Re: cauzin softstrip

[jon@i-manila.com (Jon Co)]

I was going through my pile of old II magazines and saw a review of
it.  The guy had the IIe II+ version which did not eat up a slot, but
connected to the CASSETTE PORT.  Software would interpret data, and
presumably send instructions to move its "read head".  I'm just
guessing because it used both the cassette in and out.  The IIc
version (if there was one) would be different, probably used one of
the modem ports.  This must be just a bunch of 1 and 0..  If we had
both the copy of the file a particular set of strips generated then
finding the process shouldnt be that hard..  also a copy of the
"stripper" software (for making your own strips) might help.  I'm
doing this not for any real use, but for curiosity's sake.  Who knows
we might have it incorporated in an emulator, and have the strips
inputted in gif or tif (some non-lossy) format.
Tony Cianfaglione <ab616@chebucto.ns.ca> wrote in message news:<Pine.GSO.3.95.iB1.0.1030218193532.16593A-100000@halifax.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?
> > 
> >