Rare Functioning Apple-1 Computer Headed to Auction in May

It was to turn the more common 999.99 upside down.

I expect this one to sell for 666,666.66 now. ;-)

 

Rumour had it that Woz wanted a much lower price, and Jobs said 'Why give it away'. He might have known it would be a hit (small hit) but also knew they needed to make money off it to live and pay back their friends and such that loaned them money.

Also 666 appealed to Jobs' 'counter culture' up yours feelings at the point?

It was, according to what I've read, radically overpriced at that time too. Still, it rocked the world at the time... I wish I had kept my IIci. Such a sexy and amazing computer, and one of the last 'open' macs...

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Wouldn't that be cool...

 

$666,666.66 ?
Dang someone beat me to the joke.

 

The "board house" logo used on some of the PCBs for Apple 1 main boards and Cassette Interface boards.

Since the Apple 1 didn't actually HAVE a serial number (although some were added by retailers like the Byte Shop), it becomes somewhat of a guessing-game to try and determine where a particular Apple 1 sits in the (basically two) production-runs. And one of the things that helps determine that is the presence or absence of an NTI logo on the board.

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That's kind of interesting. Because the NTI boards were the SECOND "run" of PCBs, and thus SHOULD be LESS rare.

For example, my Apple 1 does NOT have an NTI logo on the main board, but DOES have one on the Cassette Interface board, and it has a hand-written "serial no." of "1-0064" written in Sharpie on the back of the main board. This is true of other Apple 1 samples, too.

Here's the place to learn all about the "known" Apple 1 computers still in existence. Mine isn't listed, because I've never gotten around to sending the museum's curator pictures and stuff, but we have had some discussions about the "vintage" of my Apple 1:

http://www.willegal.net/appleii/apple1-originals.htm

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Exactly!

The NTI logo on the mainboard signifies a "second production run" board. Somehow, the "lore" surrounding the NTI logo has gotten mangled. The earlier Apple 1 boards, like mine, do NOT have an NTI logo. Mine has an NTI logo on the Cassette Interface; but not on the mainboard. I think all of the Cassette Boards have NTI logos.

This is the SECOND time I have seen that (purposeful?) mistake regarding the "rare" NTI logo, BTW. The first time was on that "Celebration" Apple 1.

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Sorry, but no.

I believe it was Daniel Kottke, Wendell Sanders (maybe), and maybe Randy Wigginton that built the Apple 1 boards.

Woz no doubt built a few for verification and modification purposes; but it was mostly NOT him.

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Sorry, no.

But if you can find the LANDFILL that Apple DUMPED a BUNCH of these in back in 1978 or so...

Woz told me in 1978 to "hang on to yours", because EVEN THEN, he estimated that there were only about "50 or so" that had NOT been landfilled.

So I did...

I have an original, one-owner Apple 1. It has become my "retirement plan". It may be the only one-owner Apple 1 still in existence!

Anyone interested? Save us both some Auction fees???

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Yeah, and the Mona Lisa is just some dumb old painting...

 

oh boy. i wish i had the money. that truly is a historic peace.

 

Auto correct? Auto Correct? This was 1977. There simply weren't any spell checkers for personal computers, much less "auto correct."
And when they did appear, they were a bit primitive. I recall using a spell checking program that simply took my appleworks file and prepended a list of misspelled words to the file. And then I'd go through the list, look up the proper spellings in the paper dictionary, and use find and replace to correct my spelling.

Though-- in retrospect, SpellWorks (1985) was a bit primitive. I much preferred another product-- might have been Appleworks Companion by Beagle Brothers (1986ish). I remember it added "closed apple" commands to supplement the regular "open apple commands".

 

One never knows about a winning bid. Depends who the bidder is.

 

It was a (albeit poor) joke.

 

I have one. Was offered me by the INE: Portuguese Institute os Statistics back in the end of the 90's
I was doing maintenance to their new equipments at the time (PowerBook Pismo, i think) and one guy told me "hey, Jose don't you want to take those old computers with you? They are just taking us space here.
Now this apple 1, 2 classic 1994 and 1 classic 1991 are in my Tv Room

 

We're not not crying and complaining, we're coaching and mentoring -a way forward for the survival of Apple Computers.

 

Not analogous. My list includes once-common/inexpensive items that can achieve high value with age, not a world famous one-of-a-kind Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece.

 

No one is 100% sure, but I believe the most likely answer is it stands for Nova-Tronics, Inc. a PCB manufacturer that existed in Santa Claria in the 70s. They most likley made the second batch of Apple 1 printed circuit boards, which are commonly called NTI boards.

regards,
Mike Willegal

 

Have you ever asked Wendell Sander, Woz, or Daniel Kottke? One of them should know.

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Ok, then how about a Tucker automobile? They only made about 50 of them, and they are quite valuable today.

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That's similar to the way I got my Apple 1.

I was a teenager hanging around the local computer store. In addition to "hanging out", I helped sell computers and other stuff, wrote some demo software for the then new Apple ][, and even did some repair work on the various S-100 bus systems they also sold. I had asked whether I could take an Apple 1 that was sitting on a shelf in the repair room home with me, and the store manager said "Yeah, sure".

Then the store abruptly closed with me still with the Apple 1. I called up the owner of the store, and told him about all the free work and the demo software I wrote for the store, and asked if I could keep the App,e 1 as compensation. After all, the Apple ][ was already out, and nobody would ever want that old Apple 1..

He agreed that that seemed fair (having much bigger fish to fry), and here I am with one-owner Apple 1...

 

Whether or not it's an apt analogy, that's a great reference! Love that car.

 

I've asked Wendell, Dan K. and Woz, but nobody remembers who NTI was. We think the first batch was possibly made by Santa Clara Circuits, which was right down the street from Atari, where Jobs worked. An SCC logo can be see on some of the cassette interface cards. Both batches of Apple 1's were about the same number, so either kind is equally rare.

In response to another comment, Woz did not do any soldering on these boards, they were flow soldered by the PCB manufacturer. What was done in the Jobs home, was stuff the chips in the sockets, test and debug if the testing didn't pass. My understanding is Job's sister did at least some of the stuffing and Kottke did the testing and debugging.

regards,
Mike Willegal

 

Mike,

Thanks for the update!

In my case, my Apple 1 does not appear to have ANY board-house logo on the main board, but the cassette i/f has an NTI logo, and the main board has a 1-0064 "s/n" in Sharpie. It has obviously been wave-soldered, so that comports to what you said. I didn't know SCC. Are there any alleged SCC main boards that have an SCC logo, and if so, where?

 

You have a non-NTI board (first batch), which probably was made by Santa Clara Circuits, but whomever made them, they didn't add their logo to the board. There is a lot of speculation about the sharpie numbers having been added by the Byte Shop, but I haven't seen conclusive evidence. I would call it likely.

Regards,
Mike Willegal

 

Well, mine didn't come (directly) from the Byte Shop; but rather from a regional Midwest computer chain called Data Domain. But, since the owner of DD was pretty well-known in the Personal Computer community at that time, I wonder if he bought a few (or bartered a few) Apple 1s from the Byte Shop during a trip to CA to see if there was any interest. That's the only thing that makes sense, if the other "Sharpie" units are FOR SURE originally Byte Shop sourced. And even more curious is that the unit you have attributed to "Ray Borrill" (the late owner of DD), has a "sticker" s/n with a completely different "format"! But I know the "provenance" of my Apple 1, and other than Data Domain, it has been in my hands since 1977.

And that doesn't really explain Wendell's Apple 1, which I believe your site says has a Sharpie s/n of the same format as mine. Since Wendell worked for Apple at that time, wouldn't you think that he would have gotten one "right off the line", instead of messing around with a retail purchase?

I need to ask him about that; but last I emailed him, I didn't know we had the same "version" of s/n indicia...

 

Wendell didn't work for Apple when he purchased his Apple 1. I think I've heard of another Apple 1 that came from Data Domain that had one of the those Sharpie Numbers. Now that you have jogged my memory, I recall why I originally questioned whether they were put on by the Byte Shop in the first place. It's probably a mystery that will never be solved.

regards,
Mike Willegal

 

Oh, I thought that Wendell had worked for Apple since pretty much the beginning. Hmmm. Sorry!

Probably the poor sod at Byte Shop that was charged with writing those Sharpie numbers got tired of handwriting them, and someone figured out where to get the stamps and labels that were used later on the Byte Shop units!

Your Apple 1 Registry web page says something intriguing about "recent information" regarding the Sharpie numbers; but you don't seem to have followed-up on that... ;-)

I wonder if anyone at AppleFritter would know more about the Data Domain units, since AppleFritter was located in Indiana, where Data Domain was headquartered?

 

It took real guts and vision to go it alone back then.