>D'Oh! I thought the Mac TV was a stripped-down Mac with AV in and AV out, in
>fact I recall seeing something on a website somewhere about a prototype Mac
>similar to what I have described. It was all-black with a plastic front
>panel and a metal top cover, not too unlike a Grundig GDS100 "SkyDigibox"
>digital satellite receiver. IIRC the machine was a Mac with custom boot
>ROMs, so it wouldn't run Mac OS. IIRC the hardware was near totally custom,
>too so swapping out bootROMs was not really an option. Oh, and the ROMs were
>on SIMMs. Again, IIRC...
Sounds like you are describing the Apple Set Top Box. A wonderfully
useless peice of hardware.
This box does in/out as it is a sort of cable TV tuner/interactive TV
device. But, as far as I know, there are no functional units in
existance. I think this is due mostly to the fact that they needed to be
connected to a special "server" of sorts to do anything. Mine powers up,
and does nothing from there (I can get a quick pop of audio on occasion,
but nothing more). I have heard rumor that some have gotten a blue screen
to be displayed, but really every one that I know about does the same as
mine... powers on and sits doing nothing.
The intent of them was to make an interactive TV unit for schools and
other groups. They never made it past the testing stage, and it would
seem that although a good number of the boxes made it into the public,
the server unit to make them do anything did not.
And these boxes I would think are also PAL compatible, at least mine has
SCART connectors on the back. They are covered by Do Not Remove stickers,
but the connectors appear to be there anyway.
I think Tom Owad had some info on them onhis AppleFritter site. If anyone
knows how to get one to do something, I'd be interested to hear... and if
anyone wants one, for a while there was someone selling them on eBay,
opening bid of $9.99, and I think most were closing with no bids. (I got
mine at a garage sale for $5... some poor kid went off to college, and
his mother was selling off everything he had, tons of old toys, baseball
cards, and odd computer parts. I'm sure he was NOT happy when he came
home for break!)
-chris
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Received on Thu Jan 16 2003 - 15:35:01 GMT