The solved riddle of the Apple-1 serial number

When you've only a few employees and you need to ship, everyone pitches in.

Since you're asking, I may as well tell more of this story. After Steve and I exchanged phone numbers, I thought the 6502 disassembler sounded like a fun project. So I went home and got to work on it. I didn't have a chip to test with, so I wrote out the code with pencil and paper and "tested" it by stepping through it mentally and writing the register and memory values at each step on a second sheet of paper. Kind of like what you would today call a "debugger".

Then Steve called me: "Mike, I've thought about this. Your experience is all with mainframes. We're using a microcomputer, and it works on completely principles. It is nothing like those mainframes you've used. So I've decided that you couldn't possibly do this job."

(It wasn't exactly a "job" at that point, like I said we were just a couple of scruffy hippies who ran into each other at the produce aisle, discovered we were both into computers and electronics, and got to talking.)

I tried to explain that I'd coded in assembly and machine language on two or three different architectures already, and the 6502 looked like just another one to me, with a simpler instruction set.

He said, "No, I've made up my mind. You couldn't possibly do this, so forget it."

So I thought "Who is this Steve guy telling me I can't program? I will go visit this Apple Computer and show him my code!"

I found their address at 770 Welch Road near the Stanford Barn, walked in and looked around. It didn't look like a computer company, all I saw was a row of switchboards and telephone operators. I asked one of them, "Where's Apple Computer?"

She said, "Uh, this is their answering service."

I thanked her and walked back out, shaking my head and telling myself, "These guys are flakes. They're never going to make it."