The sci-fi writer's Mac is up for sale; what could be hidden inside?
Posted 09.18.2009 at 3:46 pm
14 Comments
Gene RoddenBerry's Mac Plus
Profiles in History
The very first Macintosh Plus is up for auction, but that's not all: serial number 0001 was a gift from Apple Computer to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry in January 1986. Bidding on the system -- with its 1MB of RAM -- will start at $800 (original sticker was $2,600) through auctioneer Profiles in History in October.
The real treasure, though, is what could be on the hard drive. Here's our wish list:
1. A form fan-letter response titled "That's-Star-Wars.doc"
2. A record of the bet he lost that let Shatner direct Star Trek V.
3. Transcribed notes from the set on the first day of shooting the original TV series including the stage direction: "You NEED..to..E.NUN.ci.ATE....MORE!...clearly."
4. Rejected audition tapes for the role of Jean Luc Picard from Ben Kingsley, F. Murray Abraham, and Carl Reiner.
5. A patent illustration for the transporter.
6. Documentation that proves The Borg is real, and lists Lindsay Lohan and Madonna among the members of the collective.
7. Hatemail from J. Michael Stracyzinski and Harlan Ellison.
8. A abandoned crossover script with the working title Tribbles vs. Ewoks
9. A folder called "Uhura - PRIVATE!"
10. Brainstorming notes for the Top Ten Uses for Data's Disembodied Head
Did we forget anything? Tell us in the comments.
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from Spencer, Ohio
pictures of Gene Roddenberry sitting in the captain's chair, sporting a director's hat and a pair of boxers...
from Spencer, Ohio
oh and apparantly it's a '128 not a 'plus
Cute, but one little fact gets in the way of this fantasy:
That particular Macintosh model didn't come with a internal hard drive. Floppies only.
I had one of the original 128K Macs..If you wanted to upgrade the memory, one had to break out the soldering iron. Really.
The chemical formula for transparent aluminum. ”A keyboard. How quaint!” Scotty banged it out on a Mac. Maybe it's still on there.
Kayoteq, lighten up. It was a joke, not a "fantasy".
Besides, if you had the money, a 4MB hard drive was available.
This machine was custom, not an off the shelf item.
Kayoteq beat me to it. As a previous owner of a Mac Plus ... I can verify that there is no hard drive.
fmondana - The list is a joke but insinuating that the Plus has a hard drive is an error. The writer is either a PC user or too young to remember the days before computers came with a hard drive installed.
The machine in the picture is a 128K Macintosh, but I imagine that the folks selling the Roddenberry machine would be able to tell the difference. For one thing, the Macintosh Plus does have a label on the front that reads, "Macintosh Plus."
If I remember correctly (from nearly 30 years ago!), the original PC did not have internal hard drives, either. Part of the "Extended Technology" of the PC-XT (1983) was a hard drive. Still only 8 bits, though.
1 MB of RAM in '86 was pretty huge. My first new computer (not a garage sale comp) was a packard bell 486 (103 HMz) and had 2 MB RAM and that was in 1995, almost 10 years later. Are you guys sure that 1MB is accurate?
Seven of Nine, censored costumes.
Planet of the Amazon Women - Original Script
Gay Encounter at Farpoint – Original Script
(Not that there's anything wrong with that)
from New York, NY
Well, since we're pointing out factual errors, if this was the first Mac, then Microsoft Word wouldn't be available for it, and there certainly wasn't Mac/Windows compatibility. As such, no document file would have '.doc' in the file name. ;-)
But that being said, the formula for warp drive would be cool (that would be right next to the transporter patent, right? ;-) ).