IP: How about Apple -- Pentium III serial number

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 11:16:16 -0800
To: farber () cis upenn edu
From: Ari Ollikainen <Ari () OLTECO com>


        No one has pointed out that the Apple Lisa had a personality chip
        which identified it uniquely to the software. The Lisa Office
        System would ONLY run on the machine it was licensed to...replacing
        the motherboard required transferring the personality chip!

        AND Aplles current best seller, the iMac, has a hardware serial
        number:

        Use the "Apple System Profiler" and select "Production Information".

        Lo and behold I get:

        Production information
        ROM revision: $77D.44F1
        Boot ROM version: 3.0.f3
        Mac OS ROM file version: 1.5
        Serial number: XA9xxxxxxxFM4
        Software bundle: 694-1155

       The serial number reported is in fact the serial number printed on my
       daughter's machine.

       ALSO, all Palm III's have a serial number.

       Here is an excerpt from the Palm web site:

        "Serial Number

        Flash-ROM-based Palm III devices have unique serial numbers burned
        into them at production. It is a displayable text buffer, currently 12
        characters long, with NO null terminator. It is shown to the user in
        the Application Launcher, along with a checksum digit which you can
        use to validate input in case your users need to read the ID from
        their device and type it in or tell it to someone else."



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