Hacking the Apple Interactive Television Box #ReverseEngineering #Apple
Apple implemented a flashable Mac OS ROM volume in 1994, but hardly anyone noticed — because it was only ever used publicly in a minority subset of one of the most unusual of the Macintosh-derived systems, the Apple Interactive Television Box (a/k/a AITB or the Apple Set Top Box/STB).
The AITB/STB was Apple’s attempt to get into the early set-top box market of the 1990s. The dominance of the Apple TV today is a late phenomenon; Apple was in no position to launch such a product on their own in that era, though with the recent introduction of their QuickTime multimedia framework in 1991, they were a strong candidate for a technology partner. Apple forged an alliance with Oracle and parallel computing vendor nCube (Larry Ellison then being its single biggest stockholder), with Apple developing the front end client box and nCube boxes running Oracle Media Server handling the back end.
It was based on stripped-down 1993 Quadra 605 hardware with extra silicon for the media features but kept serial, ADB and SCSI connections to allow it to run compatible CD-ROMs, sort of a Pippin before the Pippin, with plans to sell it for $750.
Apple never ended up launching the hardware for retail sale, the existing trials were terminated, and most of the boxes were ultimately recalled and destroyed.
Various units have made their way into the hands of collectors and hackers. The Old Vintage Computing Research blog dives deep in finding the OS ROM and seeing what’s there and changing things up.
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