOWRV9Jew5Kck/edit?usp=sharing
19:27 < tdiaz> Those are the discs I have from that era.
19:37 < tdiaz> The photos on the splash screen are Gallup, Roswell NM, Dodge City KS. Johnson County Executive Airport and Avila University (Then Avila College) Wornall Rd, KC MO.
19:37 < tdiaz> Right near the KS border, I-435 and Wornall Rd, at about 120th st.
19:38 < tdiaz> The core of the campus looks like that today, but it's got more parking lot and extra buildings around it.
19:40 < blitter> was Alltech a Pippin reseller, in addition to DayStar? wondering how you were left responsible for marketing and reselling unsold units
19:40 < blitter> how, and why you / where you were
19:42 < tdiaz> No, we were a surplus reseller.
19:42 < tdiaz> Bandai came to us with the Motorola 56K external modems.
19:43 < tdiaz> .. and I questioned the @World silkscreened on them,.
19:44 < tdiaz> ..and they said "yeah, they're for .. but we never made more systems.." got to talking about that and they were unsure what to do with them and we asked about surplus selling them out, or what not.
19:44 < tdiaz> I know, the whole thing sounds really out there.
19:44 < blitter> can you recall roughly the timeline?
19:44 < blitter> may 1998?
19:44 < tdiaz> Late 1998, early 1999.
19:44 < blitter> your tuscon disc suggests it was mastered on june 7 98
19:45 < tdiaz> It was over by late 1998 pretty much, but yeah, the disc was done in the Summer.
19:47 < tdiaz> One of the initial questions was "what about Apple?" .. and this was 100% Bandai's call as to what to do with them.
19:47 < blitter> I'm just figuring you wouldn't have put together the disc until you felt a need to market a surplus of units ;)
19:47 < blitter> so Bandai must have approached you folks no later than early June
19:50 < blitter> oh woops, i misspoke
19:51 < blitter> the latest timestamp i can find on your tuscon disc is from mid-sept 1998
19:51 < tdiaz> The splash page graphics from from July 1998.
19:52 < tdiaz> The conversation started before I went on that summer vacation. I had one unit with me at that time. I'd taken it to KansasFest.
19:52 < tdiaz> http://17500mph.com/PiPPiN/Pippin-SSW-7-5-2a3.iso
19:53 < tdiaz> I don't think that's authenticated, but it should be a plain system boot of the same stuff that's on there.
19:53 < tdiaz> I don
19:54 < tdiaz> I don't remember getting such a small volume authenticated.. Though I do remember the drive being 650MB and a small partition, so it's possible.
19:54 < blitter> that 7.5.2a3 disc only boots a particular early Pippin ROM
19:54 < blitter> it doesn't boot any retail models
19:55 < tdiaz> Has that one been around too?
19:55 < blitter> I found it on macintoshrepository a year ago
19:55 < blitter> don't know where they got it
19:56 < blitter> but yeah, that's the only thing that I've found boots the prototype "Disco" ROM from 1995
19:56 < blitter> retail titles bomb on startup with that ROM, so something substantial must have changed between Pippin OS 7.5.2a3 and final
19:58 < tdiaz> Refresh the directory, is that disk image out?
19:59 < blitter> I see two images
19:59 < blitter> PiPPNROMUpdate.dmg and Pippin-SSW-7-5-2a3.iso
20:03 < tdiaz> Yes, the ROM update dmg.
20:04 < tdiaz> Here's the tray of discs, that KAO disk is one of those authenticated ones.
20:05 < tdiaz> I'm gonna dig that stuff out in a little bit, there's already a pile of the stuff on my floor.
20:05 < tdiaz> Also, near that image in the shared album is some retail boxed units.
20:06 < tdiaz> The outer boxes are brown, with the inner box being the retail, they have those red / white fragile square stickers on them.
20:06 < tdiaz> I have some more photos to scan .. including some of the ones of that same aircraft from the same roll.
20:07 < tdiaz> N15562 Piper Arrow 1972, I think it's at some rental place in Ohio now, and it's red/white instead of blue/white but the panel looks the same except the radios are updated.
20:10 < tdiaz> defor: IIRC, that PiPPiN ROM update disc is on that URL above.
20:10 < blitter> how pippin discs get authenticated is mostly a historical curiosity to me at this point tdiaz
20:10 < blitter> pippin kickstart defeats that whole thing :)
20:11 < blitter> i figured out how it all works in may 2019
20:11 < tdiaz> I know.
20:11 < blitter> ah ok
20:11 < blitter> just checking since you asked about pippin kickstart earlier
20:11 < tdiaz> You figured out how it all works back then, we've talked about this .. here.
20:11 < tdiaz> I just didn't realize you'd actually posted a disc.
20:11 < tdiaz> I remember when you wrote the article about decoding it.
20:12 < blitter> yeah 1.0.1 has been out for a while, and I thought I was done with it, but then somebody on twitter complained to me that they couldn't boot their white pippin from hard drive. so i went and figured out why *that* is
20:12 < blitter> and now i have a new 1.1 ready to release as soon as they test and verify that i have fixed that as well
20:14 < blitter> is this PiPPiN ROM Upgrade CD just a video presentation on how to service the Pippin hardware on a bench?
20:14 < blitter> or does it actually flash a ROM board
20:14 < blitter> because I know tools to do the latter exist
20:14 < blitter> I don't have them though
20:21 < tdiaz> That .dmg has tech notes and sample code on it.
20:21 < tdiaz> short myVRefNum,
20:21 < tdiaz> psRefNum,
20:21 < tdiaz> myFileRefNum;
20:21 < tdiaz> long myDirID,
20:21 < tdiaz> count = 100;
20:21 < tdiaz> char readBuffPtr[100],
20:21 < tdiaz> pointerToDataToWrite[] = "abcdefg0123456789",
20:21 < tdiaz> pointerForDataToRead[50];
20:21 < tdiaz> Str255 fileName = "\pFlash Sample Prefs";
20:21 < tdiaz> OSType fileCreator = 'Flsh',
20:21 < tdiaz> fileType = 'TEXT';
20:21 < tdiaz> FSSpec spec;
20:21 < blitter> yeah but nothing newer than what's on the 11/96 SDK
20:21 < tdiaz> OSErr myErr;
20:21 < tdiaz>
20:23 < tdiaz> ... well, there's the 1999 follow up to that graphic the splash screen is based on.
20:24 < blitter> the PiPPiNROMUpdate.dmg isn't authenticated btw
20:24 < blitter> but it has a Pippin System Folder
20:24 < blitter> so you'd have to use a dongle / kickstart
20:25 < tdiaz> Yeah,. that one was definitely from the developer seed / era

20:58 < tdiaz> blitter:

20:58 < tdiaz> There's some similar photos, including the two aircraft that are on the splash screen.
20:58 < defor> heh
20:59 < tdiaz> The 1958 Dodge with the flat and trunk full of PiPPiN boxes is me at FedEx dropping off a bunch.

22:58 < blitter> tdiaz: are you on Twitter? mind if I post a thread about what you've told me in here re: the Tuscon disc? just so a wiki has a "source" to link to
22:59 < blitter> I found an Apple IIgs hard drive image on it full of goodies, including an alpha build of a game called "Turkey Shoot" that I suppose somebody built just for you, since it says "For Tony Diaz" in the archive :)
--- Day changed Tue Jan 05 2021
00:41 < tdiaz> blitter: @y816
00:42 < tdiaz> lol, Turkey Shoot GS.. that was... an interesting era.
00:49 < tdiaz> LOL, Tucson.. I wonder who actually coined that title for it.
00:49 < tdiaz> In-N-Out is calling.
00:49 < blitter> "Tuscon" -- it's misspelled, even
00:50 < tdiaz> Yeah, I know. I can't seem to get past the auto correct fast enough.
00:52 < jjuran> Tuscon raiders
00:57 < blitter> tdiaz: writing a thread to set the record straight :)
00:57 < blitter> you don't mind me "outing" you for putting this disc together?
01:03 < tdiaz> At this point.. I don't care..
01:03 < tdiaz> I think it's hilarious.
01:06 < tdiaz> blitter: If I had known it'd be so .. umm.. well received? ... I've have done a better job. LOL.
01:06 < tdiaz> Who knew.
01:30 < blitter> https://twitter.com/ablitter/status/1346358277404180481
01:30 < blitter> I set you up to respond however you wish :)
03:44 < tdiaz> Hmmm... I wonder if RAM can be double stacked on the PiPPiN motherboard. S'pose the schematic would help so to see if, more likely, where the select lines might be.
03:44 < dtm> blitter: what is the nature of this Tuscon disk?
03:44 < tdiaz> Make a PCB that has sockets on it upside down.
03:45 < dtm> tdiaz: you was bein a mac bro
03:46 < tdiaz> LOL.. That's it, I'm gonna call that disc Tuscon Loader in a starcastic wars sense..
03:48 < jjuran> :-)
03:48 < tdiaz> I wanna see who coined that term.. What caused 'em to call it that.
03:49 < jjuran> Get your Tuscon :-)
03:50 < tdiaz> "Get your tusc-on!"
04:25 -!- amdamd [~tdiaz@ip68-101-252-59.sd.sd.cox.net] has joined #mac68k
04:25 < tdiaz> That one is mine
04:26 < dtm> tdiaz: what is it
04:26 < tdiaz> alternate fallback machine, for when I'm doing something with this one, like actually updating macOS.
04:49 < dtm> tdiaz: https://web.archive.org/web/20080820072239/http://www.hypermall.com/~tdiaz oops too late
04:50 < dtm> tdiaz: brah i'm askin what the Tuscon hard drive is. what does that mean
04:50 < amdamd> What are you mining for?
04:54 < dtm> tdiaz: ohhh i finished scrolling back. lol. ok so it's a demo cd? from where, from Apple or from you? why are your files on a cd?
05:11 < dtm> wow this whole site is utterly frozen in time. i wonder what happened. http://www.merlinmedia.com/cdrom_portfolio/pippin.html
05:13 < dtm> and they misspelled Apple Coputer.
05:39 < amdamd> My files are on a CD .. because I put them there.
05:39 < amdamd> That disc .. is my disc. I made that disc.
05:41 < amdamd> I made it to have MacOS booted so I could show various things .. on the disc, and that it can do pretty much any MacOS applications, like HyperCard/Studio for kiosk type modes/uses.
05:43 < amdamd> As an example, interactive kiosk and similar at museums that used HyperCard/Studio.
05:44 < amdamd> Which was pretty common in the day. Master the disc, burn it, stick it in the drive. Boom.
05:44 < amdamd> The only thing I never actually got was the authentication system.
05:46 < amdamd> Because Bandai decided to write them off and the authentication server fell through the cracks at that point.
05:47 < amdamd> But I was supposed to get it and handle authenticating discs at that point, if these things got sold as a VAR would, and support for the specific thing is via that VAR only.
05:49 < amdamd> Ultimately it was the Japan people that pulled the plug. The US based people were in for it, even if we didn't sell a lot of them at first. I doubt 47K of them would have sold, but we would basically get them all anyway, either way.
05:49 < amdamd> But in the end, they took the write off and wanted a certificate of destruction.
05:50 < amdamd> e.g. Alamagordo, NM, or Logan UT landfill like. (Atari/E.T. .. Apple/Lisa)
05:52 < amdamd> But like I've noted, we disassembled them and sold the SCSI CD drives, pulled various chips off the boards, and drilled holes in the ROM card to give them back.
05:55 < amdamd> Thought the ROM card ended up being chopping off the edge connector instead as that was simpler, and once they saw them all chopped off, got their certification on paper, we sent those for reclamation too.
05:56 < amdamd> The guillotine process usually cracked the plastic package on at least the two ROMs closest to the edge connector, if not all four of them.
05:57 < amdamd> Like I've said, this whole thing came to be .. as they had offered us bulk packed Motorola 56K external modems with the Macintosh cable.
05:58 < amdamd> Vendors, hawkers, whatever, would send samples to various places like us that would buy excess, surplus electronics, inventory, etc.. for everything from resale to destruction.
06:00 < amdamd> The things were black instead of beige/white a they were custom made for the PiPPiN, The thing initially was to be packaged with a smaller modem that was about the size of a pack of cigarettes.
06:01 < amdamd> It was just a 9600/14.4. They changed over to these 56K Motorola ones at the last minute, and they had twice as many as they completed units for sale.
06:03 < amdamd> They offered those first, the vendor we usually end up duking it out with over offers, poo-pooed the modems in an effort to get them totally cheap by citing that since it came with the macintosh cable, it was specificities and they would not be able to be used with anything else.
06:03 < amdamd> LOL. :) Right. Yes, they had slightly different onboard firmware where hardware handshake was default for the Mac serial port.
06:03 < amdamd> BFD.
06:05 < amdamd> That crap was typically done by the highest bid gets the deal, or other factors like how fast they'd pay for it, etc. Money talks, BS walks. We pretty much always had the checkbook out, ready to go,
06:07 < amdamd> So .. the offer was we'll beat whoever offer by a certain amount per unit, unequivocally. Because we knew what kinds of offers they'd get.
06:09 < amdamd> In the process of talking about that, and mentioning the @world markings.. "Yeah, these were supposed to be packaged with a later run of PiPPiN consoles, but the platform didn't do well, so we never did another run, and we have most of them left as it is.
06:11 < amdamd> "Oh?" .. "what's the plan?" .. got to talking about it, they weren't opposed too letting them sell for whatever kind of use, as in we'd have to make RAM cards to make them useful, get the injection molds for the dock and put a floppy and/or Ethernet dock together. We had a constant supply of 1.44MB auto insert drives.
06:12 < amdamd> So for school labs. Even the option of punching the back panel for a SCSI connector and including a drive, as a cheap Mac system for schools.
06:14 < amdamd> So .. chop chop.
06:15 < amdamd> Got the modems out of the packed consoles, the Matushita 4X with Apple firmware. (Basically, CD-600i) Those two items were the money product to resell wise.
06:16 < amdamd> The power supplies got sold as a DC switching PSU. The 1/2 AA batteries .. hell, whored those things out too for a couple bucks, free with various orders of Mac / Apple IIgs stuff.
06:18 < amdamd> Because of the cable end on the AppleJack controller, chopping them off and changing to the 4 pin mini-din was just not feasible to be done by hand.
06:19 < amdamd> ..and to get cables made from Taiwan, needed to order a minimum of 50K pieces.. There just wasn't interest in the controllers or the keyboards with the pen tablet, though IIRC, the same retrofit cable could have been used.
06:22 < amdamd> So those ultimately became shredder food. The metal chassis went to a scrap metal yard nearby, the motherboards got various chips pulled. The RAM and CPUs, Zilog SSC, and whatever else fell off during that process after those things we did want were pulled.
06:23 < amdamd> Aluminum heatsinks went to that scrap, and the small little fans.. well, we had small fans for x86 heatsinks for quite a long time.
06:24 < amdamd> Nothing went "back" to Japan, no plastics were changed, nothing reboxed, and all that jazz that various wiki sites say happened. The North America allotment of PiPPiNs were torn down.
06:25 < amdamd> Microsoft got Bungie, and that was it. Like the Newton, Apple was ahead of it's time slightly, and the product was too dumbed down.
06:26 < amdamd> They didn't want the PiPPiN licensees to sell the systems as competitors to the Macintosh. Thats why the thing didn't use standard SIMMs either.
06:28 < amdamd> But by the time this all was happening, there wasn't any threat to competing with Mac desktops with these things, and that was why they researched niche markets for them, before ultimately saying screw it
06:29 < amdamd> When the PiPPiN was announced, I could have never imagined this whole thing happening like that. Not in the slightest. So weird.. of an era.
06:30 < amdamd> Kind of like the Video Game crash of 1982 in some ways. Only to be repeated in 2001/02 with the whole Internet Appliance thing. Sony eVilla, anyone?
06:32 < amdamd> IoT 15 years too early, and too stupidly priced considering you could get a Windows 98 thing that did all the same stuff for less than the stupid dedicated, locked down, IA device.
06:33 < amdamd> But Sony didn't blow their idea. The PlayStation Network .. and what we have now with all the consoles and subscriptions.
06:33 < amdamd> Ah well.. 'nuff rambling.
06:33 < amdamd> Nearly 23 years ago.
06:36 < amdamd> If we were in the desert and real estate / buildings were dirt cheap, I can see a lot of this stuff having been just stashed. Like the nearly 2,000 Bell & Howell Apple II's unloaded from Broward County Schools, and 4,000 or so, basically, the last IIgs systems Apple had, picked up in Winter of 1993 from three different auctions on the east coast.
06:37 < amdamd> Those black A2's got sold in pieces, the cases got flattened. I so wanted to figure a way to stash them. But the boards, keyboards, power supplies as separate items were way more in demand than the whole machine.
06:39 < amdamd> Came down to if you bought a motherboard and PSU, the bottom pan would get shipped with the two things attached. Keyboard? Want the case too? $15 bucks more. All three? You get the case free.
06:39 < amdamd> So weird.
06:40 < tdiaz> OTOH, that CD that is mentioned on the Frozen in Time web site sounds interesting. Kinda similar to what I made maybe. Maybe it's out there somewhere, too.
06:42 < tdiaz> I sent about 30 units overall as samples to various places for possible interest. I did include disc.. who knows. Maybe one of those units and that disc surfaced after a bunch of years and someone was like "Ooh, what's this?!?!"
06:45 < tdiaz> I believe the hard drive I had used to master those things is in one of the boxes I have here, and there are variants of that CD, so I need to look and see if there's anything on them that I don't want out there and zero out bytes in an ISO if so.
06:45 < tdiaz> It doesn't check the whole disc against the authentication process. That would take forever.
06:55 < amdamd> LOL. Blast ][ the Past: https://apple2online.com/web_documents/apple_ii_faqs.pdf
06:56 < amdamd> Was wondering if any usenet archives had the SCSI drives being sold mentioned, didn't find any.
06:56 < amdamd> but there's Alltech and Apple II stuff in that.

01:04 < amdamd> if anyone here didn't see it, and is PiPPiNterested...
01:04 < amdamd> https://twitter.com/y816/status/1352348523061149698
01:05 < blitter> i'd really love an image of that green pippin disc :)
01:06 < amdamd> It's not in the wild I guess.. people have photos of it.. Hmmm..
01:06 < blitter> the only pippin sdk disc in the wild that I know is the 11/96 disc
01:06 < blitter> I know someone with a DR 0 SDK disc. sealed
01:07 < blitter> he keeps asking me if he should break the seal to image it and put it up on the 'net
01:08 < amdamd> F. that sealed BS. Who cares. It's not gonna do anything to it value wise, it's not a limited edition Beetlethoven or something.
01:08 < blitter> that's what i said
01:08 < blitter> i said the market for pippin developer collectibles is infintesimally small :P
01:09 < amdamd> -Anyone- -At- -All- this is going to pay -Any- money for that ... is going to absolute open it.
01:10 < amdamd> Absoositively sure that it Would. Not. Even. Be. A. Pico. Flinch. of a difference.
01:10 < amdamd> The only thing, "is it scratched? No." back to the above.
01:11 < amdamd> "Absopitivlylutely. =
01:12 < amdamd> 'was supposed to the the word
01:14 < amdamd> Now, I do wonder.. if we'd gone this far and that disc never surfaced until now.
01:14 < amdamd> Hopefully it spurred some interest all along ..
01:16 < amdamd> For the longest time I never thought a thing about it because people keep telling me that the units out there, many don't check the disc anymore, that the thing had been removed towards the end of the product line.
01:19 < amdamd> but based on all the conversations I've had with them back then, I was to get the actual Mac LC or IIsi, whatever they had it running on, if a product transfer had materialized. Which basically was going to be the wanted some X amount for each, with a percentage up front, (for X units) but we would take possession of all of it.
01:21 < amdamd> That meant all support, the inside the box paperwork would have to reflect that Bandai is not responsible for any support, any claims, any whatever for this product line.
01:21 < amdamd> On the serial # range we had , that is.
01:22 < amdamd> Whatever was out there via retail, would have been however that was going, went.
01:24 < amdamd> The legal dept. said that Bandai was 100% stake holder as to what these could be released as, as long as they did not try and compete with a current Macintosh product line.
01:25 < amdamd> As in they're pretty low performers wise to the Macintosh at that point in the game. So.. Didn't matter if we went niche/var with them as MacOS compatible for like an embedded system.
01:27 < amdamd> Which actually would have meant that the outer plastic would have been removed and I was going to make a small PCB that would fit somewhere on the metal chassis, for two Mini-Din 4 ADBs.
01:28 < amdamd> "You assemble/modify it, here's the recommendation", or we do it for an added price.
01:29 < amdamd> The real sticker was the RAM module. Which pretty much was "we're going to have to manufacture one" to include with every unit.
01:32 < amdamd> The out the door price was target to be where someone would spend a bit just over half on what the MSRP was, to get them, if they were taking more than a set number of units, and anything else was that base price and we bundle whatever accessories that we wanted and could a-la-carte the rest of the stuff.
01:35 < amdamd> Would have basically been the three inner sub packages removed from the glossy retail box, any bandai logos masked off. A common thing back then, a rig like a small cabinet with a flap that has knock outs. Stack in X amount of boxes and hit it with specially made spray for corrugated board.
01:36 < amdamd> Which the stuff worked the best on brown, to where you'd not see it blatantly.
01:37 < amdamd> On bleached corrugated, if you wanted an absolute close to clean look doing that, you'd likely spray the brown, let it dry and then cover it with flat white.
01:41 < amdamd> So, the three internal boxes, or however if we just made a die set and got new foam inserts all together. But it would he a whole hell of a lot more cost effective to have just used the existing interior packaging with the exterior carton and four blank sheets, or an inner sleeve to drop into the box to make up for the thickness that was the retail box so it would retain the rigidity for shipping.
01:44 < amdamd> We never expected 45K+ units to all go, and based it on the initial percentage of units sold, and in increments there aftermaths if there was continued interest, to at one point pulling the plug on the rest of them for scrap, giving them all the ROM cards after they'd been smacked by a sledge hammer like.
01:45 < amdamd> The rest was ours, to do with as pleased. Chip reclamation, sell the peripherals, accessories as "whatever" ..
01:47 < amdamd> Metal chassis would have likely been scrap metal, motherboards with specified parts pulled go as bulk scrap PCB, Optical drive and Power Supplies being sold as surplus.
01:48 < amdamd> Which meant that the CD drives would have been snapped up by Mac users, Mac peripheral vendors, likely to make the ZFP style external CD product, or.. whatever.
01:50 < amdamd> The CD drives were put out for $29 each, $19 in lots of 100 or more, and they went pretty quickly.
01:52 < amdamd> They ended up opting for the deal that would do when demand was lower than whatever it was we decided would trigger it, vs. paying in large blocks to sell them as a functioning product.
01:53 < amdamd> .. as in apply that from the beginning, with the ROM cards plus a certificate of destruction for write off purposes.
01:54 < amdamd> Once they saw the ROM cards piled in a gaylord box, damaged, and could dig in as far as they wanted to see that it wasn't a layer on top..
01:55 < amdamd> We take that back too and dump it in with low grade PCBs.
01:58 < amdamd> What I really suspect the deal was, since it was close to the end of the year, they just decided to finish the year with the whole thing settled.Where as had the whole thing started in January instead of July/August, there'd have been a window for some to get out as functional units in bare packaging with no paperwork, just the internal CDs in jewel cases, plus whatever pressed titles they had left.
02:00 < amdamd> Depending on who you ask, the concept was kind of too early, or too late. The price was a show stopper, and that the thing required very unique peripherals for expansion, was ultimately what sank the product line.
02:02 < amdamd> The MSRP was, "why should I buy this, that they say can run specific PiPPiNized releases of Mac games, and that those developers would also be able to just market their game as an edition for the Macintosh period. With an entry level system costing as little as 1/4 more MSRP to acquire.
02:53 < blitter> ^^ this belongs in a blog post ;)
02:53 < blitter> or a twitter thread

04:37 < amdamd> I wish I had been able to score a larger PiPPiN RAM module back when. BDE only had 8MB.
04:38 < amdamd> Kinda wonder if more can be piggybacked on the motherboard..
04:39 < amdamd> Like the Xbox developer machine had double the RAM onboard, though that's because there's pads on the PCB for it.
13:54 < blitter> amdamd: the pippin can address up to 38 megs of RAM tops
13:54 < blitter> that's a limitation of the aspen memory controller
13:55 < blitter> I've online of some japanese hackers long ago that fabbed a homemade 32 meg board, but it's twice the size of the regular modules so just kinda hangs off the bottom of the logic board
13:55 < blitter> *I've read online
15:27 < amdamd> blitter: well, with an Ether/Floppy dock, the hanging off isn't much of an issue if the dock base provides for the extra room.. so.. :)
15:27 * amdamd wonders what it would take to make that card ...
15:28 < amdamd> e.g., any further logic, or just a matter of more memory modules accordingly.
15:29 < amdamd> For an OSH Park PCB, and find your own era DRAMs..
15:29 < MrBIOS> amdamd so far I've been unable to even find a source of the mating connector on the RAM module board
15:29 < amdamd> Or yes, design a new one with a PLD and use some new single piece of memory.
15:29 < MrBIOS> so it's kind of a non-starter unless you can
15:30 < MrBIOS> it's a surface-mount board-to-board connector for which it appears there is no modern equivalent.
15:30 < amdamd> Of course. But that's not an absolute show stopper if something mechanical can fit on the same footprint.
15:30 < amdamd> Which, I
15:30 < amdamd> 'm sure has been researched.
15:31 < MrBIOS> it is a show stopper as far as I am concerned.
15:32 < MrBIOS> the easiest thing to do would probably be to find a NEW connector with the same PCB-side pin pitch, which can actually be acquired, and replace the original Apple connector
15:32 < MrBIOS> and I use the term "easy" vey loosely
15:32 < amdamd> But.. it's not an absolute either. A thin PCB could be set in the middle of that with routing to an alternate connector pair, and you have to use proper equipment to remove and place that thin PCB in there and flow solder from it's pads to the ones on the motherboard.
15:32 < MrBIOS> sure, you can always hack something like that up
15:32 < amdamd> I mean, there's a way some how. Just depends on how far you want to go. :)
15:32 < MrBIOS> but there's rather limited space around the access hatch for the RAM on the bottom
15:33 < amdamd> Yes. See Dock comment. Leave the door off. Make a recess in the dock.
15:33 < amdamd> No dock? Make a stand off plate.
15:33 < MrBIOS> I don't think you understand
15:33 < amdamd> How far do you want to go? :) That's all.
15:34 < amdamd> I know what you said. The area that is exposed when the flap is flipped open is only so big.
15:34 < MrBIOS> correct
15:34 < amdamd> Take the stupid flap off.
15:34 < amdamd> Raise up the console.
15:34 < MrBIOS> there's sheet metal around that
15:35 < amdamd> No there's not. You take the door off and you can see straight in.
15:36 < amdamd> Make your product fit in there, even if that means you have to double stack a second PCB on a connector pair that allows it to stick far enough out.. "above" the bottom of the case..
15:37 < amdamd> If you need more room. Or make two of them the same footprint that just stack and stack. Then you have options. 16 and 16, two cards, or 16 only, one card.
15:38 < amdamd> Like the crummy thing that the original Newer Tech made for the Powerbook Duo RAM expansion .. that they never supported. Pfft.
15:38 < amdamd> Stupid thing didn't work on the 2300.. while every one elses did. WTF people?

21:31 < tdiaz> ... just now realized they a couple used different PRAM battery configurations.
21:34 < tdiaz> Looks like the battery being accessible by only removing the top case vs. having to remove all of it and get inside of the cage.
21:36 < blitter> sort of
21:37 < blitter> the 1.0 board has a removable battery, but you have to remove the sheet metal cage to get at it
21:37 < blitter> the 1.2 board has a little cubby accessible just by removing the top plastic case... but the battery is soldered with little wires to the logic board >:(
21:37 < tdiaz> Where as a later one has the battery in the side of the sheet metal connected via wir...that
21:40 < tdiaz> The 1.2 has a 'nicer' plastic shield over the slot connector connections.
21:44 < tdiaz> I have a handful of the cups for the battery.
22:38 < tdiaz> The way the PiPPiN case is made, they certainly do show wear easily.
22:38 < tdiaz> The controller is better, but the matte, semi not smoothed surfaces on the rest suck.

18:10 < elliot> blitter: Hard to tear my eyes away from the Kickstart padlock animation. It makes me smile!
19:11 < tdiaz> :)

19:08 < tdiaz> blitter: Just incase there'a any possible remaining doubt on the 'Tuscon' disk:
19:08 < tdiaz>

19:09 < tdiaz> When we had to pay 30 cents a piece .. photos of photos of related pictures of some of the stuff on the splash screen.
19:09 < blitter> yeah lmk if you ever find any of the originals
19:09 < tdiaz> Because just getting the actual graphic is still not quite enough. The same plane, instrument panel..
19:11 < tdiaz> That's the funny part. That's probably why those prints are not in this set. They're somewhere else because I scanned them.
19:13 < tdiaz> The middle one with the batwing overlaid into it as Avila College (now University) off Wornall Rd, just south of the I-435 loop, right about the middle.
19:14 < tdiaz> The place has more buildings now, but that's the aerial photo I got when I then buzzed the place to say "I
19:14 < tdiaz> 'm here"
19:14 < tdiaz> before going to the airport nearish.
19:16 < tdiaz> The negative strip in there isn't these either, but I'm sure it's in one of the envelopes. I tended to sometimes.. shove the stack back into an empty one sitting on the table, in poor form. :)
19:18 < tdiaz> Scan the negative, get original of original.
19:18 < tdiaz> Stupid browser is being cranky today.

21:32 < blitter> tdiaz: it occurred to me over the past couple of days-- what was the process to get the "Tuscon" disc signed? Did you send Bandai a master CD and they sent a signed CD back to you?
21:32 < blitter> Did they email you a file that you had to burn onto disc yourself?
21:33 < blitter> did you send them a hard drive with a writable "Pippin Netscape" partition already on it?
21:58 < tdiaz> blitter: A guy took the drive from me, and brought it back the same day. I just burned the drive as a disc.
21:59 < tdiaz> I had a drive with 650MB partition and whatever was left for utilities and a separate system folder.
22:00 < tdiaz> Bandai was pretty close. The consoles were at the same facility.
22:01 < tdiaz> What sucked is .. he kinda of disappeared right near the end of that .. and was going to bring me that machine.
22:02 < tdiaz> The docs talk about a process where it contacts a server at Apple and does some exchanging before signing it.
22:02 < tdiaz> But in this case it was just self contained on a IIsi.
22:04 < tdiaz> When the decision was made to scrap them, he bailed. But it was basically going to be Bandai transferring the whole product and what they had to me/us.
22:05 < tdiaz> They were just not going to mess with it at all since it had been long enough and any obligations they had to purchased units was past.
22:06 < tdiaz> The only thing I wasn't clear on is if JP was a different division.
22:07 < tdiaz> But .. ya, he took the hard drive, brought it back and I saved a disk image with Disk Utility and Toast before doing anything else.
22:08 < tdiaz> I remember screwing around with it trying to see just how much I could mess with before it wouldn't pass again.
22:08 < tdiaz> Like messing with stuff in sub directories, files with same or different names, etc.
23:08 < blitter> tdiaz: ah, thanks for the details (glad you remember)! so basically, you handed them a hard drive, they massaged the partition for you, then were you given any instruction after that? like "only burn this, don't mess with it or you'll undo what we just did"
23:09 < blitter> you didn't have to perform any additional "signing" work on the drive after you received it back? just burned it?
23:13 < tdiaz> Basically, yeah. Make an image of this before you do anything.
23:14 < blitter> did your Bandai guy tell you that? or was it part of some official document somewhere
23:14 < tdiaz> He told me thats what he's doing.
23:15 < blitter> got it. thanks again for the details-- Apple's own docs are vague and suggest that Bandai emailed devs the authentication file, which doesn't make any sense to me because just having the file isn't enough; the MDB has to be poked in a particular place too, which you can't do without special tools
23:15 < tdiaz> Because I inquired as to the process as I know I would need to be able to make various discs and the intention was to make RAM cards and 7.6.1 environments.
23:15 < blitter> so I'm trying to get a sense of how the auth process really worked
23:16 < tdiaz> Yeah, the official process with Apple in the loop was that the vendor would have a machine and Apple had an authentication server that the OEM would work with via WAN.
23:17 < blitter> I see, that makes some sense. The vendor maybe got emailed an auth file from Apple, then applied it to the image
23:17 < tdiaz> But in the end, only Bandai licensed stuff.
23:17 < blitter> yeah Katz units didn't use auth at all, so no need there
23:17 < tdiaz> Yeah, though I got the impression that the file was transferred as part of that process.
23:18 < tdiaz> ..and then you'd do the image of the drive.
23:18 < blitter> right yeah that makes sense. I think it'd make sense if whatever signing tool would lock the partition after it was done, just to be safe
23:18 < blitter> I'm guessing that didn't happen? You didn't unlock it manually after making your image?
23:19 < tdiaz> No, I didn't have to unlock.
23:19 < blitter> fascinating
23:20 < tdiaz> Like I noted, it was handing over the whole thing, reminding stock and do what you're gonna do with them. There were no limits with Apple as to what they can't do marketing wise .. and even if there was, it was two years out by then. Wasn't gonna byte into anything Apple was doing by then.
23:21 < blitter> so just trying to get it straight in my head-- by the time you entered the picture, had Bandai retrieved the signing server (the IIsi) from Apple? had Apple completely divested itself by that point and the ball was 100% in Bandai's court?
23:21 < tdiaz> Wasn't a license transfer, just an inventory and support hardware / tools to be able to support the hardware.
23:22 < tdiaz> I think so, or for all I know they had that all along and the other process never got established.
23:22 < blitter> ok gotcha, so Bandai was both the vendor *and* the signing authority by your time
23:22 < blitter> Apple was nowhere in the signing chain
23:23 < tdiaz> Correct.
23:23 < blitter> got it, thanks
23:24 < tdiaz> That I even got into it at this whole level .. is just so weird. :)
23:25 < tdiaz> Just happened to be in the right place when I saw them offering the modems in bulk. They were still in the bulk boxes from Motorola. Black modem, black 1 meter cable in a bag.
23:25 < blitter> oh another question-- did you burn your disc from the image you made when you got the drive back? or did you go into Toast and point it toward the hard drive. reason I ask is because Toast has options to "optimize" a volume (basically it defrags and creates a brand new Desktop file), which would totally fuck up how the auth file knows the volume is laid out
23:25 < tdiaz> Wall Wart was separate in the carton.
23:25 < blitter> and did you get directions advising you to use said options in toast or not
23:25 < tdiaz> Yeah, I just burned it as I got it. I did that optimize bit before I sent it.
23:26 < tdiaz> But it didn't seem to matter. :)
23:26 < tdiaz> No, just "burn this"
23:26 < blitter> interesting. I wanna say the optimize flag only applies at burn time, but I'd have to go back and check
23:27 < tdiaz> Well, I mean defrag with MacOS native tools more than that Toast function.
23:27 < blitter> ahhhhh
23:27 < blitter> ok that makes sense
23:27 < tdiaz> Which .. screwed stuff up. Period.
23:28 < tdiaz> Toast did stupid shit with the ISO-9660 and Joliet stuff that caused things to be wonky no matter how you set things up it did whatever when the disc was inserted.
23:29 < blitter> I did have to navigate a complex web of UI when I set up my Kickstart disc, which I authored as a hybrid bootable Mac and Joliet disc
23:29 < tdiaz> ..and those dual catalog volumes - LOL. The only thing I had a smooth time with was the ProDOS / HFS stuff for Apple II support.
23:29 < blitter> it's not at all intuitive how to do hybrid discs in Toast
23:29 < tdiaz> No, it's not. It just sucks.
23:30 < tdiaz> Sucks so bad that I keep the 9600 with Toast 4. something just for that.
23:32 < tdiaz> As I still do master HFS / A2 stuff too.

00:06 < amd> jjuran: Pffft. Type all ya want. Talk makes more talk. Don't worry about typabusterinug .. no ones gonna go -that- long .. at least without an interesting topic perhaps. .. Says the guy that rattled off many pages about PiPPiN stuff.
00:08 < amd> Which .. I mean, how did that thing get coined .. 'tuscon' .. The Ultimate System CON maybe? I don't get it.
00:09 < amd> ...anyhow, back to the deafness.
00:19 < blitter> amd: in your defense, i did ask you about a couple things :P

13:59 < blitter> amd: do you still have this?
14:00 < blitter> as well as the board it plugged into?

--- Day changed Wed Jun 30 2021

--- Day changed Thu Jul 01 2021

01:00 < amd> blitter: No. There's nothing going on with it other than the mechanical repositioning of the slot.
01:11 < blitter> but you don't have that machine anymore either? that photo is dated 2017
01:11 < blitter> curious what's on the ROM

21:23 < amd> https://twitter.com/y816/status/1414032478340145160
--- Day changed Sun Jul 11 2021
06:42 < amd> Hmmm..
06:43 < amd> Wonder what the odds of finding a PiPPiN motherboard are..
08:43 < CuriosTiger> About the same as coming across a lightly used Apple I at a yard sale.
13:28 < blitter> amd: I have one :)
13:28 < blitter> do what I do and save a search on YAJ
17:10 < amd> blitter: Turns out I must have not actually gotten any more motherboards, or there is still a mystery box somewhere.
17:10 < amd> I have so many chassis/casings..
18:02 < blitter> amd: any accessories? specifically, any PCI adapters?

17:27 < blitter> amd: mind if I share a link to your photos of the early 6100-based Pippin prototype? so they can be cited on wiki
17:27 < amd> That's fine.
17:28 < blitter> mind if they're shared via twitter? (you don't have to be the one to do it)
17:28 < blitter> also do you want credit for them? :)
17:28 < amd> I still can't quit laughing over that whole tuscon thing..
17:29 < amd> Twitter, whatever is fine. credit is nice, but doesn't always happen ;-)
17:31 < blitter> right on, thanks!

02:48 < blitter> amdamd: https://twitter.com/ablitter/status/1446730216022306821
04:53 < amdamd> blitter: Some even have the PDM motherboard in them.
14:09 < blitter> amdamd: ... isn't PDM the 6100? or do you mean a PDM prototype motherboard?
17:54 < amdamd> blitter: The latter.

---

Rest in peace, Tony. Thanks for the memories.