carmel_andrews Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 like it says on the tin (to using a well worn marketing slogan) Are their any famous instances of messges being left in computer firmware (i.e o/s or basic and other roms) Only ones i am aware of are the ones from the Amiga, where particular keypress sequences revealed the various designers of the amiga and a particularly famous one that said...'we designed the amiga, they (commodore) screwed it up' ...only thing with the later messge was that you either had to be apidextrous or have someone else to help you key in the correct keypress sequences to generate the messge There is apparently a 'statement of love' encrypted within the ST o/s, made to look like legit 60000 code, left by one of the programmers of the o/s, dave staugas (who also programmed one of the 1st, if not the 1st paint program for the ST...neochrome) And according to some website about the history of the commodore 128, according to some quotes attributed to one of the senior managers on the 128 design team, Bill Herd (that where included on this website), that all the 128 design team left messges encoded within the 128's kernal (according to later in that article you could only access these messages by carefully doing certain keypress sequences) Just curious whether there exists any more 'hidden messges' on any classic computer or gaming hardware (apart from the ones already mentioned), Atari and non atari hardware ofcourse Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 There are some messages which can be found in Atari 2600 cartridges ROM (incl. one from Dave Staugas). I think most can be found here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatta Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 The ROM 03 Apple IIgs has digitized audio of the dev team cheering "Apple II" if you hit Command-Option-Control-N during startup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhd Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 The Coco 3 ROM included a digitized photo of the development team. At least one game cartridge for the Emerson Arcadia (and clones) included the name of the programmer and, if memory serves, a dedication to his famiy. This was found by examining the code; I don't think that it is displayed in the game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Briza1 Posted October 25, 2011 Share Posted October 25, 2011 The Coco 3 ROM included a digitized photo of the development team. At least one game cartridge for the Emerson Arcadia (and clones) included the name of the programmer and, if memory serves, a dedication to his famiy. This was found by examining the code; I don't think that it is displayed in the game. Yes the Famous ALT,CTRL and hitting the Reboot button for the Digitized pic of the Super Extended Basic programmers from Microware. The other Hidden messages can be found by typing in CLS 100, which will display the names of the programmers who programmed the super ext basic code and hooks into the Tandy rom etc. laters Briza Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted October 25, 2011 Share Posted October 25, 2011 Microsoft had their copyright message show up on the CoCo if you tried clearing the screen to an invalid color. And it seems to me they hid messages in some other basics they originally wrote but companies bought the rights for. I can't remember off the top of my head which ones though. Maybe it wasn't a message but a specific behavior so they could identify their basic. The MC-10 had something embedded in it's ROM but I don't think anyone would know without a ROM dump. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LocalH Posted October 25, 2011 Share Posted October 25, 2011 Microsoft had their copyright message show up on the CoCo if you tried clearing the screen to an invalid color. And it seems to me they hid messages in some other basics they originally wrote but companies bought the rights for. I can't remember off the top of my head which ones though. Maybe it wasn't a message but a specific behavior so they could identify their basic. PET BASIC v2 - WAIT 6502,1 Note that this egg was specifically added by Microsoft for PET BASIC V2. The text "MICROSOFT!" is stored in ROM, backwards, using screen code (with the top two bits set for obfuscation) and written directly to screen memory, rather than using ASCII and CHROUT. Interestingly, Microsoft themselves must have forgotten the use of those 10 bytes to store "MICROSOFT!", as every version of 6502 BASIC post-1978 still included the 10 bytes, and still using PET screen code, as well as the later 6800 and 6809 ports as seen in the TRS-80 MC-10 and Color Computer (but none of them contain the egg code). No later version of CBM BASIC contains either the egg code, nor the 10 bytes of "MICROSOFT!" - Commodore removed them from the source when they discovered its existence. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awhite2600 Posted October 25, 2011 Share Posted October 25, 2011 PET BASIC v2 - WAIT 6502,1 The value specified after WAIT 6502 determines how many times the word MICROSOFT! is printed. Entering WAIT 6502,100 will completely fill the screen of a 40 column PET with the MICROSOFT! text. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dendawg Posted October 25, 2011 Share Posted October 25, 2011 Not sure if this counts or not, but engraved on the N64's CPU are the names of the team who helped develop it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seob Posted October 26, 2011 Share Posted October 26, 2011 (edited) Not bios related, but on the mainboards of the amiga 500, are songtitles engraved. A500 "Rock Lobster" A600 "Junebug" A1200 "Channel Z" A590 "Party Mix", the front LED's called Fred and Wilma http://www.amigahist...k/b52board.html Apparently the Famicom disc system has a hidden message revealed when pressing select+start when reseting the system, then when the screen is black hold right+a to see the message. Also some 1993 amibios would not boot up at november 13th, but would play "happy birthday" on the pc speakers. Edited October 26, 2011 by Seob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LocalH Posted October 26, 2011 Share Posted October 26, 2011 (edited) Apparently the Famicom disc system has a hidden message revealed when pressing select+start when reseting the system, then when the screen is black hold right+a to see the message. I looked it up, and 2C33 INTERNAL ROM PROGRAMMED BY TAKAO SAWANO NINTENDO CO.,LTD. DEV.NO.2 The ".," is a single tile (same one seen on the license screen after "NOW LOADING..."). My guess is that this is actually an easter egg hidden within a dev testing feature, as holding Select+Start while resetting (but not mashing Right+A) Edited October 26, 2011 by LocalH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marcfrick2112 Posted October 30, 2011 Share Posted October 30, 2011 (edited) Great thread all! If anyone is interested, I believe the ReqAttack requester patch will display the Amiga's hidden OS messages by just clicking the 'About' menu item... It works with 3.1 thru 3.9, iiirc. Edited October 30, 2011 by marcfrick2112 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rex Dart Posted October 30, 2011 Share Posted October 30, 2011 Well, the various Game Genie devices (after the NES version) included hidden text messages you could view by putting in the right inputs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inky Posted November 5, 2011 Share Posted November 5, 2011 The Atari ST has J. R. "Bob" Dobbs in the ascii code 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
epobirs Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 The Atari ST has J. R. "Bob" Dobbs in the ascii code A friend of mine liked to hack games to change the graphics. On the ST version of Rogue (Epyx) he changed the Bat to be an attacking Bob Dobbs head. On the Atari 800 he made a very clever disk sector editor with the special feature of displaying the sector as player-missile data. It made it very easy to find objects in games and alter them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silntdoogood Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 I don't know if you're looking for OSs that have been produced in the past five years, but I found some Easter eggs in Linux Mint. I haven’t run Mint in years, so I don't know if there are new versions, if so, I don't know if they are included. While booting from a live CD, hold the power button. The scrolling text un-bolds, you get some ascii animals with famous quotes in speech bubbles. I'll see if I can find a screen shot anymore. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 Great thread all! If anyone is interested, I believe the ReqAttack requester patch will display the Amiga's hidden OS messages by just clicking the 'About' menu item... It works with 3.1 thru 3.9, iiirc. Yeah there are a ton of hidden names in the old Amiga Workbench releases. This page has most of them listed: http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
littleman jack Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 There are a bunch of command line easter eggs in linux, and in some of the editors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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