22 Mar
2005
22 Mar
'05
10:03 p.m.
Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
On Mon, 21 Mar 2005, Mark Firestone wrote:
>I've got the DOS Manual, and I used to have Beneath Apple DOS... If you
>want more detail than that, you might have to email Woz... I mean, he
>designed the whole thing... He may be the only one who knows...
>
>And, being Woz, he might even answer you.
>
>
I can vouch that he does answer his email, as of the 4th of this month:
-------- Original Message --------
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 06:32:59 -0800
To: Jim Brain <brain at jbrain.com>
From: Steve Wozniak
Subject: Re: FW: I seek a Yes/No answer from the Woz
"Chuck Peddle was so sure of his idea [for a
personal computer]
that he allied with Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and
father of the popular BASIC interpreter, to buy up Apple. This
took place almost at the same time when Commodore bought MOS
Technology. Wozniak and Jobs wanted back then 150,000 dollars
for Apple, but Peddle and Gates could only raise two thirds of
the required funds."
http://www.mergetel.com/~blitz/C64/cpeople.html
I cannot find a secondary source for this tidbit of information, and I
thought Woz might remember if such an encounter of one similar
happened. Unfortunately, this would have been in '77 or so, before the
AppleII, and before or maybe just after Commodore bought MOS Technology,
where Chuck Peddle worked.
Ridiculous.
We invited Chuck Peddle to uur garage and showed him the Apple ][ prototype. Chuck thought
it was pretty good. We went to Commodore and talked primarily with Andre Sousan. We were
told that Chuck wanted to do his own thing and that he could do better than us at reaching
the cheap needs of customers. Jack Tramiel, the Commodore president, was talked by Chuck
into shooting for cheapness. Steve Jobs was trying to talk Commodore into buying the Apple
][ for a large amount, like hundreds of thousands of dollars. I felt weird to hear this
because I had done the whole design and very little existed besides that, and I had not
been privy to talk of such big numbers. Steve Jobs also wanted Commodore to hire us along
with the proposed deal. The deal was never on paper and never concrete, as to how much. We
were told that Check Peddle was the instrumental force in passing on this deal. Andre
Sousan himself shortly thereafter left Commodore and came to Apple, saying that we had the
right (and better) computer.
--
Best regards,
Steve (ok a new size tv)
````````````````````````````````````````````````````
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
-----------------
I posted to comp.sys.apple2 and comp.sys.cbm. Of course, the note set
off a chain:
-------- Original Message --------
From: Brian Bagnall
To: <brain at jbrain.com>
Subject: Fw: Steve Wozniak Comments
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 09:20:19 -0600
Hi Jim,
I sent Wozniaks comments to Chuck Peddle... and now he wants to
contact Wozniak himself to talk about what really happened! That's
kind of exciting. In his mind I think he feels he was not responsible
for turning down the Apple II.
- Brian
Subject: Re: Steve Wozniak Comments
__________________
How did you reach Woz. I want to straighten this out with him when
I was
at apple we had a good relationship. We went to Reno gambling
together so
I disappointed in his response. It is likely he misunderstood what
happened with tramiel and of course Andre should have believed that
apple
was better.
Frankly there was no serious discussion of a deal just an idea that
didn't
happen.
chuck
---------------------------------------
I await any word on whether the two got together and sorted it out.
Jim
--
Jim Brain, Brain Innovations
brain at jbrain.com http://www.jbrain.com
Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times!
--
Jim Brain, Brain Innovations
brain at jbrain.com http://www.jbrain.com
Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times!