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Vintage video of Apple's Woz discovered in a basement

Footage makes its way to YouTube after being unearthed in a basement. It shows Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak in 1984, discussing the Apple I and II, and fondly recalling various high-tech pranks.

Donna Tam Staff Writer / News
Donna Tam covers Amazon and other fun stuff for CNET News. She is a San Francisco native who enjoys feasting, merrymaking, checking her Gmail and reading her Kindle.
Donna Tam
2 min read

Ah, the good ol' days of hacking into hotel hardware and getting movies on demand for free. YouTube user Vince Patton; screenshot by CNET

Some 1984 videos of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak talking about Apple's early days have surfaced on YouTube, showcasing the tech icon's deftness at tech humor.

The footage, filmed at a meeting of the Denver Apple Pi computer club, is filled with Wozniak's anecdotes about building the Apple I and Apple II and playing pranks, and includes a look at him leading a spoof of "The Pledge of Allegiance" that features the line "One notion under Jobs," a reference, of course, to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. There's also footage of Apple employee No. 6, Randy Wigginton, talking about the nerve-racking days before the launch of the Mac.

YouTube user Vince Patton found the the videotapes of the speech in his dad's basement and kindly uploaded nine clips to YouTube. He's says he intends to upload the whole 90 minute presentation but that he has to take care of some technical difficulties first.

Here are some of the highlights so far:

Wozinak leads the room in the Apple version of "The Pledge of Allegiance":

Wozinak talks about hotel pranks. He hacked a video-on-demand box in the room so he wouldn't get charged for the movies he watched, and then, before he left, took apart the room's touch-tone phone and reassembled it so the number buttons were in the wrong places:

Wozniak describes the first circuit boards he and Jobs built to sell to members of the Hombrew computing club. Jobs knew they would lose money on the venture but convinced Wozniak to do it by saying, "Yeah, we'll lose our money, but at least we'll have a company":

Wigginton talks about the Mac software bugs that appeared just hours before the launch. Apparently, the Finder couldn't even copy a disk at that point:

More pranks from Wozniak. This time, they were during his college days at the University of Colorado and involved concealing an electronic TV jammer in a pen and messing with TV sets in the dorms and classrooms:

[Via Mac Observer]