Instructions on Egging Egging is not a hard job. It takes a bit of time, creativity, and knowledge of your Mac, but the result is often rewarding. Greedy - "Stealing" Eggs Online Services America OnLine - Type keyword MOS (to get to Mac Operating System Forums) and go to Message boards. The open category "Hints and Tips" and inside you will see "System 7.5 Easter Eggs". Books The best books to read about easter eggs in are The Mac Bathroom Reader (for info. go to credits in the next chapter) Mac Secrets and Voodoo Mac. The author of The Mac Bathroom Reader provides lists of his eggs and code names in files available on OnLine services. I have pretty much used all eggs from these books in this file but the books are also very interesting to read. Magazines "MacWorld" often posts easter eggs in the "Secrets" and "Questions & Tips" columns. Other magazines that post eggs include "MacUser" and "MacWeek" (big on code names). E-Zines You can look for easter eggs in electronic magazines such as "TidBits", "Macintosh Tips & Tricks", and "MacChat". "NewtNews" and a couple other Newton magazines post Newton easter eggs rarely. Newsgroups A great source ofeaster eggs is also newsgroups such as comp.sys.mac.misc, comp.sys.mac.system, and comp.sys.newton.misc. Web Sites Well, there are some out there and you can reach them from my web page at http://members.aol.com/ixist/, but my site will always have the most eggs so there really is no need to look. Beginner - Simple Egging The easiest way to egg is to hold down the buttons Shift, Option, Command, Control, and Caps Lock all at once. Then, find an application or Control Panel made by Apple, open it, and hold these buttons down while getting info. on it. If something happens begin the process of elimination until you can figure which keys are needed for the egg to work. Click in random places inside the about boxes and use balloon help often. After you read a few of the eggs in this file, your job is clear. Advanced - Snooping Inside the Application or ROM Here are the ingredients... CanOpener - This program will take any program and divide it into text, sounds, icons, and pictures. The text is all code that can be found in ResEdit mushed together in one big page. It will also extract text not in the code which is probably its best feature. Besides that, it is fast and has pleasing graphics, but it doesn't do anything really important. ResEdit - ResEdit will allow you to view the guts of the victim application. Once opening anything with ResEdit you can make it visible (Get Info. in File Menu), change the resource fork, and do a great deal of things that can potentially damage the application. The best places to look are in the PICT, SND, TEXT, STR, STR#, and ic18 resources. Take a look at other easter eggs to get an idea of whaere to search. ROMmie - This program will tear apart your ROM into a broken-down text file of your ROM, a ResEdit file (most useful), and a dump (good luck getting this 3 meg file open). Version 1.0 failed on my Macintosh with System 7.5.1 but worked fine on a Performa 6115 with System 7.5. I think it only works in systems 7.5 and below. MacsBug - This program will confuse the hell out of you. See the "Going On" chapter to read about it. Norton Disk Editor - This application comes with Norton Utilities. Unlike ResEdit, it allows you to edit sectors, jumbled text, and symbols. It combines all of the file's resources and more. You will never use this as a practical file, but it is great to use while just snooping through your system and Apple applications for easter eggs. Besides, Norton Utilities is a great program to have, so this is just one more reason to buy it. Any universal text reader - Programs like Microsoft Word and ???->TEXT are used to view the text in such places as the System folder. So what do I do now? It should not be surprising that these are the key tools hackers use every day to bypass various applications. Programmers like to keep some of their eggs in secret from the general public's prying eyes, kind of like an "inside joke", while they leave a permanent mark at the same time. So, the programmers stuff their names into "no man's land," a place few people besides programmers and hackers are familiar with. This is also a safe place to keep the easter eggs from conflicting with another program. Remember, Apple discourages easter eggs for that very reason. Knowing the above programs is not simple. I don't know most of them. However, I do know how to use them to find easter eggs, which takes little knowledge. It would take a long time to explain how to use each of the programs for other uses, but it should be very easy to search for eggs. Take a look at some of the easter eggs that use these programs. If you have the time, explore with them. It's not that hard. Have fun!