Been having a bit of a sort-out recently. Time and entropy produce mostly sludge, but occasionally from out of the mud one plucks a pearl. I recovered my 1987 Mac Plus from beneath several archaeological layers. Oh this was going to be fun ! I connected the massive 20MB hard drive to the beast, and switched it on. After a very short delay there was a sort of clack and then smoke. I switched it off again… Number three child, The Geek, was disappointed.
Several days later I decided to remove the case and take a look. You never know, maybe there would be a single obvious burned-out component and I would know what to replace. Well, twas not so simple, but removing the case revealed a wondrous suprise … the inside of the case is signed by the Macintosh team ! I took a rather crummy picture. Here is a small section :
Its all explained at this Vintage Computing website, and in more detail at the Andy Hertzfeld section of the Mac folklore website. The Mac Design team had a party at which they all signed a large sheet of paper; Jobs then had the signatures engraved onto the Macintosh case mould. Over time as the design changed, some of the signatures got lost. I can’t find Jeff Raskin on mine, which is disappointing.
Lots of people know this already, but I didn’t, so it was a weird and pleasant surprise.
All I have to do now is find someone who can fix the bugger.