Re: Free Apple II software & Nibble Online

[Dan Foster <usenet@evilphb.org>]

In article <ddaf44$ql5$1@unlnews.unl.edu>, Ed Eastman <noone@nowhere.net> wrote:
> Terry Olsen wrote:
>> I'd much rather have the real ones if I had them...
>
> Well you don't see me browsing a DVD, now do ya? :) Believe me though, 
> it is tempting, every issue and the software...

Actually, the DVD only has the scans of the issues. Even then, it's
still pretty good stuff -- got my DVD a short time ago.

I figure it's technically possible to convert the scanned in source
listings into text files via a OCR program -- and from there, import
into an emulator file or transfer to a real floppy disk.

Of course, couldn't distribute such stuff since Mike Harvey owns the
copyright on all that stuff, but that's how one could do it for their
own purchased DVD and for own personal use. It'd be some work, admittedly.

It's been an incredible trip down memory lane for my favorite II
magazine of the era (inCider was second). Not only that... it's just
full of all the little tips and tricks I'd long since forgotten.

Like for Excel..er.. AppleWorks usage, assembly language tricks,
articles by Roger Wagner himself (Merlin author), and so forth. I always
enjoyed the one/two-liner feature -- some pretty amazing stuff there.

No, Mike Harvey isn't paying me to say any of this. :-)

I'm just excited about having this.

Yeah, I wish I still had the paper version, but I'm realistic -- I've
already gone through two floods in different states with total loss of
all my books and magazines. I'm just resigned to the simple fact that
the DVD is probably as good as I'll ever get.

I also never had anything older than 1989, so having the quite complete
collection is a nice bonus, too!

I'd totally forgotten about some stuff from the era like the PC
Transporter board (remember that?), the PFS Write (what I used on the PC
prior to Windows and Word) text processing utility, and other stuff.

It's amazing *how* much advertising AE did for their products. In one
issue, there was something like 6 identical ads spread throughout that
had Woz's smiling mug for the RamWorks III. :-) They did a lot of other
heavy advertising for their various products.

I'd totally forgotten about stuff like Jim Richardson's CLEAN utility --
it was my first exposure to use of ProDOS MLI routines. (JSR $BF00 still
has room in my memory.)

There's even games and full sources written by some now-famous people --
John Romero (whom also worked for SoftDisk and later did Doom and
started id Software with John Carmack and others).

Great stuff!

-Dan