classiccmp-digest V1 #766

Phil and Mac junkies; The MicronEye was in production for a very short time as far as I know. It claimed to use a "video RAM" - a light sensitive RAM that they claim they discovered by accident. The MicronEye was a bit larger than a 35MM film cannister and had a focusable lens and iris at one end and a ribbon cable coming out the other end, which plugged into a tan flat controller box. The controller box connected to the printer or modem serial port on the Mac. The camera came with a small foot-high tripod so you could aim it and a diskette with the application sofware on it. The software let you take black and white pictures and save them as either PICT files or MacPaint files. If I recall correctly, the picture that it took was half of an original Mac size screen and was definitely black and white only. Also FYI - the MicronEye was released and available when the original 128K Mac was released, which was when I got mine. I still have it all along with the software. It all worked last time I fired it up. I also have an interesting game call Chipwits for the 128K Mac. It let you program a robot to navigate itself through various environments. The programming language was innovative and was call "IBOL", as it was all icon based. I also have Musicworks - which let you write music and play it back, etc. And of course I have Macwrite and Macpaint in the original box. Both work on the Mac OS system version 1.0. I have an original IBM PC from the same era. I boot both of them up side by side and wonder why in the hell the PC won. (and yes, I know why, before you send your reasons) As much as I love my Macs, real programming died the day they invented the GUI. Give me an assembler and some silicon and a mission, and I'm a happy guy.