Chuck Colby and his many innovations
The MacColby

Chuck Colby is a prime force in invention in the computer industry. One such invention is the MacColby. Chuck will provide more detail here but enjoy photos of the MacColby below and our pages on Chuck's other inventions. Here Chuck describes the MacColby:

The day the Mac was introduced 20 years ago at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco, in the back of the room (on two fold up card tables) there were two other companies showing Mac related things. At this, the first Mac World, one company was a small software company named Microsoft. The other company was an even smaller company called Colby Systems with a product called MacColby, which was the first portable Mac. It was built using the case of our MS-DOS portable, by replacing the IBM PC motherboard with a Mac motherboard (which I had gotten it from Steve Wozniak in December 1983 when I was over at his house installing his Satellite TV system that I had designed for him), adding two Mac floppy drives and changing the keyboard to a Mac keyboard. The display was the hardest to get going because the Mac used a horizontal scanning frequency that was non-standard and twice the frequency of a standard video monitor.

After Jobs did the big introduction, he introduced John Sculley the new Apple President, who gave his presentation. When Sculley was done on stage, he came to the back of the room to see what the excitement was around the MacColby. Sculley ordered 2 MacColbys on the spot (one for himself and one for his son who was attending Stanford). He arranged for the two Mac motherboards to be sent to Colby, and we delivered the two Mac Colbys to him a week later. However, he never paid for them, so here we are 20 years later and with compounded interest, I figure Apple owes me $20,000 or so, which I will be glad to take in new Mac hardware and software!