I have a Prodigy SE (contains both the 68020 and 68000) and there was little information about this particular Mac so I took the opportunity to find what it was all about.
Original link contains a couple pictures of the Prodigy SE: http:// www.mattfro.com/Site/Mac_Stuff/Pages/Prodigy_SE.html'' > I interviewed the co-founder of the now extinct Levco Corp., Duane > Maxwell, to get some answers on the origin and significance of the > Prodigy SE. > > > NOVEMBER 27, 2007 > > - The Prodigy SE that I own has a silver sticker on the front that > says "Prodigy SE by Levco". Does that imply that the computer was > sold with the card pre-installed by Levco or was it a sticker that > came with the Prodigy card for purchaser to put on themselves? > > The Prodigy SE was mainly sold as a user-installable kit, and > the sticker was part of that - the Macintosh SE had an internal > connector for these sorts of devices. However, many people and > companies didn't want kits, so Levco became an Apple OEM partner, > and resold Macs with the board preinstalled. Levco also had a small > network of dealers around the country that would install the kit > for customers. There's probably no way to know which type yours is. > > > - In short, what was the main reason you decided to make the > Prodigy SE? What needs were there for it? > > The Prodigy SE was the successor to the Prodigy 4, a similar > accelerator for the Macintosh 128K/512K/Plus. At the time, the > fastest Macs you could get were 8 MHz 68000 based, while the > Prodigy was a 16 MHz 68020/ with 68881 hardware floating point > coprocessor and a whopping 4 MB of memory - the most a Macintosh > could handle at the time. Levco was fundamentally in the hardware > upgrade business - it started selling upgrade kits for the Mac 128K > to increase the memory to 512K. At the time, Apple was selling the > same upgrades as a motherboard swap at some price on the order of > $500-$1000, while Levco's price was around $200 or even less if you > bought your own memory chips elsewhere. > > The Prodigy 4 worked on Macintosh 128K and 512K, and included > the SCSI port that was found in the Macintosh Plus. It was > introduced the same day as the Mac Plus - Apple didn't offer a > device with similar memory and performance for over a year > afterwards with the Mac II, or in the same form factor with the SE/ > 30 three years later. > > > - In creating the Prodigy SE, did you work alongside with Apple or > was it more of a third party modification? > > Apple's design of the Macintosh SE presumed the market for such > devices - that was a lesson learned when the more "closed" > Macintosh 128K/512K/Plus ecosystem developed third-party upgrades > despite Apple's discouragement. > > During the 128K/512K era, Steve Jobs was at the helm of Apple > and really didn't want anyone messing with his perfect appliance. > He felt that no one should care about mundane things things like > "memory" or "performance" - that developers should build for the > device as sold by them. However, the Apple sales force was unable > to get Macs into major corporate accounts due to the low > performance and lack of upgradeability, and worked with companies > like Levco "under the table". It got quite silly for a while as > Cupertino was completely oblivious as to what was happening in > their regional sales offices. > > All that changed when Jobs left Apple - the very next day, > Apple actively sought out us and other similar "renegade" companies > and started an official dialog on how to alter the basic Macintosh > design to create an official hardware upgrade ecosystem. The > Macintosh SE and, to some degree, the Macintosh II were the results > of those conversations. > > The availability Prodigy greatly helped Apple's transition to > the 68020 - by the time Apple came out with the Mac II, most > developers had cleaned up their code to work on that processor, > since many programs initially wouldn't work. For instance, > MacWrite simply didn't work on the 68020 - when the author was told > that there was a machine out there that it wouldn't run on, his > first response was "OK, who's the smartass that built a 68020 Mac?" > - he already knew there was a problem and was hoping that he had > some more time to fix it, but the Prodigy showed the writing on the > wall. The Prodigy came with a special software patch to handle > MacWrite's 68020 bugs. > > Some other programs, mostly ones dealing with the audio, were > carefully tweaked to the 8MHz performance, and those got fixed as > well. Because Mac II prototypes were rare, Apple at one point > recommended developers buy Prodigy upgrades, and even purchased > them for some high-profile developers. > > I personally flew up to San Jose to install the Prodigy upgrade > in Andy Hertzfeld's Mac. > > > - What was the starting price of the Prodigy SE? > > I don't recall exactly, but I think it started at around $2K, > and dropped over time as parts (mainly memory) became cheaper and > the volume went up. The Prodigy 4 started at $4K when it first > came out - but at the time it was the fastest computer you could > buy. It even outran most of the available workstations from Apollo > and Sun at a fraction of the price. > > > - How many of them did you make? > > No idea - on the order of thousands, but probably not tens of > thousands. > > > - How long did you make them? > > I think they were actively on the market for nearly two years. > There was also a bundle that combined the Prodigy SE with an > internal hard disk. Eventually, Apple's hardware offerings caught > up and the need for accelerators for that form-factor dropped. By > that time, Levco had been sold to SMS, which went out of business > about a year later due to some gross mismanagement - the Levco > division was combined with SuperMac and jettisoned just before SMS > cratered. The main Levco hardware designer, Doug Gilbert, stayed > at SuperMac and worked on a number of important projects, including > "Digital Film", one of the first cheap video capture cards. He > finally left to become a chiropractor. > > I left when SMS went down, and worked a bit with Pixar before > starting Gryphon Software in 1992 - most famous for a product > called "Morph", but also developer for a lot of "edutainment" > CDROMs for Disney, Warner Bros, etc. Most of the rest of my > history is visible on the Internet (but I'm *not* the guy who wrote > all the D&D books). One other founder, Stas Lewak went to post- > communist Poland and created a successful software development > outsourcing firm. The last founder, Curt Johnson went back to his > previous vocation as a consultant in the industrial controls business. > > > I think that's all of the questions that I have. Thanks again for > putting in the time to help me here. > > Sure, glad to help. www.MattFro.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.math.louisville.edu/pipermail/macgroup/attachments/20071127/9ee04e68/attachment-0001.html
