Hardware Details
The Apple Set-Top Box is based upon the Macintosh Quadra 605/LC475. Since the box was never marketed, no official technical specifications have been released by Apple. However, the following information was found in the online manual documentation:
- Status light
- Red (steady): main power is switched on; the Apple Interactive TV Box is undergoing self-test checks
- Yellow: main power is switched on, but the Apple Interactive TV Box is not currently in use
- Green: the Apple Interactive TV Box is on and in use
- Red (flashing): the Apple Interactive TV Box is not working correctly
- Power: Universal power supply:
- From 90 volts to 240 volts
- From 50 hertz to 60 hertz
- Weight
- 7 lbs. (2.6 kg)
- Dimensions
- 15.6 in. wide x 11.4 in. deep x 2.2 in. high (395 mm x 290 mm x 56 mm)
- Operating temperatures: Temperature is given in Celsius (C) and Fahrenheit (F).
- 10 °C to 40 °C (50 °F to 104 °F)
- Storage temperatures
- –40 °C to 47 °C (–40 °F to 116 °F)
- TV Standards for RF Ports
- If RF ports have aerial connectors: PAL
- If RF ports have F connectors: NTSC
- Video decompression standard
- MPEG-2 Transport containing ISO11172 (MPEG-1) bit streams
- Input and output ports
- INPUT: Apple Desktop Bus (ADB)
- SCART: two 21-pin EURO-SCART
- RF IN and RF OUT: 75 ohms; either PAL aerial connectors tuned to channels 32–40 or NTSC F-connectors tuned to channel 3 or 4
- Network: RJ-45 connector for either E1 data stream on PAL devices or T1 data stream on NTSC devices
- Serial: requires Apple System/Peripheral 8 Cable
- S-Video: Separate Video output
- Video: RCA jack, composite video output
- Audio: RCA jacks, left and right stereo output
- SCSI: HDI-30
Apple intended to offer the set-top box with a matching black ADB mouse, keyboard, Apple 300e CD-ROM drive, StyleWriter printer and one of several styles of remote controls.
A few hundred to a few thousand units were in actual use at Disneyland California hotels and provided in room shopping and park navigation. A few units have been unearthed containing SCSI hard drives that had some of this information contained within the box. It is surmised that other content was drawn from a network to complement some of the set top box interactivity.
Since the machine was designed to be part of a subscription data service, the remaining units are mostly inoperable. The set-top box ROM contains only what is required to continue booting from an external hard drive or from its Ethernet connection. What's more, many of the prototypes do not appear to even attempt to boot. This is likely dependent on changes in the ROM. The ROM itself contained parts of a downsized Mac OS 7.1 enabling the Television Box to establish a network connection to the media servers provided by "nCube Systems". These servers also provided the parts of the OS not implemented in ROM of the Television Box. Therefore a Television Box had to establish a network connection successfully in order to finish the boot process. There have been cases of users entering in a command key combination, to get the Set Top Box to boot off of a pre-installed OS 7.1 on an external SCSI hard drive, using a PowerBook SCSI adapter (NOT a SCSI Disk Mode-enabled adapter, but one just for external hard drives).
Read more about this topic: Apple Interactive Television Box
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