It began, oddly enough, with software.Powerful, massive, hard-drive hungry software. A program so vast and sopotent it is shipped on four floppies, to which a single meg of memoryis like a pebble on its mighty shore. A masterpiece of programmingwhich, with its brute and awesome number-crunching demands, runs on myMac SE about as fast as a 42nd Street crosstown bus at 5:15 pm. My choice was clear: get an accelerator card or go to law school.The literature for the Orion accelerator card spoke glowingly of aninexpensive card that you pop into your machine, and voila:“calculation-dependent software like music and CAD/CAM applications runup to 100 times faster!” Sounded pretty good. I ordered one. $860 forthe whole shebang. Confident, smiling, I unplugged my computer. I laid it on aSpider-Man towel, screen down. Feeling like James T. Kirk, exploringnew dimensions, I unscrewed the
Mac’s four case screws. Piece o’cake–achild could open this computer. I lifted off the case, admiring thefamed signatures of the Mac’s creators inscribed on the inside–a sight,I realized with a glow of pride, that only the true power-usercognoscienti would ever get to see. I turned back to the patient and looked at the innards. Immediately I abandoned all hope.The Mac was a mess. There were wires and components and circuits andall kinds of stuff. Reluctantly, I opened the manual for the firsttime. “1. WARNING: Installation procedure is intended for Authorizedservice technicians. All other attempts to install Orion Boards arediscouraged by the manufacturer, who is not responsible for theconsequences. You must work in an environment that is static
free.Always wear goggles. Remove rings and wristwatches before performinginstallation. Never touch the Anode–it carries high voltage from theside of the picture tube. These precautions will reduce the possibilityof injury but will not eliminate them.”Consequences!? Injury!? Goggles?! What was it gonna do, squirt ink at me? For a fleeting moment, my mental picture of Ultra Mac began to waveraround the edges, like David Letterman going into a flashback whileanswering Viewer Mail. The specter of the Anode haunted me, too. Icould just see the Post. “KOMPU KID FRIED IN MAC ATTACK.” But nay! I thrust my shoulders back and gripped the screwdriver. Ican DO this. Knowingly, I took my watch off. I took my socks off,too–you never know about static. “2. You will notice three
connectors to the
motherboard. Unplugthese connectors from the motherboard (the one from the power board maytake a little
persuasion).”Persuasion? Perspiring already, I inspected the motherboard. This, then, was theBrain. But there were five main connectors, not three. Or maybe onlyfour were connectors, and the other was–the Anode.I wiped the thought from my mind. The first four came off with no problem–like taking diodes from a baby. The fifth required a little persuasion.“PLEASE! PLEEEEEASE come off!” I cried as I tried to wrest it free with sweating fingers. No dice.It occurred to me that a different, more New York kind of persuasionmight be the ticket. Glowering threateningly, I slowly lowered the tipof a putty knife to the plastic terminus. I slipped it underneath likea lever and persuasioned that little sucker right out of its socketwith an unnerving ripping sound. Right out of any future functionality, too, no doubt. “3. Locate and remove Apple’s
rom chips, labeled ROM HI and ROM LO. Perform this removal carefully.”In my mind, I heard Leonard Nimoy narrating. “The slightest slip willsend the patient into an irreversible paraelectronic stupor. Pogue mustremove the chips leg by leg, taking care not to bend a single one. Asthe night wears on, the surgeon faces his greatest challenge.” At last the chips were free. Handling them like radioactiveisotopes, I lifted them with the tip of the screwdriver and set themgently down on the bottom of a Rubbermaid Freez-N-Serv sandwich box. And so it went, organ by internal organ. Finally, an hour later, Iarrived atthe last page of the manual. It was called “Finishing Up.” It read, in its entirety:
More abstracts about the Mac Surgery