

Ghosts in the rom - z2amiller
http://www.nycresistor.com/2012/08/21/ghosts-in-the-rom/

======
damian2000
According to this link:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/damianward/3300112470/>

"The ROM used only 89 KB of the available 256 KB. So to fill the chip, Apple
put the photos of the development team into the ROM. To see these photos,
press the debug button then type: G 41D89A"

~~~
mechanical_fish
Yes, I remember doing this circa 1990, now. There's some neuron in my brain
that recognizes that address.

Thanks for looking that up.

------
daeken
If you're interested in this sort of digital archaeology, check out The
Cutting Room Floor: <http://tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor> It's focused on
unearthing this sort of thing in games.

There's also a lot of this sort of thing on <http://pagetable.com>

~~~
voltagex_
pagetable.net and www.pagetable.net don't seem to resolve.

    
    
        <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> pagetable.net
        ;; global options: +cmd
        ;; Got answer:
        ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 32690
        ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1,     ADDITIONAL: 0
    
        ;; QUESTION SECTION:
        ;pagetable.net.                 IN      A

~~~
daeken
Sorry, fixed; it's pagetable.com.

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shashwatak
It blows my mind that those photos was taken over a quarter century ago,
hidden by some playful programmers, and are only now unearthed by an entirely
different generation of playful programmers. Cool stuff.

~~~
megablast
I am pretty sure this is not the first time it has been shown.

~~~
dalke
Indeed, it's been known for a long time.

~~~
joezydeco
Here's an archived Usenet post with a load of PC easter eggs. It's twenty
years old. The Mac SE team picture is listed in here.

<http://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/Easter-Eggs>

------
DanBC
See also the "stolen from Apple" icon hidden in the rom for the first Mac.

([http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...](http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Stolen_From_Apple.txt))

~~~
josteink
Funny how Apple seems to endorse theft when they are doing it, but somehow
sees it as wrong if others are taking stuff from them.

Pot calling kettle evidently goes a long way back as far as Apple is
concerned.

~~~
joezydeco
Direct copying of a computer's firmware is a _way_ different type of "theft"
than what you are alluding to.

~~~
rprasad
No, it's really not, unless you are arguing that what was copied from Apple
(designs) is not something that should be subject to protection.

------
joezydeco
Back in the heyday of arcade video games, a lot of manufacturers would hide
things like this in the code to prevent counterfeiting of the games. PC boards
are easy to copy (the schematics were in the service manual), but
counterfeiters would just duplicate the ROMs and change a few strings or
sprites to give the appearance of a new game. The Easter eggs were triggerable
by a certain sequence of moves to show the real authors of the code on-screen.

Here's one example: <http://www.digitpress.com/eastereggs/arcaderobotron.htm>

------
threeio
They were known about back in the day as well.. we all saw them because of
fantastic mac shareware mags, macworld, etc.. they just haven't been seen in a
while.

------
mgunes
Previously: "The Joy of Dumping" --
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4150668>

------
cpeterso
Where's Steve?

~~~
damian2000
Where's Woz?

~~~
vidarh
No idea if he's in any of the pics, but wouldn't be surprising if he isn't.
Woz wasn't part of the Mac team, and was pretty much only an Apple employee on
paper at the point those photos were taken.

~~~
thornofmight
Reading Steve Job's biography right now, and it was really surprising to me
how little (almost insignificant) of a role Woz played at Apple after the
first couple years there.

