Re: cauzin softstrip

[Tony Cianfaglione <ab616@chebucto.ns.ca>]

I don't know if that's possible as they were a special format that the
reader could handle.  I have software for the Apple II, Mac and PC as well
as the Laser Archivist, which is the program to make professional strips
that hold a higher density of data.  There wre several hundred programs
available on strips.

As it is, the strips only held 1k each (the higher density could hold 5k
eacah but you needed to send the data to SoftStrip to have them
professionally print them for you.  There was a newsletter called 'Cauzin
Effect') that would feature the higher density strips as well as news
about the system and the company.  

Many magazines featured strips for their respective formats: InCider, II
Computing, Creative Computing for the II series; Macazine, MacUser for the
Mac; PC World, Personal Computing for the PC.  Commodore never got into
the strips, however.  The SoftStrip company still exist in Waterbury,
Conn.and sells a newer form of strip software/hardware which is totally
incompatible with the Cauzin system.  They also did repairs (as of sevral
years ago) on the old reader systems.

The II software was DOS 3.3.  Support for the II was dropped before they
released their ProDOS version but someone in our old Cauzin club was
working on a GS/OS version.  He was ill and disappeared.  He may have
passed away before completing his work.  The PC version was DOS only.  The
readers acted like modems and hooked up via the modem port on the 
computers, communicated in that manner.  There were various cable 
connectors available depending on your socket.

As soon as software started getting larger, the strips became quickly
outdated.  7 strips would fit on a printed page, representing 7k of data.
A 700k program would take 100 pages to print them all so you can why the
system fell out of favor very quickly.

------------------------------------ 

On 18 Feb 2003, Jon Co wrote:

> Remember all those softstrips published in old magazines?  I was
> wondering if there was a way to  "decode" the stuff by scanning it
> into a PC and decoding the files or disk images stored in them?
> 
>