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Apple
Easter Eggs
Hardware
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By: David K. Every
& Daniel Fanton
(C) Copyright 1999 DKE - All Rights Reserved.
Lowest Levels
One of the lowest level easter eggs in existence, is
where when some machines are turned on, the lowest level
hardware (ROM?) initialized the register set of the 68000
with the ASCII codes for "AL SCALISE". Of course it is
erased as soon as the machine start to do anything (like
boot) -- so you will never see it unless you have a logic
analyzer attached before booting.
About the only Eggs lower level than this, are the ones
where the chip designers actually etch little pictures or
their initials/names/etc., on the Microprocessors or support
chips themselves. Like this one on the PowerPC 750 which
shows King Arthurs Sword (Excalibur). At least I assume it
his sword since the Code name for the 750 was "Arthur".
All these type of eggs are extremely obscure and hard to
find. You need things like Logic Analyzers, or in the case
of little etchings you actually need to remove the chip
carrier, and look over the surface of the silicon with a
microscope. Let me know if you find any!
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