urlichs@smurf.ira.uka.de (Matthias Urlichs) (04/22/89)
We visited the MacWorld Expo, Amsterdam, on Wednesday. On our first walkthru we noticed some circuit boards at the side of one of the Apple booths. One was for a LaserWriter Plus. One was for a LaserWriter II NT. (Or something like that.) One was VERY interesting. It should be sufficient to list some of the things which were printed on it: No name yet, just "(c) 1989, Apple Computer", stuff like that CHARGER (!!) (back left) RAMs (lots of SMD chips, don't know how much) RAMs (one SIMM socket, presumably very incompatible with Plus/SE/II SIMMs) No standard SIMM sockets for RAM ROM (one SIMM socket) 68000 (not '30) Two floppy ports (internal) One floppy port (external) One SCSI port (internal) One SCSI port (external) ADB, Modem, Printer port should have been at the back (don't remember exactly) One connector which looks like the one used in NuBus, SE, and SE-30 (presumably not Nubus, further information not available) One internal (!!) connector named MODEM Something named DISPLAY which looked like it was meant to be attached to some LCD display or other (of course the display was NOT hanging next to it, so...) Reset and Interrupt buttons at the left edge, near the front (yet another location for these) Two other connectors which may or may not be used for anything (near the front right) as well as four sockets with names (codenames for the PALs?) which I can't remember, numerous other (not interesting) tidbits, and some solder splashes. Despite the solder splashes, the board (unfortunately without any components) looked very much like production quality. Afetr standing around some time and figuring things out, we asked a guy from Apple what that board was for. He told us that the first two boards were for LaserWriter's, and then had to admit that he didn't know about the third, "Cork [place in Ireland containing a Mac factory] just sent them over". When we came back a few hours later, surprise! the board was gone. You draw your own conclusions. Disclaimer: My memory may be faulty. On the other hand... Oh yes: The expo at large was not very interesting. It seemed to suffer from two problems: One, being located in Amsterdam, (which for most US companies still seems to be somewhere between the end of the world and somewhere still further away), two, taking place shortly between the Cebit (the German big computer (af)fair) and, I presume, MacWorld in Washington. (Is that correct?) Another problem is Amsterdam itself, but that's another story. (My car radio got stolen. Interestingly, they left my (audio) CDs behind.) Despite numerous rumors, the closed session at the end of the Apple EUC (European University Consortium) conference, held this Friday at a nearby hotel, did not feature said laptop Macintosh. -- Matthias Urlichs -- Humboldtstrasse 7 -- 7500 Karlsruhe 1 -- FRG urlichs@smurf.ira.uka.de -- ++49+721-621127@PTT