Quest for the Apple IIGS+ Computer 
(aka; Mark Twain, IIGS ROM 04)

Original article
Copyright (c) 1996 
by Charles T. 'Dr. Tom' Turley

Updated article
Copyright (c) May 15, 1997 
by Charles T. 'Dr. Tom' Turley

Status: Freeware
Distribution: No restrictions
-----------------------------

I first got a hands on experience with this unique IIGS
prototype, code named Mark Twain by Apple, way back in early
1992, when a fellow IIGS user and friend (George Lee), I did
computer repairs and consulting on software use for, gave me a
call and asked if he could bring a strange looking Apple IIGS
over for me to have a look at.  He told me he bought it for
$50 at a flea market and that is was very different from his
ROM 01 machine.

I asked him how so and he preceded to describe how it had a
disk drive inside of it, with an insert slot for the disk
drive on the front left of the case.  It also had a small
power supply mounted over and just behind the internal 3.5
disk drive, which was connected to a card under both -
attached to the motherboard, only appeared to have five card
slots, plus one on the far right had a hard white plastic
sheath for some sort of card insert, but was empty. At this
point in the conversation, my curiosity had the best of me and
I asked him what did it say on the front case. He replied
nothing, that it simply had a Apple Logo and no name or words
of any kind - depicting what type of Apple it might be.  I
told him to bring it over and I'd have a look at it.  So, an
hour later he showed up with it and as soon as I took the top
case off I realized it was some sort of experimental IIGS
prototype. There were no names or labels to identify it at
all.

It had a 3.5 disk stuck in the disk drive, which I carefully
worked out and removed. I took the disk over to my standard
ROM 01 IIGS and checked out the contents. The disk had a hand
written label noted simply: MT-AVI-12 and nothing else.  The
disk contained an SHR color picture, had some 6 other black
and white (or rather grayscale 16 color) SHR pictures named;
S.A1 thru S.A6, with crude drawings of the computer circuits
and the motherboard.  There were also several standard text
files, (14 in all) titled; TN.EPT.a thru TN.EPT.n that
contained various technical content and outlines on the
computer. well, beyond the scope of my understanding then.
Thru out these text files were mentions of proposals for the
Mark Twain, with outlines of the changes it went thru from the
standard model of the IIGS.

I made a copy of that disk and then gave it back to George. We
were unable to get the disk drive to work in the Mark Twain,
as it appeared to have been damaged. We powered up the
computer twice and it showed up on the screen as a ROM 03,
when it booted. As I recall, the Control Panel appeared to be
the same as my ROM 01 IIGS, but showed up as having 2MB of
RAM. I studied it and the unique motherboard design,
modifications, etc. and told George that I was sorry, I
couldn't do much with it, with a bad disk drive and all,
suggesting that he take it to an authorized Apple Dealer for
repairs.  George took it and left.

Months passed and I never saw George or the computer again. I
tried to contact him by telephone but, got a disconnect. I'd
tried to view the color graphic on the disk I copied on
several occasions with all of the current graphics programs I
had then for my IIGS.  But, none of them would give me
anything but a distorted outline of the computer with bazaar
colors that looked rather strange. I went on about my daily
activity and forgot about that disk for well over a year.

Then, I got a new 256 color graphics program for the IIGS,
sent to me from France, that I thought I'd try viewing the
color SHR picture file from that disk with it.

It displayed the picture perfectly in vivid 256 color display.
 The graphic was of the SHR file type ($C1) and was titled:
MTAR1, I made several copies of the file and saved them from
the new French 256 Color graphics program.  The graphic SHR
file, was the only copy I made from the original copied disk
and during a move in May of 1993, that original copied disk
and many others got lost.  I've looked for it many times with
no success.

I now use Mac's with my IIGS efforts, and have converted the
original SHR graphic file (MTAR1) which is an artist rendering
of the Mark Twain, to a GIF format, which I used in the first
'Intro. Graphic' of the premiere release with GS WorldView,
the online (freeware WWW EZine), which I'm the Web Master and
Editor of.  That GIF Graphic is included with this article.

See: Fig.1.GIF - for a review of the original MTAR1 256 color
SHR graphic.

I've had a driving desire to locate one of these Mark Twain
IIGS prototypes from my first brief encounter with it back in
1992.  So, the quest continued! I'd been informed via various
sources and rumors about the Mark Twain, even found a fellow
on America Online that contacted me to tell me he had one. I
wrote back to him on several occasions to discuss it with him
also. He lived on the East coast and I on the West coast,
which made it impractical for me or him to get together and
review the Mark Twain, that he had in his possession.  He also
seems to have vanished from contact and closed his AOL
account. If I recall correctly, his AOL name was Dinosaur1 or
something to that effect.

The subject of all this came up in a discussion I had with Tim
Meekins, on a visit to his home, in 1993 and Tim told me there
was a case with nothing in it for the Mark Twain at his work,
but that he'd never seen an entire unit himself, just the
case.

So, until just recently, my quest for The Mark Twain had
proved to be rather unsuccessful. I've written to a few
friends that work for Apple but, they can't discuss or
acknowledge anything about it to me, as that's the Apple
Computer, Inc. policy -with respect to any unreleased prototype 
computers, even with projects that have been suspended or 
canceled.

Up until the first month of 1996, virtually nothing had
been available concerning the Mark Twain (Apple IIGS
prototype).  Then word of it started to appear on Genie, next
Joe Kohn posted to the CSA2 Usenet group, that he had obtained
one, which he was going to unveil via an article and pictures
in his SSII news letters, next few issues.

I next contacted Joe by telephone - made him aware of my encounter
with the Mark Twain prototype as outlined above and had some
rather lengthy discussions concerning the Mark Twain he
recently acquired. He related that he actually had 1 complete
Mark Twain with the CPU case and a spare motherboard of the
Mark Twain obtained from one of his user group members, he
didn't specify who.

------------------------------------------------------------------

The following is a complete unedited quote of a post to csa2:

------------------------------------------------------------------

"From: sbeattie@helios.augustana.edu (Shawn T. Beattie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 
Subject: ROM 4 GS 
Date: 28 Feb 1996 22:35:56 -0600 
Organization: Augustana College
Message-ID: <sbeattie.825568486@news.bradley.edu>

If this has already been posted, sorry... --


This article was taken from the February issue of AppleQuerque
Computer Club's publication AppleTalk and the copyright
remains with the club.  Three pictures that were included with
the article are not included.  There was a picture of the ROM
1, ROM 3 and Mark Twain computers side by side with the covers
off; a picture of the Mark Twain computer with monitor and
keyboard and a picture of Jim Pittman and Mike Westerfield
with the Mark Twain computer.

The Apple II and You --- Jim Pittman --- 14 January 1996

The Apple IIGS "Mark Twain" Prototype or "Super Apple II"

During the last month several AppleQuerque members have been
able to evaluate a prototype Apple IIGS, sometimes called the
"ROM-4" or "the Super Apple II," a machine that never
officially existed.

A couple of years ago I met a former Apple Computer employee
at the University of New Mexico Computing Center. I was using
my trusty 1981 Apple II Plus as a terminal to our UNIX system,
and she remarked that she had worked with the Apple II team
and was always glad to see an old Apple II still in use. As we
talked about her work at Apple Computer and my fondness for my
much-enhanced Apple II Plus, she mentioned that she had a
prototype Apple IIGS that had been designed and developed but
never manufactured.

I was not particularly interested in one-of-a-kind prototypes
at the time and soon forgot about it. In November at the Apple
II Library meeting, Jim Wifall and Joe Walters were discussing
some news that had appeared on Genie. Some Apple II
enthusiasts, notably Joe Kohn of Shareware Solutions II fame,
were tracking down prototype Apple IIGS machines that had
never been announced or manufactured. They believed that
somewhere, some of these prototypes still existed.

I casually remarked, "I know someone in Albuquerque who has
one of those."

At this, Jim and Joe turned their astounded gaze on me and
wanted to know "What? Who? Where? When? Did you see it? We
want to see it!"

When I finished my rather sketchy story about meeting someone
who owned a prototype, Jim and Joe were excited that such a
historically significant machine might be close at hand. We
all agreed that it was our moral duty to find this machine and
examine it. I said I'd try to find out if my friend was still
in Albuquerque and contact her to see if she would be willing
to bring her computer to a Club meeting and demonstrate it to
us.

I looked up her 1993 phone number at a UNM department, got her
current business number and was soon talking to her on the
phone. She remembered me and my Apple II Plus. Yes, she still
had the computer, it was in storage and she was delighted that
our Club members were interested in seeing her prototype Apple
II. She didn't have a monitor for it but she would be happy to
bring it to one of our meetings in January.

After the holidays I contacted her again to be sure the
meeting was on. She said she wouldn't be able to attend the
meeting this month but would bring the machine to the
University so we could make sure it still worked, and she'd
loan it to the Club for our evaluation!

On January 4th she brought the prototype to my office at UNM.
It looked like an Apple IIGS with a slot in front, but on the
bottom it said "Mark Twain" with a single-digit serial number!
We plugged in a Mac keyboard and mouse and an old monochrome
NEC monitor and turned the machine on. It beeped, announced
itself as an "Apple IIGS Rom 3" and booted up to the Finder;
obviously it was in fine shape after hibernating for a couple
of years. A quick trip to the clock in the control panel
revealed that the machine was within a few seconds of the
correct (Pacific Standard) time!

The hard disk had GS/0S System 6.0 installed, as well as
HyperCard GS and a few more or less standard utilities. I had
brought some 3.5" disks along to try out. We had heard that
the ROM-4 prototypes were supposed to be equipped with
1.44-megabyte "super-drives" but this one only seemed to
recognize 800-K disks. And, the drive would not eject disks,
either by dragging the disk icon to the trash or by pushing
the eject button. Fortunately, the straightened paper clip
trick worked.

That evening I took the machine to Jim Wifall's to give him
time to do some exploring before the Apple II Library meeting.
A spare color monitor, keyboard and mouse brought the machine
fully to life and it was the star attraction at the Saturday
meeting of Apple II enthusiasts. Jim, Joe, Mike Westerfield
and Richard Wifall discovered a number of interesting details
about the machine.

The CPU was the same as in a ROM 01 or ROM 3 Apple IIGS, a
65C816 DIP running at 2.8 MHz, making it seem rather slow
compared to our accelerated IIGS's. There was just over two
megabytes of memory on the motherboard. The hard drive was 40
megabytes and it seemed rather slow, too. The motherboard was
very neatly laid out.

Two 64-pin SIMM sockets were located where the memory card on
a standard IIGS is found; we had no SIMMs of the appropriate
size to try out. The slots appeared to be standard Apple II
slots, but there were only five; slots 5 and 7 were missing,
to allow room for the square power supply box. (Since slot 5
corresponds to the smart port on the back and slot 7
corresponds to the hard drive, the loss is minimal.) There was
a game paddle socket but instead of a speaker there was a
little black transducer. Several yellow wires were soldered to
various places. The most notable instance was a 14 pin DIP
chip that was turned upside down on the motherboard, with
wires running from its pins to the motherboard holes. There
was some sort of daughter board under the disk drive area and
a connector next to it on the motherboard, sticking out to the
right; we assumed these comprised the equivalent of a
high-speed SCSI controller card.

The case was a standard IIGS case with the Apple logo but no
name, and had a slot cleanly cut in the front for the 3.5"
disk; the eject button was right next to the slot. The back
connectors were pretty much the same as on a standard Apple
IIGS, but neat holes had been provided for the relocated power
cable and switch. A significant difference in the back panel
was a new 1/8" jack immediately above the headphone port.
Close inspection and some tests revealed that the headphone
jack definitely handles two channels, not one, so we presume
it is a stereo jack. We also assume the second jack is a
microphone input.

We didn't try a SCSI device, but we did install a FOCUS hard
card with System 6.0.1 in slot six and set the control panel
to boot from that slot. The FOCUS card booted up and seemed to
work just fine in the prototype machine.

We also saw the "almost" version of the cover for the 1992
Apple II Resource Guide. The version that actually came out
had a book displaying the name of the author, Mark Twain,
which was the code name for the prototype machine. The
alternate cover, which was obviously a proof from finished
artwork, actually showed the ROM 4 Apple IIGS! The cover was
mounted in glass with the Tennyson quote painted on the glass,
"It is better to have loved and lost that never to have loved
at all." Mike remarked that, considering the code name, he
thought a bastardization of another quote would have been more
appropriate: "The news of my death has [not] been greatly
exaggerated."

Rumors from Kansasfest 1991 described the "Super Apple II" as
a killer machine that Apple management dared not release for
fear it would dampen sales of their favorite child, the
Macintosh. But it appears that the Mark Twain prototype was in
no way intended for such a role. Rather, it was designed to be
a powerful but inexpensive consumer product, a natural
successor to the Apple II, II Plus, IIe, IIc and IIGS and its
target would have been PC clones and the education market.
With a hard drive containing AppleWorks GS and HyperCard GS,
it could be sold as a home or school computer that was not
only simple to set up -- truly plug-and-play -- but also easy
to use. Yet it would provide all the power most people need in
a home computer.

Despite the completely new motherboard, we feel this machine
provides essentially no technical advance beyond that of a ROM
3 Apple IIGS, other than having a built-in hard drive, 3.5"
drive, SCSI port and twice the memory.

Apple II enthusiasts in the AppleQuerque Club have been
fortunate to get a glimpse of a bit of history in seeing this
Apple IIGS that might have been. Many of us expressed our
belief that if Apple Computer had built this machine we would
certainly have bought it.

Reality is another matter. Despite Apple Computer's decision
to drop all Apple II products, many of us now own Apple IIGS
computers with added equipment that give our machines far more
power than the prototype Mark Twain: larger and faster hard
drives, 1.44-megabyte 3.5" disk drives, accelerators,
floptical drives, Zip drives, and 8-meg memory cards. After
the decisions were made not to produce the super Apple IIGS
and to quit producing the ROM 3 Apple IIGS, a remarkable
amount of hardware and software has become available. The
Apple IIGS is enjoying a renaissance of sorts that so far
shows little sign of ending.

We intend to demonstrate this remarkable prototype machine at
the February AppleQuerque meeting and at the February Apple II
Library meeting."

-end of csa2 post article quote-


-------------------------------------------------------------

Wanting to obtain still more information on the Mark Twain, I
posted a request for same and shortly after posting the
request the following two post responses were made.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Additional unedited and complete quoteed post and comments 
concerning this posted announcement follow.

"From: mac@wco.com (Raymond McAnally) 
Newsgroups:comp.sys.apple2 
Subject: ROM 04 
Date: 3 May 1996 15:42:44 GMT
Organization: West Coast Online, Inc. 
Message-ID:<4md9hk$sdp@news.wco.com>

Of the 2 machines and one motherboard that were made available
to Joe for the photos, I worked on them both. Not really much
different from a standard ROM 03. The changes were more
cosmetic then anything. In my opinion, they limited the
machine rather than enhanced it. ie. 2 megs on motherboard
with SIMM slots for 2 more megs max. My GS is 8 megs using the
original RAM expansion slot and 2 4 meg cards piggy-backed.
non-standard SCSI that no utility software could access.

Mac.

Save you're frequent flyer miles for something more
interesting."

-end of csa2 post article quote-


-------------------------------------------------------------

The following is a csa2 post I made concerning all additional
information I've obtained about the Mark Twain for your
review - this was a reply thread from a rather curt post by
Joe Kohn. 

-------------------------------------------------------------

From - Wed May 14 18:35:36 1997
Path: news2.cais.com!news
From: "Charles T. 'Dr. Tom' Turley" <cturley@grin.net>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: August 1988 Issue of inCider magazine....
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 16:39:43 -0800
Organization: I Try, US-A2WUG, 1WSW, GS WorldView, A2-2000
Lines: 132
Message-ID: <337909CF.7680@grin.net>
References: <336BE9AB.248D@swbell.net>
<19970512210800.RAA07008@ladder02.news.aol.com>
<33781868.51CE@swbell.net> 
<5laks3$e59$1@nnrp1.crl.com>
Reply-To: cturley@grin.net
NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.202.191.157
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit


Why not just give the correct and direct URL for the Mark Twain
Video?

http://www.crl.com./~mpearce/GSAUG/Desc.html

Sure the thing exist. I saw it years ago in my own home, when
an old customer brought it over for me to have a look at. That
first meeting I had with the Mark Twain is covered in an
article in the summer-96 issue of II Alive. You have one Joe -
everybody knows it, so does Tony Diaz and you both are hyping
it to high heaven. There is also another Mark Twain in
Arizona. The pictures of the Mark Twain exist on Genie as SHR
in archives and on my own web site in converted GIF format for
everybody to see - with some other interesting info concerning
just how you actually obtained it. 

So, why would anybody want to pay $20 to $25 for the video
after reading about it from so many sources and realizing it's
just a big prototype flop project that is nothing much to even
woof about (IMHO). With the current hardware available today
for the IIgs anybody can soup up there IIgs to run circles
around the Mark Twain prototype computer. It has no ROM 04 in
it. It's nothing more than a rare prototpye IIgs FLOP that
never made it to even the final development stages.

(SEE BELOW)

Here's the exact email copy of that NEW info on the Mark Twain
for everybody on this news group to read (and varify the
contents via an email to the sender if they wish). Hey, Joe Kohn
even got a copy of the following email.


Read how Joe Kohn got his Mark Twain below - from my email
(unedited): 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 May 1996 12:41:44 -0700 (PDT) 
X-Sender: mac@mail.wco.com
Mime-Version: 1.0 
To: gbmaidsf@wco.com 
From: mac@wco.com (Ray McAnally) 
Subject:Re: Mark Twain 
Cc: joko@crl.com

>Thanks for the reply Ray,

>I understand about lack of time, only to well. What type of
job do you have? What are your current machines that you use?
How did you first see and or have use of a Mark Twain?

I came into possession of 2.5 machines from a member of our
group. In return for being able to keep one of them, I
repaired multiple problems on the 2 complete machines and
provided a Fully functional ROM 01 in return. I later replaced
the ROM 01 for 40 bucks, so I guess you could say I got the
mark twain for 40 bucks and about 4 hours of work. There was
no interesting software on the internal drives except for a
beta of AppleWorks GS that later became version 1.1. I later
traded the Mark Twain for a Macintosh Centris 610 system. Joe
got his by trading a 486 system that was given to him by a
friend. So the original owner ended up with a fully functional
ROM 01 GS and a 486 IBM clone. Worked out well for all
concerned. I made sure that the machine that Joe got was the
one that was repaired the best. All features function and I
had no crashes with it. I was however unable to test the sound
input function as I had no software at the time. According to
the numbers on the machines, we've been able to determine that
at least 20 machines were produced. 10 of which were
definitely crushed at Apple. 5 were with one researher at the
time of her resignation from Apple, and our 2.5 machines came
from her in a round about way. (She left them behind after a
divorce and the husband gave them away.) Our member got 2.5
and the SF trash people got the other 3 complete ones.

Upon opening the case, I discovered that there were only 5
slots. Slots 5 and 7 being mapped to the internal drives. The
machine had a Quantum LPS 40 meg drive mounted under the
floppy at the front of the case. The case was a hack job
rather then any sort of production run. The back of the case
was cut to acommidate a new type of power suppy that I found
to be under powered for its job. Also, it contained a fan,
something that Apple never included in the // series. Even the
Macs never had one until the SE. The supports for the drives
and the motherboard were fabricated from metal that had an
unfinished look to them. It was a real bitch to disassemble
the whole thing. I needed to replace the composite output jack
on one machine, so removal of the motherboard was required.
All three boards were slightly different. 2 had on board mini
speakers that were worthless for anything above a small beep.
The third had a regular speaker header with no speaker as no
place to mount it was available due to the placement of the
drives. The machine Joe has functioning is one with a mini
speaker. However, the floppy would not eject when the button
was pushed. this was due to a problem on the motherboard and
not on the drive or switch. I by passed this by rewiring the
switch directly to the drive connector. It works, but it will
eject the disk anytime the button is pushed, including while
being written to. The eject by dragging to the trash was
unaffected and works properly. You may be aware that the only
way to eject a disk in a Mac is by that means. (not including
the emergency method with a paper clip.) The other two
motherboards would eject with the button, but had other
problems that made one unstable and the other had no place to
mount the speaker. With the exception of the rewired switch, I
left the two machines in original condition. Joe later had the
external SCSI port added, something that Apple neglected to
do. I believe he may have also bumped it up to 4 megs. In
essense, what we have here is a ROM 03 with built in sound
input (mono), New sound output (stereo). Built in 40 meg Hard
drive and 800K Floppy. One machine had an 800K and the other
had a 1.44 meg drive that only functioned as an 800K. I
believe that was due to the fact that Apple no longer sells
800K drives. I would guess that the machine with the 800K was
an earlier prototype or at least the group working on it had
more parts in stock from previous designs. The machines were
standard speed, and the drives behaved like they were attached
to a standard SCSI card although one did have the circuitry of
a high speed SCSI card. That was the most unstable board
though, and not suited for use.

In contrast, I have a perfectly stable ROM 01 GS with 8 megs
of RAM, a 100 meg SCSI drive in an old Vulcan case attached to
a RAMFast SCSI card. A ZIP 8 mhz card, a Hyper studio
digitizer and a MDIdeas stereo card. This gives me the same
abilities as the Mark Twain except for the internal floppy,
plus a higher clock speed. I found the Mark Twain to be largly
a disappointment, and was quite happy to be able to trade it
for the Centris. The Apple // is a dead platform. I keep mine
for my 3 year old daughter to play on. If she trashes it, who
cares. I figure it will get her through grammar school before
I have to provide her with either a Macintosh or a PC clone.
Besides. I spent the last few years collecting childrens
software for it, and would hate to have it all go to waste.
Thats about all I remember off hand. That should give you a
good start on your research. I doubt you'll ever see any more
of them floating around, so I suggest you check out Joe's demo
when he gives it at the next meeting.


MAC

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So there you have it word for word from the fellow that gave
the Mark Twain to Joe Kohn. Now Joe, nobody is saying the Mark
Twain is a hoax nor is anybody saying the video of the Mark
Twain is a hoax either.  It's just a simple matter that the
Mark Twain is nothing much to hype on or brag about, like you
seem to have been doing for the past year or so now. So, your
Mark Twain video shows the French version of the Brutal Deluxe
gs/os 6.0.2 and the the other stuff you have that none of the
public is blessed with having YET and probably never will have
either :(.

It's highly unlikely that the public will ever have a Mark
Twain or the French BD hack/patch or whatever you want to call
it of the GS/OS 6.0.1 -> aka gs/os 6.0.2. Perhaps the other
software covered in the video might make it to the public some
day between now and the year 2000, although I wouldn't hold my
breath waiting for any of it.  I'd speculate that Nathan Mates
gs/os 6.0.1 patch program will give you about the same thing
with fixes and updates that the so-called BD gs/os 6.02
offered.

So, how many of the 'Mark Twain Video' have actually been sold
so far anyway?  I'm not knocking your efforts to make money,
just thought the public should know the REAL FACTS and TRUTH
about the Mark Twain (aka; ROM 04) - before wasting their
money on ordering this Mark Twain Video.

Cheers, 
Tom

-EOF-