Kevin.Michael.Field@f31.n343.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Kevin Michael Field) (09/16/89)
Hello all...
Just got the ol' book "Bigger Secrets" by William Poundstone. VERY
interesting book. Anyway, in one section on secrets in video games and
computers, it talks about "Mr. Macintosh", an animated figure who would
appear and race around the screen say, every 10,000th tiime you turned on
the Mac, or every 10,000th time you opened something from the menubar. I
don't have the book near me, but if I remember, Steve Jobs told the
author in an interview that "Mr. Mac." would take up too much memory in
the Mac, and that plans for him were dropped. Is there any truth to
this? Does Mr. Macintosh really exist???
Awaiting curiosly,
KEVIN
--
Kevin Michael Field via cmhGate - Net 226 fido<=>uucp gateway Col, OH
UUCP: ...!osu-cis!n8emr!cmhgate!343!31!Kevin.Michael.Field
INET: Kevin.Michael.Field@f31.n343.z1.FIDONET.ORGzebolskyd@yvax.byu.edu (09/26/89)
In 22864.25142491@cmhgate.FIDONET.ORG, Kevin asks:
>Does Mr. Macintosh really exist???
Yes, at least in the Macs with 64K ROMs, he did. Mine was undergoing one
of those wonderful crashes, where the screen fills with oatmeal and awful
screeches come from the speaker, when the screen suddenly went black and
four ICON-sized images of a little cartoon head appeared, then after about
two seconds, disappeared. That had to have been Mr. Macintosh. I posted
to this forum a while back asking the same question, and nobody knew. So
I am designing a small program to cruise through the ROMs, funneling all
their contents through an ICON-sized square. I'll get the little bugger's
address if it works, and post it. Maybe even a hex dump of him.
--Lyle D. Gunderson
zebolskyd@yvax.byu.eduthecloud@dhw68k.cts.com (Ken McLeod) (09/28/89)
In article <817zebolskyd@yvax.byu.edu> zebolskyd@yvax.byu.edu writes: > >>Does Mr. Macintosh really exist??? > >Yes, at least in the Macs with 64K ROMs, he did. Mine was undergoing one >of those wonderful crashes, where the screen fills with oatmeal and awful >screeches come from the speaker, when the screen suddenly went black and >four ICON-sized images of a little cartoon head appeared, then after about >two seconds, disappeared. That had to have been Mr. Macintosh. I posted >to this forum a while back asking the same question, and nobody knew. So >I am designing a small program to cruise through the ROMs, funneling all >their contents through an ICON-sized square. I'll get the little bugger's >address if it works, and post it. Maybe even a hex dump of him. Mr. Macintosh is probably not in any ROMs except the original 64K set. There's another interesting icon hidden in the 128K (Mac Plus & 512e) ROM; here's a short routine that displays it: PlotROMIcon(inRect) Rect *inRect; { asm { BRA.S @2 @1 DC.L 0x40E132 ;address of icon in 128K (Plus) ROM @2 MOVE.L inRect,-(SP) ;was PEA PEA @1 ;push "handle" DC.W 0xA94B ;_PlotIcon } } We've had Mr. Macintosh, the 'stolen' icon, the SE Team Slideshow... I can just imagine what must be in the new 512K ROMs! :-) -- ========== ....... ============================================= Ken McLeod :. .: UUCP: ...{spsd,zardoz,felix}!dhw68k!thecloud ========== :::.. ..::: INTERNET: thecloud@dhw68k.cts.com //// =============================================
leahy3@apple.com (Frank Leahy) (09/30/89)
While I've never heard of a Mr. Mac icon, I do know that there is a MrMacHook, and it's still there. Mr. MacHook (also known as MBarHook in InsideMacintosh) is a hook that gets called every time a menu is pulled down. Late one night, while the Mac was being built, apparently someone thought it would be funny to have a little program (the hook) that would count the number of times a menu was pulled down, and then on the 10,000 th (or some other appropriate number) time display an animating image (Mr. Macintosh) instead of the menu. If you look at the MrMacHook (called such in the original assembly language headers) parameters, it takes the menu rect, and returns a boolean telling the MDEF whether to go ahead and draw the menu or not. It could actually be fun to do an INIT with various MrMacHooks based on birthdays, holidays, etc.. Frank Leahy (In a former life Mr. MenuManager) Software Engineering Apple Computer, Inc.