Applefritter - Stories

The Data Domain

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 09:52:41 -0800

This interview is an excerpt from [url=http://www.applefritter.com/replica][i]Apple I Replica Creation[/i][/url], by Tom Owad. Ray Borril began his career in electronics after leaving the US Army in 1956. Employed as a technician at Brookhaven National Labs, he constructed digital systems for nuclear research. Ray enlisted in the USAF in 1958 and attended courses on the computers used in the SAGE system. Honorably discharged from the Air Force in July, 1959, Ray soon founded Applied Digital Data Systems (ADDS) which became one of the leading susppliers of IBM and Teletype compatable CRT Terminals. He moved to Indiana in 1973 to work as a Systems engineer, designing and developing computer bassed systems for psychological research. In February, 1976 Ray opened The Data Domain, one of the pioneering retail computer stores. He retired in 1984. TO: What is your background in computers? RB: If I have any talent at all, it is the task of telling or writing “war stories” of the computer industry, which I have been directly involved with since the fall of 1958. I got into the personal computer business sort of passively in 1975, when in November I attended the famous Kansas City meeting sponsored by Byte Magazine. The purpose was to develop a specification describing the operating parameters of an interface between a serial data port on a personal computer and an audio cassette player so that data could be compatible between systems. It was a lofty but naive objective because virtually every manufacturer in the industry already had a product on the market or at least on the drawing boards. There were more than 25 people there, but I was the only one who did not represent anyone but myself. I met and became somewhat acquainted with Don Tarbell, Don Lancaster, Harry Garland of Cromemco, Hal Chamberlain of The Computer Hobbyist, Lee Felsenstein, the people from Processor Technology and IMSAI, and more. I decided there and then to open a computer store as soon as possible. It took me almost three months, but The Data Domain started in about 750 Sq. Ft. just off the Court House Square, in Bloomington, Indiana, on Feb. 12th 1976. At that time we were authorized dealers for IMSAI, Processor Technology, Cromemco, and several makers of after-market add-ons, as well as TV monitors, keyboards, every computer book we could find, every computer magazine on the market, and even computer generated works of art! At the World ALTAIR Convention in March, I met and became friends with Ted Nelson, author of Compute Lib/Dream Machine. Ted was the keynote speaker and kept the large audience in hysterics for an hour giving his somewhat risqué predictions of the future digital world. Ted was there with his friend Jim Banish, and they told me that they were opening a store in Evanston Ill. and thought we should establish some sort of relationship. They were interested in my experience and talent for selling computers and I could take advantage of their great financial management group. The result was that I became the vice president of the “itty bitty machine company” as well as the sole proprietor of The Data Domain. I have a picture (see figure) of The Data Domain that I took in April or May of 1976. It is my firm belief that we were the first to use the term Personal Computer commercially. DEC used it internally in 1972 or 73. and Apple used it in a Wall Street Journal ad in 1978 and got the credit for making it catch on, but I used it first! [center] TO: How did you become involved with the Apple I? RB: By June the store was going great guns and I was always on the lookout for new products to sell. One day, I got a call from a young man named Steve Jobs. He had just spoken with Jim Banish of the itty bitty machine company who told Steve that I was the guy he would have to convince since I made all the purchasing decisions. He went into his spiel about what a great computer he had since there was no assembly required (a slight exaggeration since one had to wire a power supply, keyboard cable, display monitor and some other ancillary stuff, then find a way to package it all up nicely.) But Steve is a good talker and we needed more products to sell. So, as was routine in those early days, I ordered 15 Apple 1 computers with the optional cassette interface card, sight unseen, on the word of a guy I had never met or heard of, and which would be delivered C.O.D. “soon.” And thus, The Data Domain and the itty bitty machine company became two of the first four dealers for Apple Computer Co. The first dealer was The Byte Shop and the second was Stan Viet's store in New York. The Apple 1 was hard to sell because of the packaging problem, and for some reason we were never supplied with the cassette version of Apple Basic, which made some buyers very unhappy. But, eventually, all fifteen were sold, except for two. One of these was a machine we gave away to the US Olympic Tennis team. Only a few weeks later, it went down with a plane that killed several members and destroyed the Apple 1. The other one stayed in my display case for a couple of years. When it began to gain fame for its design, I decided to take it home and keep it. There it stayed for 25 years until I decided to auction it off in 2001. TO: What was your impression of the Apple I? Did you do any programming for it? RB: Of course, in my case, there was no real personal decision in choosing and purchasing the Apple 1 over some competitor. I listened to Steve's sales pitch and it seemed like a good idea to be able to offer a computer that did not require any soldering skill. It was inexpensive enough to sell, and we had the opportunity to increase the value of the total sale (and increase the profit margins) by selling the things needed to make a complete system, such as a cassette recorder, power supply components, keyboard, monitor, and a case, or a further option, we offered to assemble the whole thing. While my techs wrote some programs for the Apple 1, I did not and only learned to run some demos that we wrote, and things like that. I spent more of my time teaching people how to make interfaces, etc. for all of our computers. I didn't get closely involved with the Apple 1 like I did with the Apple II and S-100 bus computers. TO: What were some common peripherals and modifications for the Apple I? RB: Printers were popular, but in those days about the only printers available to the general public were Teletypewriters and lots of surplus units, both serial and parallel. You wouldn't believe the confusion and frustration of hooking up a simple Model 33 ASR Teletype to a serial interface when you had no idea how a Teletype works and never heard of RS-232C! One of the nice things about the Apple 1 was that it required no modifications to make it run and was a complete, working system once the ancillary stuff was assembled. Occasionally, someone would wish to change from the 6502 processor to the Motorola 6800, which the mother board was designed to allow, or add a serial RS232C interface in the “kludge” area, but these were not ordinary modifications and rarely done. RB: The real fact is that the Apple 1 potential never was exploited by Apple. At the Atlantic City convention in August, all attending dealers were shown a demonstration of the color graphics of the future Apple II and that was the end of orders for the Apple 1.

Letter from Stan Veit

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 08:38:35 -0800

This letter is from Stan Veit, former owner of The Computer Mart of New York, the third person Steve Jobs sold an Apple 1 to, and Apple's third dealer. It was sent to Joe Torzewski of the Apple One Owners Club. [hr] STANLEY S. VEIT19 WEST 34 ST.NEW YORK,N.Y.10001 MAY 23,1981 APPLE ONE LIBRARYJOE TORZEWSKI51625 CHESTNUT ROADGRANGER, IN 46530 Dear Joe: Strange you should mention it, but I will certainly talk about the Apple One. I knew that someone out there might be working with them, but I didn't know there was such a library. I will be happy to use my column to bring it to everyone's attention. In April of 1976, I received a phone call at The Computer Mart of New York which I ran. It was from a young man in who had just developed a single-board computer using the 6502. He wanted me to become his dealer on the east coast and because he was so enthusiastic about his machine, I bought it. In a short time UPS dropped off a package containing the Apple 1. It didn't work. So I got on the phone and called Los Gatos and talked to Steve (for both the young men involved were called Steve). They sent me another one and a keyboard, plus the little cassette board they had just built. This time it worked like a charm. There was a monitor, a Game of Life program and that's it. No BASIC yet. Still I enjoyed my Apple One and I built it into an attache case. About that time the New York Chapter of the ACM had a meeting at which they invited several microcomputer vendors to show their wares to the collected group of big-computer people. My wife and I attended the meeting with my little case and a 9-inch monitor. The Altair people were there with a whole rack of equipment, the Computer Corner of Westchester showed an IMSAI with a terminal and a ASR-33 Teletype. When they saw me with no big load of equipment they were disappointed, but when I set up the Apple One and ran LIFE, I was the hit of the evening. Here was a true personal computer. That summer was the first Atlantic City Personal Computer Festival the first big computer show. I had two booths. Before it opened I went to Emeryville Ca. to a meeting at Processor Technology. While there I met the two Steves, Jobs,and Wozniack ,they offered me a piece of the Apple Computer Co for $10,000. I had all my money invested in the Computer Mart of New York so I had to refuse. That 10K would have returned millions! Anyway, I invited them to join me in my booth at the show for free. They said they would be glad to come if they could rase the fare to Atlantic City. Well they borrowed the money and came. They had promised me to bring BASIC with them and it was not finished, but they had the prototype of Apple II and they wanted to dump Apple One right then and there. I convinced them that they would have zero creditability if they didn't finish BASIC and support the model 1 while they developed the model 2. The upshot of all this was they finished BASIC in the hotel during the show, they were a big hit and Apple was on its way. As for me, I sold all my Apple One's (including my own), didn't get Apple II for over a year, by which time all was forgotten. What had I done for them lately! Of course Steve Jobs still says "hello" to me when we meet, as we did two weeks ago at the NCC, but the Apple Computer wouldn't give me the right time. Hang on to your Apple One, it's history and my be worth something some day, besides being a great board. Thanks for writing to me. Stan Veit

Letter from Craig Solomonson

Letters from Larry Nelson

Beta Testing with the Apple Server Group

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 08:35:12 -0800

These notes about [url=http://www.forest.net]Chuck Goolsbee's[/url] beta testing experiences are taken verbatim from my correspondances with him. [h2]Frank Nicolo[/h2] I was a participant in the ANS testing from late 95 through release in early 96. Frank Nicolo was the (hardware) product manager. Frank came to Apple from DEC. His project was to build the world's best server enclosure. I think he lived up to that task quite well. Unfortunately for Frank he worked for Morons. Frank left Apple for who knows where? [h2]Apple Workgroup Server 95[/h2] My only involvement with the AWS95 prior to its release (when my employer bought one) was being one of the first customers to see one at Mactivity94 in San Jose. Marv Su was the product manager and I was one of the first 50 people to see the AWS95. We were supposed to see an actual running model, but that was *stolen* from the exhibit hall about 15 minutes before "showtime!" The sight of people rolling computers around on carts at trade shows is not unusual so nobody really took notice to the guy who walked off with the very first fully functional AWS95. Marv, after a moment of abject terror, managed to pull off an excellent demo. I recall that he "made" an AWS 95 on the spot by taking a Quadra 950 brought up from Apple's booth and installing the PDS card and A/UX. I walked away with an appreciation for Marv and an "Apple Workgroup Servers" painters cap. Marv left Apple in 1995/6 for eXite or Lycos or somesuch internet search-engine startup and is now probably a bazillionaire. [h2]Apple Network Server 500[/h2] I tested the ANS 500 & 700. I had a 500 from November 95 until December 95, and a 700 from December 95 through early summer 1996 when I was asked to return it to Apple. It was released in early 96 and was featured prominently at MacWorld Expo San Francisco that year. Unfortunately Apple did not really know what to do with a 'real server' once they had one. Only one of the servers on the show floor had a monitor on it running AIX and quite a few were running the hacked version of MacOS that was made to run on it (sort of). This was of course a completely mixed message to send to the attendees. The box was never designed to run MacOS - ever. At best it would be on par with a 9500. It was tuned to run AIX, and it did that very well. As a Macintosh it would be a bundle of missed opportunities like the IIfx: tons of cool hardware that would never be supported by the OS and as such be not worth the hefty price tag. I remember being quoted in MacWEEK. Big time geek-points for that back then. I recall a chance meeting Frank Nicolo at the gym in the ANA hotel at MacWorld 96. He arranged a dinner meeting between myself and his new boss. This guy represented all that was wrong with Apple during their darkest days. His name was Baker. What a moron. He was this total (no offense!) east-coast, Ivy League, MBA type. The words "pompous" and "indecision" come to mind for some reason. After that meeting I had a strong suspicion that the whole project was doomed right here at the start. With somebody like Baker at the wheel Apple's server group was like the Exxon Valdez: headed for the rocks... [h2]Apple Network Server 700[/h2] The code name for the ANS 700 was "Shiner" (named after a beer brewed near Austin Texas, home of the development team). At the time (1993?) I first saw the early pre-Shiner (ANS) demos by Apple of Netware and AIX running on a weird PPC 601 in a Quadra 950 case prototype, I was working for The Bon Marche, a division of Federated Department Stores. This was at an ANMA meeting at Apple's now defunct Market Center in Kirkland WA. I'm pretty sure Frank Nicolo & Robert Patrick (aka "RP") were there from Cupertino. I recall the Apple host as being Kurt Gotfredsen who now works for AT&T wireless. I was doing some serious OPI (Open PrePress Interface) serving to a huge room full of Macintosh production workstations using then state-of-the-art Sun Microsystems Sparc servers and huge(!) MegaDrive MR/5 drive arrays that held a whopping 8 gigabytes in a raid-5 config. That was a mind-boggling amount of storage at the time since the average desktop drive was under 100 megs. The two guys from Cupertino were all excited to show us (about 15 ANMA network geeks) Netware ported to PowerPC. We said "no thanks" to Netware and said "show us your UNIX." They were floored, since at the time Netware was *the* NOS of choice but we knew its days were numbered. These were the days of John Sculley & Michael Spindler and promises of "Pink" and "PowerOpen." We never saw Netware beyond a startup screen because we didn't want to. Of course we didn't see UNIX then either, but the Apple guys went back to Cupertino after sucking our collective brain dry for hours about what we wanted in a server. They came back in late94/early95 with the "Shiner" which later became the ANS. It was a very impressive machine. I was signed on to the beta program. What was weird is that right after I started the beta I switched jobs and left The Bon Marche to go work for TPD Publishing... and I took the beta server with me! TPD was not really a great testing arena for the box. The Bon was perfect in that it was high-volume advertising with about 140 users, whereas TPD was a small startup with about 15 people on staff and only one project... ironically "Microsoft Magazine" (!) I used the ANS for some internal testing, and helped de-bug a RAID card and had about 10 people using it as an applshare server. I was not able to put it through the paces originally expected of me but I did help shape the box's software and user interface a bit. I think mostly I helped evangelize my peers in the publishing business. Microsoft Magazine's Fall/Winter 1995 issue was produced using the beta Shiner as its server for some of it's images. All design & production for Microsoft magazine was done on Macs. [h2]The End of the Server Group[/h2] Things were cancelled in piecemeal. I think Frank Nicolo had already left and RP was running the program when the Deep Dish project started. Baker was still at the helm of the server group, unfortunately. They were actually making money, due to higher margins, but was obviously not cranking out high volumes. The ANS was never marketed very well at all though and never did sell very well compared to the MacOS based servers. I think this had a lot to do with Apple's deep internal schizophrenia about UNIX. Apple, like any large company, suffers from extensive "NIH" problems. "Not Invented Here" prevents people from pursuing projects that otherwise would succeed if given the chance. UNIX was invented before Apple existed, and many within Apple have always felt and acted like it was some sort of evil monster that was too scary for their customers to handle. The reality was (and is) that many of their customers had handled it fine for a long time and were already using it because it was and is a superior server platform for many tasks. Why cede that market to Sun, SGI, HP, etc.? Ironically Apple was in search of a modern operating system to replace, or merge with the MacOS and ended up buying a UNIX company in the form of NeXT. Additionally it was the merger of the two companies that ended the ANS program. With a future being placed on a different UNIX and a hardware line that was being pared down from the myriad models of 1997 to the four basic lines we have in 1999. Apple's entire server group seemed to vanish shortly after Steve Jobs returned to Apple. In many ways I understand... Apple had to cut things back to basics and return to profitability. As a customer and a stockholder I would prefer to see them selling millions of iMacs than thousands of servers. On the other hand as a network administrator who has built and retired many servers, Apple's withdraw from the market left most of us holding onto instantly obsolete machines with little or no future, or running to the few alternatives out there. WindowsNT captured a huge share of the Apple server market with an absolutely crappy product in it's "Services For Macintosh"... the "free" NT afp server. Egads what a lousy product! But it was one of the few alternatives during this time. Linux was not yet mature, and the other UNIX afp servers were so expensive (many with big buck per-seat licensing.) Apple continued with AppleShare, finally adding IP as the transport protocol with AppleShare 5, but so much in the MacOS kept it from being a big winner. Stability primarily with the running disaster that was 7.5, and other issues such as the aging file system and so-so I/O. (lousy I/O compared to UNIX or NT really.)