EDIT: RRAuction has a video of Corey taking a look at the prototype here: ruclips.net/video/jajuk4S_GZg/видео.html What are your thoughts on this prototype? Do you agree it's the one in the Paul Terrell photos? Would you pay $1M for it if you had the money? Should it be rebuilt to operating status?
In order: It's neat It probably is If my monthly income were about that much Probably not Ultimately this is just abstract for me, who earns 50 or so grand a year and can't fathom the numbers involved.
Or they only wanted the PSU off the board for another project or computer at the time? That's why we only have this part that was thrown away. And not the other part that might of been reused for something else? I'd rebuild it if it had all the chips. Otherwise without the chips it becomes a ship of theseus project with this much of it missing. interesting, but not for $1M. but the market for just about anything right now is stupid.
@@MobCat_ I agree, I think they stole the power supply. The corners cut off was maybe some had this working at some point and installed in a case of some kind. Later, maybe they salvaged for parts, including the power supply.
EDIT: It just sold for 677 000 $ yesterday. There's an interview on the RR Auction official channel. An interesting theory crossed my mind. Someone savvy in the market for such historic oddities could easily devise a strategy to make more money by cutting the board in half. Think about it. The value is completely historic, arbitrary and intrinsic, it has little to do with the computer working, all the parts being present or even the whole board being there. So you throw up one piece for auction, it nets a 6 or even 7 figure sum. Years later the coveted "second part" is allegedly found somewhere and it sells for even MORE. Because of its nature as a missing part that completes the whole, the historic APPLE original PCB is now in its entirety. That second part now has increased value. Essentially you create two out of one with the second part being more valuable all it takes is some patience and a decent story to backup your claims and boom you made a crap ton of money by breaking the board in half doubling its value instead of halving it.
That would be a massive risk to take. If it had been complete, it likely would've sold for considerable more. The 2nd half would also have less value for people other than whoever bought the 1st half. It wouldn't be unusual to remove a chunk(back at the time) to use parts, aside from just accidental breakage.
Looking at it, I almost wonder if someone didn't need a DC power supply for some other project and hacked the end of the board off to re-use that part...
It would be a pretty sad state of affairs to destroy a working PCB for a standard PSU section, no technician with any soul would do that. It would be easier to build one from scratch rather than hacksaw a PCB.
@@joefish6091 it's not the pcb part of it necessarily but that you'd have to transplant the components off it anyway. if they needed a working one for the next prototype and radio shack wasn't open or didn't have the parts that's just what you do. if you hacked the thing together in the first place it's no big deal for you to hack it apart. (or maybe it caught fire or whatever)
The ironic thing is, these things are only really valued at all today because Apple grew into a billion pound beheamoth. Back in the day nobody really lusted after owning an Apple 1. Yeah maybe around Woz's computer club activities but really not so much so on a wider scale. There was so many other machines that were either sexier or lower priced and more attainable, or more complete and working. I myself used the single Apple II computer in the school library, but never lusted after them, simply because their Basic editor and screen mapping was very krusty. Dual floppies had some appeal, but you could get floppy drives for other machines as well, and they were expensive. Hard to believe now. Within a few years we were all on harddrives.
I've seen the Apple-1 at the Nixdorf museum and completely forgot about it roughly 20 years ago and only noticed and remembered it when I visited the museum again 10 years ago. Ironically the exhibits reflect our opinions. The first time I went there it wasn't exactly theft proof by being bolted to a tabletop with 2 small screws - later it was encased in acrylic. I always found the Sphere-1 and Fairlight CMI on display there way more appealing.
To be fair, most engineers I know (including myself) aren't precious about our prototypes. Most prototypes of things I have made (if I kept them) sit (poorly kept) in the bottom of some drawer... if they are lucky. It is normally fans and historians that treat them like artifacts and not curiosities
I think it's often that way in many things.. something you create yourself isn't as special to you as something created by someone else. Especially someone else who's famous.
@@TechTimeTraveller I have a prototype Sonos like system I helped develop at Intel 22 years ago. For me it was 18 months worth of hard work, but the memories are what are special... not the artifact
True. As one of those guys, I have blank PCBs of products that I designed (especially where I laid out the PCB as well) and also fully functional units. The first units from a mass production run are always more satisfying to me than the prototypes that led up to that point.
@@JockMurphy yeah I think historians/fans/collectors like the artefacts precisely because they feel like they provide a "window" into this experiences and memories. The people who were actually there... don't need any kind of proxy!
This was "just junk" at one point -- a bodge-wire prototype of a board that they only made a handful of, and was obsolete almost instantly. Apple couldn't even send it as a warranty exchange.
I always found it hilarious the sort of prices an original apple 1 goes for and the kind of people who buy them. Especially this one with it being snapped in half. Don't get me wrong I know it's important in computing history and everything but really it isn't all that exciting for someone who knows exactly what an apple 1 is. Just a collectors item for the extremely wealthy.
more so the apple 1, as it has no case, no keyboard, it was only Circuit Board - PCB, with a lot of off the shelf part added, except PCB - Circuit Board, and if buying a fully put to gatherer machine, the Circuit Board - PCB, will be totaly concealed in a case? and from the out side it might as well by a 2022 copy remade with all new off the shelf parts, today?
Most interesting part would be documenting the differences to the production boards - but that's unlikely since most collectors either don't care about technical details (yet lust about traces of finger grime that might have belonged to Steve Jobs) or fear doing so might lower the mythical value.
Krazy Ken (a Mac youtuber) does a lot of scam busting emails. One of the scams he busted was a company was selling iPhone cases that contained what was apparently a bit of the motherboard of a production Apple 1. His reasoning for concluding it was fake? Not only did the bits of circuit board look nothing like any part of the Apple 1, but if the manufacturer had had actual Apple 1s to cut up, they'd actually have made more money selling those than they did the phone cases.
Yeah I read about that business - that seemed crazy. And they would have paid top dollar for that according to various sites.. like $900k. I'm glad that one was a scam - if they actually did that they should be flogged!
I prefer the homebrew computer based on the KIM-I @Dave's Garage had a while back. This Apple A may be historical significant, but a working homebrew computer out of the same era is more impressive to me. :)
Regarding the 6501 vs the 6502 processor. This gets interesting... I've got an original Apple-1 user manual, which conveniently includes the Rev. A schematics. There is a note (#7 on Sheet 2) which indicates that there was an option to use the 6800 processor instead of the 6502. It needed two jumpers be removed and additional components for the external clock generation circuitry. That clock circuit was the difference in pinout between the two chips (other than the instruction set). The 6800 needed a 2-phase non-overlaping clock source, where the 6502 could be fed by a simple single phase clock. That 6800 clock circuitry appears to be the 4 transistors and associated components up at the top left of the boards, along with the hex inverter ('04) at position C1. There should be a pair jumpers labeled "6502" which I don't see in the pictures to select which processor type gets used. That said, I don't recall the Apple-1 ever being produced with the 6800 processor, and Note #7 says that "as supplied" the extra components are not included. It's possible that they used the 6501 as a prototype stand-in for the 6800 (I expect it was a lot cheaper), but nowhere else in the user guide is the 6800 mentioned. I wonder if they were hedging their bets on the 6502's success, or if perhaps there were possible markets where they could displace an existing 6800-based product? They did, after all, use the 6820 not the 6520 as the PIA chip. Where this gets interesting is that the 650x and 6800 processors have a different instruction set and internal register architecture. Since the monitor ROM uses 6502 instructions, it's possible that they could have used the 6501 chip instead of the '02, but to what end? More components for the '01, and the law suit (though I don't know the relative timing of the suit and the Apple-1 development). So I wonder who that ghostly customer might have been, or if Woz was already designing the Apple-1 with the 6800 before switching to the 6502 when it came out? Not intending to start a rumor here; just thinking out loud. I don't recall Woz ever getting the 6501, or talking about the 6800 for that matter, but it's been a while. He and I both were at Wescon when the 6502 came out (though we didn't know each other), where we both got the '02s. They were $25. I also picked up the 6530 TIM chip ($35, if I recall). As I recall, the '01 was marketed to existing customers of the Motorola 6800 as a drop-in hardware replacement, so unless there was an existing 6800 customer that they were perhaps targeting, or hedging their bets on the viability of the 6502, using the 6501 in the Apple-1 prototype does not make a lot of sense to me.
The corners being cut off is what you'd do, without a drill, to either screw it down in the corners or dodge existing screws in an enclosure. not sure why apple wouldn't have a drill tho. Edit: in the Polaroid, we see there ma have already been holes that were too small for standard wood screws for instance. You cannot drill these larger, you'd have the reinforce the area first or just file it off like they did, and maybe use washers to mount it.
Yeah, board looks like FR4 or similar fibreglass substrate, doesn't look like phenolic. Epoxy/Fibreglass boards are only green because of the soldermask the raw board is the colour shown in the pictures.
I find it interesting that the 13 page 'authentication' report isnt published anywhere. Not that I care but if I was to spend over a currently half million dollars, you'd think that they would make that report public or at least available to bidders.
It's available to bidders.. I'm not sure how that works, if there's some sort of NDA that has to be signed. Corey has certain undisclosed knowledge about A1 production that he doesn't want potential forgers having.
I think this is a genuine board. I am not a tech collector. Or a techie at all, but based on the dust patterns, the board seems pretty legit. Dust is in sockets around the corners, edges and connections. There is little dust on the back of the board except close to the solder joints. By the dust, most of the chips look like they have been pulled out early with dust gathering in the sockets of the ones that were pulled. Except for some empty sockets toward the left of the board. Those look to have been pulled out far after the others. The dust is brown, but can’t tell, my best guess was that this was left in a cardboard box. Another thing is the bent pin in the top left of the board. The most confusing part of the board is the cutting of the corners of the board. Why? Corners are the weakest point of almost any rectangular product as they handle stress poorly compared to the rounded edges. My best guess is that the owner of the board hit the top left corner of the board on something, cracked it, and got worried that the weight of the right half of the board was going to further compromise the integrity of the rest of the board. So the owner decided to chop it off and chamfer the edges from destroying the board further.
I'll be selling the other half next month. If I knew the Apple-Tards would get this excited about the prototype, I would have broken it into eight pieces
The thing that struck me about the picture comparison is that the board in the auction has beveled corners (the top and bottom left corners are not square) but the Paul Terrell polaroid shows those corners square!
It is puzzling. It looks like the board in the Polaroid photos has mounting holes in the corners. Maybe someone had attempted to secure the mounted board with threadlocker or epoxy or something, and then later found sawing off the holes in the corners was the only way to remove it.
This computer is in really really rough shape. It would take a super miracle to get it working again, and might de-value the computer if parts werent the* original
What do you think one of Steve Wozniak's teeth would be worth? I know a dentist who worked in the bay area back in the late 70's who did some work for him.
I had no clue the Lisa goes for 50k, I figured it'd be a few grand. The 8 Bit Guy told a story of buying one in the mid 90s for $100, and he wound up selling it for like 10, he must regret that now.
Might have been the Lisa 2 - the original Lisa 1 with the Twiggy drives would have been crazy rare even then. The Lisa 2 would be worth several thousands today, so it would still suck. But if it was a Lisa 1.. yeah, that'd be worth crying over. :)
I'm on and off about collecting computer stuff. Some stuff is nice to have, but if it's just collecting dust in my home, and I never get around to use it for something, I start to wonder why I keep it. Computer are great, but to get really into a computer and it's software etc. is almost infinite time. When you have several computers it's infinite time exponential.
If I had the money to buy this board, I'd put it in a frame, put it on display somewhere, and otherwise never touch it. I don't think there's anything else that can really be done with it that won't simply ruin its value.
Given the cut corners, and the bad quality of the Polaroid, it's impossible to verify the two are the same article. The corners bother me though. Why would anyone bother to cut the corners off after it was declared fit to show as a sales sample?
The theory some have is the power supply section was saved for something else. Another possibility is the board was snapped because it was done its duty and headed for the garbage pile. There's a lot of things that don't quite add up with it, but someone apparently was convinced to the tune of $700k that it's real. And of course, the only person that could say it wasn't for certain is deceased.
@@TechTimeTraveller I'll never understand the extreme value some people put on... things. Then again, I'll never have the kind of wealth that allows someone to spend over half a million dollars without too much worry.
Was it chopped up to fit into some sort of fancy pants marketing display? Hacking off the psu side for re-use doesn't really make sense with the corners being cut off too. Interesting video! :-)
you know, I'm sure Corey knows far, far more than I do, but the chunk of the board being broken off, or hacked off, seems like a big red flag to me. There's no real explanation of it either, and it clearly wasn't just broken, it was cut and torn. I don't understand why they would lie about that, it seems like something is being obfuscated
Honestly for the channel and sharing the computers with the world I thank you for this hobby. have you ever considered maybe opening a computer museum? maybe with other computer enthusiasts? I have considered that myself in this area. looking into government grants and maybe a tied RUclips channel and donations all tied into it. it could even become a career.
No, thank you for watching and being supportive! With regards to a museum, I would love to do that. My collection began in earnest when a big computer store in Vancouver closed their own museum. However this area is notoriously costly for space.. probably on par with expensive parts of New York or LA. So that would be a major impediment to getting something like that going. I have thought about organizing a VCF festival up here though, so that might be one way to get things seen.
Great video! Personally, I wouldn't spent a dime on this. Yes, it's rare but hacked beyond repair. So if it doesn't work and not repairable then it just wall art. Good luck to the seller and buyer.
My hunch is it isn't real, and they couldn't find the parts for the power supply section so tried to fake it being broken. It SCREAMS fake. Im looking at the photos and some the traces even seem different... Not to mention some the components seem almost new old stock vs other parts that are pretty tarnished...
I don't think I'd buy it under any circumstances. I don't think I'd have a shot at getting that board working, and if I can't get it working, I'm just not interested.
@@TechTimeTraveller True. I am working on a Scopitone film jukebox right now and originality is the furthest thing from my mind as I attempt to get it working.
I have never been a real big fan of apple products... BUT.... I have eyeballed some of the reproduction kits and if an older apple fell into my lap it would be in a good home.
Certainly wouldn't spend that kind of money on it (If I had it) but I'll admit to scouring Ebay for orange Sprague Atom capacitors with the idea of creating a replica :)
What would the replica sell for? $50,000 to the right buyer? (Perhaps a bit more if it could be convincingly described as another previously "lost"/unknown prototype.)
Possibly - the 6501 CPU itself would be worth $5k if you could find one. If it were 100% authentic looking.. yeah, easily north of $10k or $20k anyway.
The Terrell board has a transistor below the trimmer in the upper left that the auction board doesn't. If it was removed later they did an unusually clean job
Yeah. I had been looking for signs of that with the resistors I was pointing out - because I thought it might be possible that this was a prototype board but not *the* Terrell prototype.. and maybe someone who saw the photos in Time or wherever moved the jumpers to align. But it looked like they'd been that way since day one to me.
i am by no means saying its fake, but the corners are different, and a ploy used by fakers is making a fake then putting it beyond use ie "non working".
Re: 1:27, "Argument about whether it was the first 'true' personal computer." ... Every time I hear that, gotta be honest, I feel like chucking something through the nearest window. No, it isn't. Not even remotely close. (To keep it short and sweet, almost every bit of mythos about this thing being "significant" beyond the history of Apple, the company, is pure unadulterated garbage. Microcomputers with ROM software to let you just start typing away on it predate the Altair; Intel's own development systems for the 4004 and 8008 were set up to work that way a good four years earlier. This involved an external serial terminal, sure, but the Apple I's built-in video circuitry is just as "dumb" as a serial terminal, it's nothing like as good as the memory-mapped video systems that were becoming commonplace in S-100 cards and machines like the Sphere which, again, substantially predate it. Heck, MOS' first support chips for the 6502 included the 6530 RIOT, which had the TIM monitor in mask ROM and was used in the Jolt, the first 6502 single-board computer. The *only* rickety leg it has to stand on in this argument is it's an early example of a system where the CPU and the video circuitry were on the same physical PCB. Is the IBM 5150 *not* a Personal Computer because its video output comes out of a separate board? This is a completely arbitrary and bogus distinction.) Anyway, whatever, done being triggered. Regarding the "authenticity" of this board... I'm not really sold, but it *could* be that one in the Paul Terrell photos. Gotta say, though, undoubtedly there were multiple copies of this prototype PCB, even back in the 70's it wouldn't have made a lot of sense to order just one unit of a board with plated-through VIAs, and it's very likely they built up more than one for demos. The fact that this board has so many chips yanked off it suggests to me that whatever its initial purpose was it ended up serving as workshop parts mule, and then got snapped in half when Apple decided to discontinue support for the Apple I. (Remember, it's an oft-quoted bit of Apple history that because Woz was the only one that could answer any questions about these things they encouraged owners to trade them in for Apple II's and destroyed every unit that came back.) Maybe the story of it being a gift from Steve Jobs could be true, I could imagine some scenario where he was gleefully presiding over the destruction of a batch of these things and had second thoughts after noticing one of the things he'd just axed was one of the prototypes, but... I guess that really puts a fine point on this: Someone is going to pay half a million bucks for literal garbage. What a world we live in.
Yeah I don't agree with the premise that the Apple-1 was the first PC.. it was something raised over on applefritter.. apparently IEEE or such has a motion to recognize it as first simply because everything was on board. I find that too arbitrary. To me a personal computer is an electronic device that can carry out computation for an individual, at a price an average individual could afford. But you go pretty broadly there. For all we know the first such computer was put together by a hermit electronics guru in his garage in 1969 but never caught any public notice. You could get neck deep in semantics on stuff like this. The one that irks me more is mainstream media outlets that call the Altair the first personal computer. I'd love to know what was in Corey's report.. if they were able to reasonably prove Jobs gave this person this thing. The only thing I find odd about the whole thing is that Apple-1s have been known to be hugely valuable now for years, but this owner never mentioned having been given this prototype until now. With Jobs being dead anyone could say they met him or got something from him.. hard for him to refute it. Some people are private I guess.
@@TechTimeTraveller Yeah, the problem with the whole idea of declaring some particular machine the "first personal computer" should be obvious, but it sure doesn't stop anyone from trying. Even the most superficially valid criteria, price, is ridiculously subjective: run it through an inflation calculator and the Apple I's introductory $666 price (which was just the motherboard, you were in for the better part of a thousand bucks before you were up and running with a keyboard and cassette interface, let alone the TV) comes to about $3,400 today; is that "affordable"? (And it also wasn't even that cheap; you could get a turnkey S-100 system like the PolyMorphic Systems Poly-88 for about the same money, and the Poly-88 had a superior memory-mapped video display much more similar to a modern PC. And for that matter, the Sphere 6800 was also very much in the same price ballpark almost a full year earlier.) Personally I like the argument, which I've seen semi-seriously advanced, that the first "personal computer" was the MIT Whirlwind I, circa 1951. It cost a bazillion dollars, sure, but it was the first computer designed for single person to sit down at a console and interact in real time with in the way we expect computers to behave today. (It even had a graphics display with a light pen and was the first computer for which "game programs" were written.) Everything since then has been about shrinking that experience down and making it cheaper, trying to pick some arbitrary point on that slope and declaring it the "first" is a fool's errand. (Although I guess if you were really going to put a gun to my head and make me pick the first "consumer PC" I would probably vote for the TRS-80 Model I, based on the arbitrary criteria that it was the first well known, popular, and *completely assembled* turnkey computer you could buy and start pounding away on in BASIC, not machine language, for less than the magic number of a thousand bucks. The Apple II beat it to market by a month but sold for $1,300, not $599; that's the difference between $3000 and $6000 in today's money and the TRS-80 included the monitor and cassette recorder; you could have it for $399 without. $3,000 is a jacked but not completely unreasonable gaming PC, nobody not filthy rich spends $6,000 on a home computer. ) Back to provenance... yeah, this story does seem awfully fishy. I'm not going to say the artifact itself is a fake, I'm willing to buy that, sure, it's a populated and subsequently destroyed Apple I prototype, but *anybody* could have dumpster-dived that thing. It smells to me like something someone found in a garage after someone who worked at or near Apple in the late 1970's passed away.
Check out the book '20 projects for the ZX81' by Stephen Adams, theres a nice 65 plus list of old and forgotten computer systems near the beginning of the book.
I have to ask: do you own an Apple 1 or replica yourself? I know you just said you've got collection fatigue but it's weird to think of you not owning a replica kit at least!
I own a Newton Apple 1 board. I haven't gotten around to building it - I'm a stickler for authenticity and with so many people at it finding the right parts are hard. But someday I will build it for sure.
If I had the money I would put it on hold until C64 develpment prototypes, ICs with partial implementations of the SID and VIC made to test sections ... drawings etc, and also VIC20 stuff .... isnt CBM that romantic ??
I am inherently suspicious when "lost" items suddenly reappear on the market. I certainly do not have 1M to spend on it (that's like my entire collecting budget for the whole year), but if I did, I would want more information about its provenance and authenticity. I do not even know enough to determine what specific tests or examinations would be appropriate. ETA: Since many key chips are missing, there is no way to check the date codes to determine if they are period-correct. Likewise there is no way to examine the contents of the PROM to compare it to early production models. ETA2: I appreciate that there is some skepticism about the authenticity.
Yeah I'm generally suspicious of stuff like this, especially when the potential value is so elevated. I trust Corey Cohen though. If he weren't involved, I'd be wondering, not so much that this is a forgery constructed in 2022, but that maybe it's not exactly the unit in the photo, maybe someone with the board looked at the photos in 2012 when they were published, moved/changed components to match - making it the one in the photo might add a few $ in value. I'd definitely want to see provenance on this and have some kind of proof the seller and Jobs knew each other. I think that's the main thing that would matter here. It's relatively possible to manufacture everything else.
Emphasizing that Cohen's report is notarized is pointless. It just means that a notary verified his identity as the author; it does not speak to the accuracy of the contents. More than once I had to submit a notarized legal document for various purposes. The notary checked my ID and witnessed the signature. S/He had no idea if the information on the notarized document was factually correct.
@@TechTimeTraveller The unaligned components are the suspects here. There's no reason for them to be exactly unaligned as the ones in the 1976 polaroid unless this is the same board.
My first thought was someone was frustrated with the board maybe because it wasn't working and snapped it over their knee. On second thought I think someone may have broke off the power supply parts to reuse on another board although it doesn't seem likely. Great Video, entertaining and informational too :)
A curiosity, but nothing more IMO. Certainly not worth half a million bucks in a rational world. If it could be “resurrected” then it would be really interesting.
With as many of the chips missing, and the huge part cut off, only a fool would pay more than a few bucks for this, Sure yesI know it is unique and historic, but it is damaged beyond its original capability, a curiosity but nothing more.
Those of you that rely on internet memes OBVIOUSLY never had anything to do with Apple. Like, seeing or using an Apple computer. BTW, Apple hate is sooo 2010, don't you people have anything better to troll about?
EDIT: RRAuction has a video of Corey taking a look at the prototype here: ruclips.net/video/jajuk4S_GZg/видео.html
What are your thoughts on this prototype? Do you agree it's the one in the Paul Terrell photos? Would you pay $1M for it if you had the money? Should it be rebuilt to operating status?
In order:
It's neat
It probably is
If my monthly income were about that much
Probably not
Ultimately this is just abstract for me, who earns 50 or so grand a year and can't fathom the numbers involved.
Or they only wanted the PSU off the board for another project or computer at the time? That's why we only have this part that was thrown away. And not the other part that might of been reused for something else?
I'd rebuild it if it had all the chips. Otherwise without the chips it becomes a ship of theseus project with this much of it missing.
interesting, but not for $1M. but the market for just about anything right now is stupid.
@@MobCat_ I agree, I think they stole the power supply. The corners cut off was maybe some had this working at some point and installed in a case of some kind. Later, maybe they salvaged for parts, including the power supply.
EDIT: It just sold for 677 000 $ yesterday. There's an interview on the RR Auction official channel.
An interesting theory crossed my mind. Someone savvy in the market for such historic oddities could easily devise a strategy to make more money by cutting the board in half. Think about it. The value is completely historic, arbitrary and intrinsic, it has little to do with the computer working, all the parts being present or even the whole board being there. So you throw up one piece for auction, it nets a 6 or even 7 figure sum. Years later the coveted "second part" is allegedly found somewhere and it sells for even MORE. Because of its nature as a missing part that completes the whole, the historic APPLE original PCB is now in its entirety. That second part now has increased value. Essentially you create two out of one with the second part being more valuable all it takes is some patience and a decent story to backup your claims and boom you made a crap ton of money by breaking the board in half doubling its value instead of halving it.
That would be a massive risk to take. If it had been complete, it likely would've sold for considerable more. The 2nd half would also have less value for people other than whoever bought the 1st half.
It wouldn't be unusual to remove a chunk(back at the time) to use parts, aside from just accidental breakage.
@@DoubleMonoLR Aye, youre right on all points. I was just playing around with ideas.
A form of Phenolic (sp?) resin was also used to make the Trabant in East Germany...
Looking at it, I almost wonder if someone didn't need a DC power supply for some other project and hacked the end of the board off to re-use that part...
That's actually a good theory. Maybe Apple themselves borrowed it to troubleshoot power problems on the production boards.
It would be a pretty sad state of affairs to destroy a working PCB for a standard PSU section, no technician with any soul would do that.
It would be easier to build one from scratch rather than hacksaw a PCB.
@@joefish6091 it's not the pcb part of it necessarily but that you'd have to transplant the components off it anyway. if they needed a working one for the next prototype and radio shack wasn't open or didn't have the parts that's just what you do. if you hacked the thing together in the first place it's no big deal for you to hack it apart.
(or maybe it caught fire or whatever)
I'd be more likely to believe that this board was reused for developing something else, and the right side of the board interfered in some way.
who knows how many laptop supplies i've lopped the end off because i needed a random 19v...
The ironic thing is, these things are only really valued at all today because Apple grew into a billion pound beheamoth. Back in the day nobody really lusted after owning an Apple 1. Yeah maybe around Woz's computer club activities but really not so much so on a wider scale. There was so many other machines that were either sexier or lower priced and more attainable, or more complete and working.
I myself used the single Apple II computer in the school library, but never lusted after them, simply because their Basic editor and screen mapping was very krusty. Dual floppies had some appeal, but you could get floppy drives for other machines as well, and they were expensive. Hard to believe now. Within a few years we were all on harddrives.
I've seen the Apple-1 at the Nixdorf museum and completely forgot about it roughly 20 years ago and only noticed and remembered it when I visited the museum again 10 years ago. Ironically the exhibits reflect our opinions. The first time I went there it wasn't exactly theft proof by being bolted to a tabletop with 2 small screws - later it was encased in acrylic.
I always found the Sphere-1 and Fairlight CMI on display there way more appealing.
To be fair, most engineers I know (including myself) aren't precious about our prototypes. Most prototypes of things I have made (if I kept them) sit (poorly kept) in the bottom of some drawer... if they are lucky. It is normally fans and historians that treat them like artifacts and not curiosities
I think it's often that way in many things.. something you create yourself isn't as special to you as something created by someone else. Especially someone else who's famous.
@@TechTimeTraveller I have a prototype Sonos like system I helped develop at Intel 22 years ago. For me it was 18 months worth of hard work, but the memories are what are special... not the artifact
True. As one of those guys, I have blank PCBs of products that I designed (especially where I laid out the PCB as well) and also fully functional units. The first units from a mass production run are always more satisfying to me than the prototypes that led up to that point.
@@JockMurphy yeah I think historians/fans/collectors like the artefacts precisely because they feel like they provide a "window" into this experiences and memories. The people who were actually there... don't need any kind of proxy!
those wires are barely visible as of color on the poloroid but as for they shape and how they sit looks identical 16:29
Nice to hear about more BC youtubers! Great work! And yes, it was hot with the humidity.
TTT going all Harrison Ford :)
"That belongs in a museum!"
The solder looks oddly shiny to me. I have seen stuff from 1992 that had way more dull shine to it. Like this looks almost like fresh soldering.
Thanks! I showed this to my wife to prove that I don't REALLY have a retro computer collecting problem. She said "No, you just collect junk".
This was "just junk" at one point -- a bodge-wire prototype of a board that they only made a handful of, and was obsolete almost instantly. Apple couldn't even send it as a warranty exchange.
I always found it hilarious the sort of prices an original apple 1 goes for and the kind of people who buy them. Especially this one with it being snapped in half. Don't get me wrong I know it's important in computing history and everything but really it isn't all that exciting for someone who knows exactly what an apple 1 is. Just a collectors item for the extremely wealthy.
more so the apple 1, as it has no case, no keyboard, it was only Circuit Board - PCB, with a lot of off the shelf part added, except PCB - Circuit Board, and if buying a fully put to gatherer machine, the Circuit Board - PCB, will be totaly concealed in a case? and from the out side it might as well by a 2022 copy remade with all new off the shelf parts, today?
Most interesting part would be documenting the differences to the production boards - but that's unlikely since most collectors either don't care about technical details (yet lust about traces of finger grime that might have belonged to Steve Jobs) or fear doing so might lower the mythical value.
Krazy Ken (a Mac youtuber) does a lot of scam busting emails. One of the scams he busted was a company was selling iPhone cases that contained what was apparently a bit of the motherboard of a production Apple 1. His reasoning for concluding it was fake? Not only did the bits of circuit board look nothing like any part of the Apple 1, but if the manufacturer had had actual Apple 1s to cut up, they'd actually have made more money selling those than they did the phone cases.
Yeah I read about that business - that seemed crazy. And they would have paid top dollar for that according to various sites.. like $900k. I'm glad that one was a scam - if they actually did that they should be flogged!
@@TechTimeTraveller Well.... It may just be where the cut off part of this board went 😋
Terrific - thanks! Clear, comprehensive & helpful.
👍
I prefer the homebrew computer based on the KIM-I @Dave's Garage had a while back. This Apple A may be historical significant, but a working homebrew computer out of the same era is more impressive to me. :)
Whilst I don't disagree with the system Dave bought recently, isn't this a homebrew?
Regarding the 6501 vs the 6502 processor. This gets interesting... I've got an original Apple-1 user manual, which conveniently includes the Rev. A schematics. There is a note (#7 on Sheet 2) which indicates that there was an option to use the 6800 processor instead of the 6502. It needed two jumpers be removed and additional components for the external clock generation circuitry. That clock circuit was the difference in pinout between the two chips (other than the instruction set). The 6800 needed a 2-phase non-overlaping clock source, where the 6502 could be fed by a simple single phase clock. That 6800 clock circuitry appears to be the 4 transistors and associated components up at the top left of the boards, along with the hex inverter ('04) at position C1. There should be a pair jumpers labeled "6502" which I don't see in the pictures to select which processor type gets used.
That said, I don't recall the Apple-1 ever being produced with the 6800 processor, and Note #7 says that "as supplied" the extra components are not included. It's possible that they used the 6501 as a prototype stand-in for the 6800 (I expect it was a lot cheaper), but nowhere else in the user guide is the 6800 mentioned. I wonder if they were hedging their bets on the 6502's success, or if perhaps there were possible markets where they could displace an existing 6800-based product? They did, after all, use the 6820 not the 6520 as the PIA chip.
Where this gets interesting is that the 650x and 6800 processors have a different instruction set and internal register architecture. Since the monitor ROM uses 6502 instructions, it's possible that they could have used the 6501 chip instead of the '02, but to what end? More components for the '01, and the law suit (though I don't know the relative timing of the suit and the Apple-1 development). So I wonder who that ghostly customer might have been, or if Woz was already designing the Apple-1 with the 6800 before switching to the 6502 when it came out? Not intending to start a rumor here; just thinking out loud.
I don't recall Woz ever getting the 6501, or talking about the 6800 for that matter, but it's been a while. He and I both were at Wescon when the 6502 came out (though we didn't know each other), where we both got the '02s. They were $25. I also picked up the 6530 TIM chip ($35, if I recall). As I recall, the '01 was marketed to existing customers of the Motorola 6800 as a drop-in hardware replacement, so unless there was an existing 6800 customer that they were perhaps targeting, or hedging their bets on the viability of the 6502, using the 6501 in the Apple-1 prototype does not make a lot of sense to me.
You were at WESCON 75? That's pretty incredible! Would love to hear more about that.
The corners being cut off is what you'd do, without a drill, to either screw it down in the corners or dodge existing screws in an enclosure. not sure why apple wouldn't have a drill tho.
Edit: in the Polaroid, we see there ma have already been holes that were too small for standard wood screws for instance. You cannot drill these larger, you'd have the reinforce the area first or just file it off like they did, and maybe use washers to mount it.
It looks as though it was mis-handled at some stage and the big capacitors caught the brunt of something. The PCB material could be FR-3 or CEM-1.
Yeah, board looks like FR4 or similar fibreglass substrate, doesn't look like phenolic.
Epoxy/Fibreglass boards are only green because of the soldermask the raw board is the colour shown in the pictures.
I find it interesting that the 13 page 'authentication' report isnt published anywhere. Not that I care but if I was to spend over a currently half million dollars, you'd think that they would make that report public or at least available to bidders.
It's available to bidders.. I'm not sure how that works, if there's some sort of NDA that has to be signed. Corey has certain undisclosed knowledge about A1 production that he doesn't want potential forgers having.
Given its history+++ and condition----------- I'd be willing to go as high as $25 for it.
I think this is a genuine board. I am not a tech collector. Or a techie at all, but based on the dust patterns, the board seems pretty legit. Dust is in sockets around the corners, edges and connections. There is little dust on the back of the board except close to the solder joints.
By the dust, most of the chips look like they have been pulled out early with dust gathering in the sockets of the ones that were pulled. Except for some empty sockets toward the left of the board. Those look to have been pulled out far after the others.
The dust is brown, but can’t tell, my best guess was that this was left in a cardboard box.
Another thing is the bent pin in the top left of the board.
The most confusing part of the board is the cutting of the corners of the board. Why? Corners are the weakest point of almost any rectangular product as they handle stress poorly compared to the rounded edges. My best guess is that the owner of the board hit the top left corner of the board on something, cracked it, and got worried that the weight of the right half of the board was going to further compromise the integrity of the rest of the board. So the owner decided to chop it off and chamfer the edges from destroying the board further.
I'll be selling the other half next month. If I knew the Apple-Tards would get this excited about the prototype, I would have broken it into eight pieces
The thing that struck me about the picture comparison is that the board in the auction has beveled corners (the top and bottom left corners are not square) but the Paul Terrell polaroid shows those corners square!
Yeah I didn't know what to make of that. It's of course possible they were trimmed later, but why?
@@TechTimeTraveller Maybe it was mounted in a case at some point.
It is puzzling. It looks like the board in the Polaroid photos has mounting holes in the corners. Maybe someone had attempted to secure the mounted board with threadlocker or epoxy or something, and then later found sawing off the holes in the corners was the only way to remove it.
@@bcostin I can definitely imagine how this would have happened!
This computer is in really really rough shape. It would take a super miracle to get it working again, and might de-value the computer if parts werent the* original
What do you think one of Steve Wozniak's teeth would be worth? I know a dentist who worked in the bay area back in the late 70's who did some work for him.
And maybe some time later the other half of this board is found and sold for a record breaking amount of money. The other half is more rare then this.
I'd buy it if I didn't need to buy a third Lear jet.
I had no clue the Lisa goes for 50k, I figured it'd be a few grand. The 8 Bit Guy told a story of buying one in the mid 90s for $100, and he wound up selling it for like 10, he must regret that now.
Might have been the Lisa 2 - the original Lisa 1 with the Twiggy drives would have been crazy rare even then. The Lisa 2 would be worth several thousands today, so it would still suck. But if it was a Lisa 1.. yeah, that'd be worth crying over. :)
I'm on and off about collecting computer stuff. Some stuff is nice to have, but if it's just collecting dust in my home, and I never get around to use it for something, I start to wonder why I keep it. Computer are great, but to get really into a computer and it's software etc. is almost infinite time. When you have several computers it's infinite time exponential.
If I had the money to buy this board, I'd put it in a frame, put it on display somewhere, and otherwise never touch it. I don't think there's anything else that can really be done with it that won't simply ruin its value.
Given the cut corners, and the bad quality of the Polaroid, it's impossible to verify the two are the same article. The corners bother me though. Why would anyone bother to cut the corners off after it was declared fit to show as a sales sample?
The theory some have is the power supply section was saved for something else. Another possibility is the board was snapped because it was done its duty and headed for the garbage pile. There's a lot of things that don't quite add up with it, but someone apparently was convinced to the tune of $700k that it's real. And of course, the only person that could say it wasn't for certain is deceased.
@@TechTimeTraveller I'll never understand the extreme value some people put on... things. Then again, I'll never have the kind of wealth that allows someone to spend over half a million dollars without too much worry.
@photodan24 it's historically significant and it's belong to Steve jobs
Was it chopped up to fit into some sort of fancy pants marketing display? Hacking off the psu side for re-use doesn't really make sense with the corners being cut off too. Interesting video! :-)
For all we know, Jobs could have snapped it in a fit of rage after getting forced out.
you know, I'm sure Corey knows far, far more than I do, but the chunk of the board being broken off, or hacked off, seems like a big red flag to me. There's no real explanation of it either, and it clearly wasn't just broken, it was cut and torn. I don't understand why they would lie about that, it seems like something is being obfuscated
i wonder if wozniak would be or is interested in buying this lol. kind of doubt it, but curious no doubt
I think Woz has a similar attitude to Jobs
Woz has lost track of his earlier prototype that had a ROM daughterboard ;) Doubt he cares too much.
Woz is known to be verry nostalgic.
Honestly for the channel and sharing the computers with the world I thank you for this hobby. have you ever considered maybe opening a computer museum? maybe with other computer enthusiasts? I have considered that myself in this area. looking into government grants and maybe a tied RUclips channel and donations all tied into it. it could even become a career.
No, thank you for watching and being supportive! With regards to a museum, I would love to do that. My collection began in earnest when a big computer store in Vancouver closed their own museum. However this area is notoriously costly for space.. probably on par with expensive parts of New York or LA. So that would be a major impediment to getting something like that going. I have thought about organizing a VCF festival up here though, so that might be one way to get things seen.
Great video! Personally, I wouldn't spent a dime on this. Yes, it's rare but hacked beyond repair. So if it doesn't work and not repairable then it just wall art. Good luck to the seller and buyer.
I think Apple should fork over whatever it takes to buy and display it at their headquarters.
My hunch is it isn't real, and they couldn't find the parts for the power supply section so tried to fake it being broken. It SCREAMS fake. Im looking at the photos and some the traces even seem different... Not to mention some the components seem almost new old stock vs other parts that are pretty tarnished...
I don't think I'd buy it under any circumstances. I don't think I'd have a shot at getting that board working, and if I can't get it working, I'm just not interested.
I feel like if someone tried to 'restore' it the originality would be ruined anyway.
@@TechTimeTraveller True. I am working on a Scopitone film jukebox right now and originality is the furthest thing from my mind as I attempt to get it working.
A quick 34 min video. How much did it sell for
$750k
I have never been a real big fan of apple products... BUT.... I have eyeballed some of the reproduction kits and if an older apple fell into my lap it would be in a good home.
Certainly wouldn't spend that kind of money on it (If I had it) but I'll admit to scouring Ebay for orange Sprague Atom capacitors with the idea of creating a replica :)
Already hunting myself lol
What would the replica sell for? $50,000 to the right buyer? (Perhaps a bit more if it could be convincingly described as another previously "lost"/unknown prototype.)
Possibly - the 6501 CPU itself would be worth $5k if you could find one. If it were 100% authentic looking.. yeah, easily north of $10k or $20k anyway.
Criminally undersubscribed channel
maybe steve jobs broke it in a rage against apple
"Steve Job's", hand soldered by Wozniak the dude who actually designed and built the computer...
The Terrell board has a transistor below the trimmer in the upper left that the auction board doesn't. If it was removed later they did an unusually clean job
oh hey, zooming into the rear view photo, you can see some solder and flux residue there.
Yeah. I had been looking for signs of that with the resistors I was pointing out - because I thought it might be possible that this was a prototype board but not *the* Terrell prototype.. and maybe someone who saw the photos in Time or wherever moved the jumpers to align. But it looked like they'd been that way since day one to me.
i am by no means saying its fake, but the corners are different, and a ploy used by fakers is making a fake then putting it beyond use ie "non working".
Re: 1:27, "Argument about whether it was the first 'true' personal computer." ... Every time I hear that, gotta be honest, I feel like chucking something through the nearest window. No, it isn't. Not even remotely close.
(To keep it short and sweet, almost every bit of mythos about this thing being "significant" beyond the history of Apple, the company, is pure unadulterated garbage. Microcomputers with ROM software to let you just start typing away on it predate the Altair; Intel's own development systems for the 4004 and 8008 were set up to work that way a good four years earlier. This involved an external serial terminal, sure, but the Apple I's built-in video circuitry is just as "dumb" as a serial terminal, it's nothing like as good as the memory-mapped video systems that were becoming commonplace in S-100 cards and machines like the Sphere which, again, substantially predate it. Heck, MOS' first support chips for the 6502 included the 6530 RIOT, which had the TIM monitor in mask ROM and was used in the Jolt, the first 6502 single-board computer.
The *only* rickety leg it has to stand on in this argument is it's an early example of a system where the CPU and the video circuitry were on the same physical PCB. Is the IBM 5150 *not* a Personal Computer because its video output comes out of a separate board? This is a completely arbitrary and bogus distinction.)
Anyway, whatever, done being triggered. Regarding the "authenticity" of this board... I'm not really sold, but it *could* be that one in the Paul Terrell photos. Gotta say, though, undoubtedly there were multiple copies of this prototype PCB, even back in the 70's it wouldn't have made a lot of sense to order just one unit of a board with plated-through VIAs, and it's very likely they built up more than one for demos.
The fact that this board has so many chips yanked off it suggests to me that whatever its initial purpose was it ended up serving as workshop parts mule, and then got snapped in half when Apple decided to discontinue support for the Apple I. (Remember, it's an oft-quoted bit of Apple history that because Woz was the only one that could answer any questions about these things they encouraged owners to trade them in for Apple II's and destroyed every unit that came back.) Maybe the story of it being a gift from Steve Jobs could be true, I could imagine some scenario where he was gleefully presiding over the destruction of a batch of these things and had second thoughts after noticing one of the things he'd just axed was one of the prototypes, but... I guess that really puts a fine point on this: Someone is going to pay half a million bucks for literal garbage. What a world we live in.
Yeah I don't agree with the premise that the Apple-1 was the first PC.. it was something raised over on applefritter.. apparently IEEE or such has a motion to recognize it as first simply because everything was on board. I find that too arbitrary. To me a personal computer is an electronic device that can carry out computation for an individual, at a price an average individual could afford. But you go pretty broadly there. For all we know the first such computer was put together by a hermit electronics guru in his garage in 1969 but never caught any public notice. You could get neck deep in semantics on stuff like this. The one that irks me more is mainstream media outlets that call the Altair the first personal computer.
I'd love to know what was in Corey's report.. if they were able to reasonably prove Jobs gave this person this thing. The only thing I find odd about the whole thing is that Apple-1s have been known to be hugely valuable now for years, but this owner never mentioned having been given this prototype until now. With Jobs being dead anyone could say they met him or got something from him.. hard for him to refute it. Some people are private I guess.
@@TechTimeTraveller Yeah, the problem with the whole idea of declaring some particular machine the "first personal computer" should be obvious, but it sure doesn't stop anyone from trying. Even the most superficially valid criteria, price, is ridiculously subjective: run it through an inflation calculator and the Apple I's introductory $666 price (which was just the motherboard, you were in for the better part of a thousand bucks before you were up and running with a keyboard and cassette interface, let alone the TV) comes to about $3,400 today; is that "affordable"? (And it also wasn't even that cheap; you could get a turnkey S-100 system like the PolyMorphic Systems Poly-88 for about the same money, and the Poly-88 had a superior memory-mapped video display much more similar to a modern PC. And for that matter, the Sphere 6800 was also very much in the same price ballpark almost a full year earlier.)
Personally I like the argument, which I've seen semi-seriously advanced, that the first "personal computer" was the MIT Whirlwind I, circa 1951. It cost a bazillion dollars, sure, but it was the first computer designed for single person to sit down at a console and interact in real time with in the way we expect computers to behave today. (It even had a graphics display with a light pen and was the first computer for which "game programs" were written.) Everything since then has been about shrinking that experience down and making it cheaper, trying to pick some arbitrary point on that slope and declaring it the "first" is a fool's errand.
(Although I guess if you were really going to put a gun to my head and make me pick the first "consumer PC" I would probably vote for the TRS-80 Model I, based on the arbitrary criteria that it was the first well known, popular, and *completely assembled* turnkey computer you could buy and start pounding away on in BASIC, not machine language, for less than the magic number of a thousand bucks. The Apple II beat it to market by a month but sold for $1,300, not $599; that's the difference between $3000 and $6000 in today's money and the TRS-80 included the monitor and cassette recorder; you could have it for $399 without. $3,000 is a jacked but not completely unreasonable gaming PC, nobody not filthy rich spends $6,000 on a home computer. )
Back to provenance... yeah, this story does seem awfully fishy. I'm not going to say the artifact itself is a fake, I'm willing to buy that, sure, it's a populated and subsequently destroyed Apple I prototype, but *anybody* could have dumpster-dived that thing. It smells to me like something someone found in a garage after someone who worked at or near Apple in the late 1970's passed away.
YAY your Video Finally Played...WTF YT....
Check out the book '20 projects for the ZX81' by Stephen Adams, theres a nice 65 plus list of old and forgotten computer systems near the beginning of the book.
The prototype is literally broken
Looks like an estate sale from an Next employee.
I have to ask: do you own an Apple 1 or replica yourself? I know you just said you've got collection fatigue but it's weird to think of you not owning a replica kit at least!
I own a Newton Apple 1 board. I haven't gotten around to building it - I'm a stickler for authenticity and with so many people at it finding the right parts are hard. But someday I will build it for sure.
nice find but... a million? nah there is a moment when sanity has to win over hobbyism
If I had the money I would put it on hold until C64 develpment prototypes, ICs with partial implementations of the SID and VIC made to test sections ... drawings etc, and also VIC20 stuff .... isnt CBM that romantic ??
I'd buy at least 3 C64DXs!
I am inherently suspicious when "lost" items suddenly reappear on the market. I certainly do not have 1M to spend on it (that's like my entire collecting budget for the whole year), but if I did, I would want more information about its provenance and authenticity. I do not even know enough to determine what specific tests or examinations would be appropriate.
ETA: Since many key chips are missing, there is no way to check the date codes to determine if they are period-correct. Likewise there is no way to examine the contents of the PROM to compare it to early production models.
ETA2: I appreciate that there is some skepticism about the authenticity.
Yeah I'm generally suspicious of stuff like this, especially when the potential value is so elevated. I trust Corey Cohen though. If he weren't involved, I'd be wondering, not so much that this is a forgery constructed in 2022, but that maybe it's not exactly the unit in the photo, maybe someone with the board looked at the photos in 2012 when they were published, moved/changed components to match - making it the one in the photo might add a few $ in value. I'd definitely want to see provenance on this and have some kind of proof the seller and Jobs knew each other. I think that's the main thing that would matter here. It's relatively possible to manufacture everything else.
If you don't trust it, don't buy it.
Emphasizing that Cohen's report is notarized is pointless. It just means that a notary verified his identity as the author; it does not speak to the accuracy of the contents.
More than once I had to submit a notarized legal document for various purposes. The notary checked my ID and witnessed the signature. S/He had no idea if the information on the notarized document was factually correct.
@@TechTimeTraveller The unaligned components are the suspects here. There's no reason for them to be exactly unaligned as the ones in the 1976 polaroid unless this is the same board.
why don't you just do the mindset video IN the pool? 🤔
$2.4 trillion dollar company
I wouldn't buy it, but it looks interesting. Wire wrap tools and methods would have been around back then. Jameson is the company I remember.
My first thought was someone was frustrated with the board maybe because it wasn't working and snapped it over their knee. On second thought I think someone may have broke off the power supply parts to reuse on another board although it doesn't seem likely. Great Video, entertaining and informational too :)
Make the photograph into an NFT and sell for ten times to some fanboi.
I think one reason genuine Apple 1s aren't going for as much is because of the Apple 1 clones.
A curiosity, but nothing more IMO. Certainly not worth half a million bucks in a rational world. If it could be “resurrected” then it would be really interesting.
on your mk8 board try "liquid tin" from MG chemicals (stinks like sin though so use it in a well ventilated space)
With as many of the chips missing, and the huge part cut off, only a fool would pay more than a few bucks for this, Sure yesI know it is unique and historic, but it is damaged beyond its original capability, a curiosity but nothing more.
'Point to point' wiring - More commonly known as 'Wire wrapping'
Waste of money!
I wouldn't call it "Found"
More like, "most of it"
Those of us that lived through it, don't want nothing to do with any apple. Especially the worthless apple 1.
Those of you that rely on internet memes OBVIOUSLY never had anything to do with Apple. Like, seeing or using an Apple computer.
BTW, Apple hate is sooo 2010, don't you people have anything better to troll about?
$407K rubbish broken e-waste from Apple. Come on
Yet you're commenting on it.
@@mojoblues66 Apple hate is still strong. Imagine making a video about a 1977 refrigerator and having people pour all that hate into General Electric.
What? 36 degrees is friggen freezing! Holy crap you are out of your mind
36°C is 98.6°F so yeah, freezing!
@@jonasduell9953 he said 36, not 98.. get outa here
@@juliedunken1150 wha? Lol
@@jonasduell9953 if you can’t read go back to elementary school
@@juliedunken1150 Anger management issues?