WTS: Blue Box board by Woz

It might help if WOZ authenticates it.  Shouldn't be impossible to do.  You would get a pretty substantial price if it's authenticated.  Just say'n ...

[quote=macnoyd]

It might help if WOZ authenticates it.  Shouldn't be impossible to do.  You would get a pretty substantial price if it's authenticated.  Just say'n ...

[/quote]

Wouldn't hurt.  It looks legit to me.  The board layout, parts and soldering job look very similar to one that was up for auction at Bonham's.

[quote=softwarejanitor]

[quote=macnoyd]

It might help if WOZ authenticates it.  Shouldn't be impossible to do.  You would get a pretty substantial price if it's authenticated.  Just say'n ...

[/quote]

Wouldn't hurt.  It looks legit to me.  The board layout, parts and soldering job look very similar to one that was up for auction at Bonham's.

[/quote]

We have an original one at the VCF museum in NJ on loan.  We are in the middle of major renovations this month so it's not easily accessible with the museum closed and in pieces but when we finish renovations, I can open it and take hires pic for comparison.   

if you can get Woz to authenticate it, that would add a lot of value as there were many copies and replicas so provenance needs to be established.   If you have some other documented provenance that may work as well.  

now THAT is pure SEX!!!!!! 

sure looks the part - and even if its not a product of Woz, what a great piece of history... and if it is... wow. thanks for sharing, nice to save/archive the pics anyway.

It is not 1972 or 1973. The 9316 chips show 1974 date code. Mid-1974 0n the 9390 chip. The earliest this could have been made is late 1974.

This is now being auctioned at Bonham's "History of Science" for about $10K

https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/26078/lot/62/?category=list&length=12&page=6

The 1820-0054 is a Hewlett Packard part number. Never was sold on the open market. So whoever built this thing had access to the internal IC stock at Hewlett Packard. Fits to Woz ;-)

nonwithstanding who made this IC (in this case Motorola), the 1820-0054 is the in-house part number of Hewlett Packard for this IC.  I was too lazy to look up if it's a 7400. Typically, they do carry the manufacturer logo, then the HP part#, but only very rarely they do carry the original part# of the original manufacturer. I happen to live in Colorado Springs where some surplus places used to sell the "leftovers" from the local HP factory by the tube.  Of course, you could always order them as a HP spare part at an usurious price. But no blue box builder outside of HP would want to pay that price. Grinding off the part# with a Dremel is much cheaper to conceil the true function of an  IC. So the logical conclusion left is that whoever built that blue box got that IC - most likely "for free" - from inside HP.

So the logical conclusion left is that whoever built that blue box got that IC - most likely "for free" - from inside HP.

 See cdreike's post above yours -- they confirm that they received several bare boards from Woz and likely populated the parts themselves.

And yes, the hope is that Applefritter is around a millennia from now. Somebody's gotta archive this kind of history, might as well be us.

Looking at the pictures on Bonhams, the DM7404  chip (next to the motorola chip with HP part no) appears to have  a date code of 7639. Not visible on the picture in this thread.

So this is 1976. It is also possible that the board sat half assembled since 1974 and someone added that chip in 1976.

Also,  1974 must have been really terrible year for TTL chip users.  Not possible to tell part number from date code. Ha-ha.

And lastly, if this is really Woz's -- he won't admit it because of the pretty crappy soldering job.

You can see the part number if you zoom in:

detail-bluebox.png

The national instrument part is clearly marked with date code 7639 and DM2404N below.Not that it matters..