Atari 1000? You just lost major geek cred.

Lots of designers put microscopic logos or text on chips. They can be seen with a microscope and are probably the smallest “hardware easter eggs” I’ve heard of. The Silicon Zoo (http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/logoindex.html) has a whole gallery of them. The best is a message on a VAX microprocessor to Soviet reverse engineers–it says, in Russian, “CVAX – when you care enough to steal the very best.” (http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html)

Along the same lines as the Amiga the original Macintosh shipped with the signatures of the designers printed on the inside cover.
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Signing_Party.txt&showcomments=1

remember that NES chip that had the mario logo in the lithography? i cant find a picture of it to save my life…

i had an old microsoft joystick with all of the design team’s signitures inscribed on the inside of the case…

I don’t remember what company it was, but there used to be a russian company that produced knock off processors. I think they were Intel designs that they stole and printed themselves, but I don’t remember for sure.

Anyhow, on the die was a message printed in the layout. In russian it read “Slocak. When you care enough to steal the best” (where ‘Slocak’ was the name of the company”

I heard about this years ago, so forgive me for the details. Can’t seem to find a source online right now in a 2 second search.

It might have well been the Atari 1000 the design team was headed up by most of the designers of the Atari 400/800. Jay Minor did most of the work on the graphics chips for both.

FYI, I believe that isn’t a sound board from Rush, I think it was the steering wheel feedback motor driver board, although it’s been a long time…

More Amiga eggs:

The Amiga 500 was Commodore’s best-selling Amiga model. Early units, at least, had the words “B52/ROCK LOBSTER”[26] silk-screen printed onto their printed circuit board, a reference to the popular song “Rock Lobster” by the rock band The B-52′s. Commodore’s two subsequent console style models also carried a reference to the same band on their motherboards — the Amiga 600 had “JUNE BUG” (after the song “Junebug”) and the Amiga 1200 had “CHANNEL Z” (after “Channel Z”).

Pics:

A500
http://www.amiga-hardware.com/download_photos/a500mb_rev5_1.jpg

A600
http://www.amiga-hardware.com/download_photos/a600mbrev1_big.jpg

A700
http://www.amiga-hardware.com/download_photos/a1200mb1d1.jpg

The boys at HP put their signatures in the inside bottom molding of their Codemaster XL Defibs back in the day, I always liked working on them and finding that. You couldn’t really see it till you stipped most of the gubbins out.

Here is one on the MaxSonar EZ1 sensor available from ladyada/sparkfun : http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2009/06/23/getting-started-with-the-maxbotix-sonar-sensor-quick-start-guide/

Look closely at the picture of the back of the printed circuit board of the sonar sensor.

take apart any DEll server and you will find tons of easter eggs though out all the parts
Favorite one i found I think its in the 2400 series on a raid card there was a bottle with “Jim was fired for drinking” next to it

on an apple mac IIci you could set the date to a particular date, reboot and hold down a set of keys and a picture of the design team would appear. i think other models had similar eggs in them.

Here’s some:
http://smithsonianchips.si.edu/chipfun/graff.htm

Many of the early Macs (at least up to the IIci) had the designers’ signatures inside the case.

Took apart a dawn clock/light, on the pcbs was silkscreened “sbh fecit” alongside all the meaningless model numbers and letters.

Google turned up nothing.

“Fecit” is latin for “Made by”

Made by SBH, whoever the sneaky fellow who snuck that in was.

Not hardware, but I loved when I found code in the old webtv plus and dishplayer that read.
“File ROMSystem is corrupt; you’re f*cked.”

Along with a Flintstone telephone directory with real numbers for Fred, Barney, Mr. Slate (MS Corp), Bedrock Pharmaceuticals (which was the number for Andy Rubin….former Danger.com CEO/creator of the T-Mobile Sidekick.)

I remember calling Andy back in the day asking him about his rover bot that you could control through the internet. Circa 1999-2000ish.

The circuit board in a Scrubbing bubbles automatic shower cleaner has “Rosie” silkscreened on it. I assumed it was a reference to Rosie the Robot from the Jetsons.

I still think the coolest easter egg was a scanner that used the sound the motor made to play a tune. It’s a specific model of HP’s ScanJet and played Beethoven when you turned on the scanner pressing a button. Someone claims it was a “hardware test” for tech support people, but I’m not sure..

@Alex G.

Yep. The 5190 has it on the speaker.
http://smokin.homeip.net/sites/default/files/happy%20phone.gif

haha i guess ive been doing this for a couple years. i work for a small startup company, and occasionally i’ll do the layout for a new module design… if the board is 3 or more layers, i’ll put my name on an inner layer in copper, so you can only see it with an x-ray machine… or in copper underneath a large square of silkscreen (the white silkscreen space is usually put there for note-taking on the specific pcb, but you can see my name if you angle the board just right under the right light).

AlphaSmart 3000. Main PCB. A smiley face, the phrase “Rise and Shout the AlphaSmart’s out!!!”, and the designers’ names. I lost the photo I took when I took my old one apart (after the LCD shattered), but here’s another.

http://www.eeggs.com/images/items/2942.full.jpg

I once opened up my Metal Muff by electro harmonix to find they had printed “Metal Rules” on the inside. As far as I know they do that a lot on their pedals. I have just been reminded by the fact, so im going to go home and open all my EHX pedals.

Kinda related, we went to clock a mark 1 Gold GTI that belonged to my mates sisters boyfriend after we had ‘put a few miles’ on it early one morning. After removing the dashboard and reaching the back of the odo it said ‘Oh no, not again!’ – we never had the heart to tell him.

The naval RADAR, AN/SPS-49, would play “Anchors Aweigh” when given the right command sequence. Since the radar system did not have any speakers in the traditional sensor the song would be played by the hums and the clicks of the electronics of the air-search RADAR system.

My company works on now-defunct temp controllers. The company that made them went belly-up after the owner died. We bought their stuff, but the software to make the PROM used in the controller was missing. We decided to just copy directly from the PROM and everything appeared fine. After putting it in, it would act fine until about an hour later when it would shut itself off (usually an overtemp safety procedure). When powering it back on, it would scroll COUntErfEIt across the display. With him being dead, we ended up having to rewrite the firmware.

Along the same (assembly) lines as javier’s comment.

My dad told the story of a car that had an annoying rattle in it. After many trips to the dealer, a Coke bottle was found inside the box frame. In it was a note. “How long did it take you to find this?”

Urban Legend?

http://img63.imageshack.us/i/failg.jpg/
how about a typo?
up, down, lift, right?

The Cisco 12000 series routers have the inofficial(?) name and logo of the project silkscreened on the GRP (Gigabit Route Processor):

http://www.kumari.net/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=331

(I did not take the picture, but I’ve seen the logo myself. It is on GRP and GRP-B cards.) The Cisco expansion of the acronym is Big Fast Router. Yep.

I don’t get some of these e-eggs, it looks like some of them actually require extra manufacturing processes to add on for no obvious profitable reason. I understand the IC e-eggs, as they don’t require extra costs to add, but some of the other stuff does. Also the coke bottle in the car is an urban legend, it’s been around for a long time, in another version of the story, it’s a nut.

Some versions of the Nintendo DS Lite had button contacts shaped like peace symbols:

http://www.modd3d.com/articles/item/hidden-peace-symbols-on-ds-lite-board

The last cellphone I reworked had the initials of the inspector on the inside in big letters, it was weird because I have the same initials and I usually sign the inside of things when I’m done with them… If u happen to buy a used fleet car (one that was from a rental agency) you’ll be surprised at what you might find, I used to draw a good ol cock and balls underneath whatever panel I would work on (as long as the agency couldn’t see it)

I was recently modding my xbox and found to my suprise a signature on the motherboard. like with sharpie. the seal had been up until the unbroken and as best as i can read it says mr3f4 or something. heres a link to the picture
http://s41.photobucket.com/albums/e286/snakeman2058/?action=view&current=Photo10271249.jpg
email me at snakeman2058 at gmail if you have any ideas about what it could be

how do you get eggs without taking apart computers go to farms and stuff like that

how do you get loads of eggs by staying at your xzoo