The MacCharlie is a hardware add-on for the Apple

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

that was made by

Dayna Communications Dayna Communications, Inc., was a privately-held American computer company, active from 1984 to 1997 and based in Salt Lake City, Utah. It primarily manufactured networking products for Apple Computer's computing platforms, including the Macinto ...

. The name refers to an

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a tea ...

advertising campaign of the time featuring Charlie Chaplin's "

Little Tramp : ''See The Tramp for the character played by Charlie Chaplin''. ''Little Tramp'' is a musical with a book by David Pomeranz and Steven David Horwich and music and lyrics by David Pomeranz. Based on the life of comedian Charles Chaplin and name ...

" character. It allows users to run

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

software for the IBM PC by clipping a unit onto the chassis of the

Macintosh 128K The Apple Macintosh—later rebranded as the Macintosh 128K—is the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. It played a pivotal role in establishing desktop publishing as a general office function. The motherboard, a CRT monitor, and a fl ...

, as well as a keyboard extender to provide the function keys and numeric keypad that are absent from Apple's original keyboard. The clip-on unit sits to the side of the Mac and, like the contemporary

Amiga Sidecar The Commodore A1060 Sidecar is an expansion hardware device developed by Commodore and released in 1986 for the Amiga 1000 computer. It features a complete PC XT-clone system mounted in an expansion case which connected to the expansion bus on ...

, contains essentially a complete

IBM PC compatible IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones ...

with an

8088 The Intel 8088 ("''eighty-eighty-eight''", also called iAPX 88) microprocessor is a variant of the Intel 8086. Introduced on June 1, 1979, the 8088 has an eight-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers and ...

processor, 256 KB of

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch ...

(expandable to 640 KB) and a single 5.25"

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined ...

drive that stores 360 KB. A second floppy drive can be added. While running DOS software, users can still access the Macintosh menu bar and

desk accessories A desk accessory (DA) in computing is a small transient or auxiliary application that can be run concurrently in a desktop environment with any other application on the system. Early examples, such as Sidekick and Macintosh desk accessories, used s ...

. However, the DOS environment, which runs in a window, is text-only and does not permit Macintosh applications to run concurrently while in use. MacCharlie uses the Mac as a

terminal Terminal may refer to: Computing Hardware * Terminal (electronics), a device for joining electrical circuits together * Terminal (telecommunication), a device communicating over a line * Computer terminal, a set of primary input and output devic ...

, performing all DOS processing itself, and sends video data over a relatively slow serial link to the Mac for display. This slowness, coupled with the declining prices of real IBM PC compatibles, contributed to the short market life of the MacCharlie.

References

External links

1985 Advertisement hosted by The Mac Mothership
, 1985 review article at the New York Times IBM PC compatibles Macintosh peripherals Macintosh platform Products introduced in 1985 {{mac-stub

See also

References

External links