At a few different times in its history, Apple has published magazines of a sort. These were not just catalogs, although they did of course promote the Apple cause. The Apple magazine lasted for a few issues in the early 1980s, and I will be posting scans of those at […]
Tag Archives: apple
Dear Educator, we live in exciting times!
Pretty much right from the beginning, Apple marketed itself heavily to children and the educational market. Through a happy accident I wound up with what seems to be an untouched Apple Curriculum Materials Kit, from February 1979. From what’s inside, it seems to have been sent out to schools (on […]
Set phasors to “Zap”
Here is Programma’s Phasor Zap cassette, another game of the “shoot alien spacecraft in space” variety. Here are the audio files. I have not tested the WAV files but the AIFF file loads fine in Virtual II. I have also put it on a disk. Programma – Phasor Zap AIFF […]
A dazzling display of purple and green
I got two copies of Programma’s Kaleidoscope, which seem to straddle the point in time when their tape packaging changed, and for the better I’d say. I took audio images of both tapes, but there do not appear to be any differences. I didn’t do a byte-level analysis, but they […]
Spoiler: A happy home life in the making
Old cassettes continue to show up at my door, today we’ll look briefly at Ancient Tarot from Programma International. In the Spring 1980 Programma catalog on the Brutal Deluxe Programma site, this is listed as “Tarot Cards” (AP122), which matches the splash screen, but on the tape itself and in […]
Softalk’s historical scoop: Apple joins the Dark Side
Prompted by discussion on the Softalk Forever!!! Facebook group, itself prompted by the initiation of an ambitious data mining project (The Softalk Apple Project) using Softalk as its base, I present the one full scan I’ve done since the last round at the beginning of the summer. It’s a nice […]
Red 5, standing by
Next up is Softape’s Star Wars and Space Maze, written by Bob Bishop. Again we find that the tape’s cover doesn’t quite match. In nearly everything I’ve seen, the relevant game is referred to as Star Wars, but on the cover it’s called Star Warriors, and on the tape case, […]
A fierce competitor from 1979
Here are the contents of the Softape Othello tape, now that I have opened it up. There was no instruction card or anything, just the tape and the cover insert. The two sides of the tape contain different versions of the game, one side has a version for the standard […]
Superappleinvader Game captured
I made some attempts at capturing the audio from the cassettes, and the first one, Invader Game Apple Invader Super Invader Superinvader, was successfully transferred. The audio files are below, in WAV and AIFF formats. I have tested the AIFF file in Virtual II, but I have not tested the […]
Apple cassettes
Back in the days before the disk drive, one of the primary methods of distributing software for the Apple II was on cassette tapes, and there were actually quite a large number of tapes produced for the platform. However, they also were relatively short-lived, since the floppy disk provided a […]