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Dayna MacCharlie

Welcome to the web's first page dedicated to Dayna's short-lived PC expansion box for the original Macintosh series. If you have any information about MacCharlie that is not provded here, please get in touch.

What is MacCharlie?

MacCharlie is an IBM PC clone capable of running text based DOS applications. The MacCharlie system has a similar profile to the original compact Macs and is supplied with a little platform to integrate it with the Mac system box. Two nine pin D connectors plug into the back of MacCharlie and into the printer and modem ports on the Mac. A special comms program allows the Mac to act as a console, to transfer files between Mac/DOS environments and to send special commands (eg to reset the PC).

The photos below explain MacCharlie better. Click on a thumbnail to view a photo in more detail

Front view of my MacCharlie Plus, showing two 360KB 5.25" drives. The switch at the bottom is used to power up the host Mac as well as MacCharlie.	Rear view of MacCharlie. On the left, two RS422 nine pin ports (for connecting to the Macintosh) and one RS232 serial port (for PC use). Unlike a real PC, MacCharlie does not have any internal expansion slots; the port at the bottom of MacCharlie is for connecting to an external IBM PC expansion chassis.
MacCharlie's keyboard extender provides PC function keys and a numeric keypad.	Half a dozen screws hold the MacCharlie together.
A close-up of the disk drives and power supply. The PSU is an international model so if you get one, check that the jumper is correctly set for 115V or 230V.	The Intel 8088 processor is in the top right of this photo. Note the two ROMs with white paper label ("Emily v.4" and "Charlie v.3C"). Are there different ROM versions in circulation?

What is that Image at the Top of the Page?

The image was taken from some MacCharlie packaging and shows an apple morphing into a bowler hat. When Dayna conceived the MacCharlie, IBM were using the Charlie Chaplin tramp image in their PC advertising...

Does MacCharlie work?

Yes. Daniel A very kindly provided me with copies of the Mac and PC disks for MacCharlie. As described in the documentation, the console software runs on the Mac and displays a PC text screen in a Mac window. A utility is provided for transferring files between the Mac and PC environments plus a PC driver to synchronize the clocks (real PCs of this age don't necessarily have their own clock for date stamping files).

More Links on this Site

Dayna MacCharlie Manual & Software -- the entire manual in HTML format, the Mac software and the DOS software. This software has only been tested with a Mac 512K with 64KB ROMs. I have just received some software that is supposed to work with a Mac Plus -- more info when I've tested it.

Dayna MacCharlie in Action describes what I had to do to get it all up and running.

The MacCharlie Web Server -- as a basic DOS PC, MacCharlie isn't very interesting so I set about configuring it as a DOS based wb server.

Miscellaneous Information -- a few interesting Usenet snippets about MacCharlie from 1985.

Dayna MacCharlie Carrying Case -- a few photos of Dayna's carrying case for the MacCharlie. Added 21 October 2006.

MacCharlie's Big Brother

Later generations of Macs had more expansion capability than the original compact models so the PC options were more usable. My Orange386 NuBus card in a 1989 Mac II is quite happy to run Linux.

Copyright information: If you wish to use any images on these pages, please contact the author, Phil Beesley on beesley@mandrake.demon.co.uk.

Last updated 21 October 2006