Hands-On with Two Apple Network Server Prototype ROMs

Grateful acknowledgement made to the several former Apple employees who materially contributed to this entry. This article wouldn't have been possible without you! Here's why I need to do inventory more often. This is an Apple prototype ROM I am ashamed to admit I found in my own box of junk from various Apple Network Server parts someone at Apple Austin sent me in 2003. The 1996 Apple Network Server is one of Apple's more noteworthy white elephants and, to date, the last non-Macintosh computer (iOS devices notwithstanding) to come from Cupertino. Best known for being about the size of a generous dorm fridge and officially only running AIX 4.1, IBM's proprietary Unix for Power ISA, its complicated history is a microcosm of some of Apple's strangest days during the mid-1990s. At $10,000+…