Happy holidays, everyone! Yes, that’s me and yes, I wrote the AppleSoft BASIC program that rendered the “Merry Christmas” on the screen. The white sleeve on the left edge of the card belongs to the blouse my sister was wearing. I decided to protect her privacy (and maybe a bit of her dignity) and cropped her out of the scan.
I figured this would be an easy one, and it was. I consider this a good thing, as it encourages participation (and adding a prize didn’t hurt either, I’m sure). I had seven entrants, all of whom correctly guessed that the screen capture was taken from the 1985 movie, Explorers.
I find it amusing that, in a similar fashion to the image from the previous contest, the Apple IIc used by the kids to control the ship throughout the movie was never visibly plugged in to a power source. In the scenes shot in the basement of Wolfgang’s house, that makes sense – wires and outlets tend to be tucked away until the plot calls for them. But this IIc was magical. It even worked outdoors, sitting on a rock with no electrical outlet in sight.
At one point, Wolfgang pulls a 9-volt battery from a compartment in the monitor and explains that this is how everything is powered, which might make sense except that a single 9-volt cell obviously doesn’t provide enough energy to run an Apple IIc and even if it did, nothing is plugged into the IIc’s power input, as mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Ah, movie logic.
As an interesting aside, Explorers marked the first major roles for two of its young stars, Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix. It also featured an unrecognizable Robert Picardo in an early role. Several, actually.
Anyway, on with the show.
The winner of the 6502Lane Tuesday Trivia Contest, and box of Apple-branded 3.5” floppy disks is…
Joseph Bailey!
Congratulations, Joseph. I’ll be sending you an email shortly. To everyone else who participated, thanks for playing along. This was fun and I’ll probably do it again shortly.
Found it! Here’s what the trivia contest winner gets to take home:
It’s a box of 3.5” 800K Apple-branded floppy disks, still sealed. As I said, nothing major but hopefully not complete crap, either. Perfect for use with your Apple IIGS, or for sitting on the shelf, collecting dust.
It’s getting late, but it’s still Tuesday in some parts of the world, so here goes.
Yes, it’s yet another installment of the contest that just won’t go away. This is going up mostly because I haven’t posted anything here for a while – my attention has been focused on the podcast and the scans recently – and I don’t want my three regular readers to get bored and go away.
To make it more interesting, I’m actually giving away a prize to the winner this time. I’m not going to announce what the prize is just yet (because I have to find it first, and if I can’t locate what I have in mind, I’ll give you something else), but you *will* get something. It will be small, because this is an easy one, but it’s better than nothing I suppose.
In the case of multiple correct answers, a winner will be chosen at random. This contest will run until midnight onTuesday, November 8th.
So, dear readers, from what movie is this screencap taken?
Oh, and you’ll need to email the answer to me directly. No answers in the comments will be accepted. No naughty copying off your neighbor’s paper.
Is it ever possible to have too much Apple II gear? Well, if shows like A&E’s Hoarders and Hoarding: Buried Alive on TLC are any indication, the answer is an obvious ‘yes’. Any self-help guide or program designed to get you organized will emphasize reducing “stuff”, “clutter”, whatever you want to call it, to help you focus.
As I look around my overflowing office space, I find myself recalling my recent trip to the Funspot Arcade in New Hampshire. Spread across three spacious floors of gaming fun, the facility is stuffed with every manner of arcade game, from the original Pong to the latest fighters and shooters. While it was great to get to play games I hadn’t touched since the early 80s (MAME doesn’t count, kids), I was somewhat disappointed to see the poor condition of some of my old favorites. Broken Fire buttons, flaky controls, and CRTs with excessive burn-in or failing color guns were plentiful. Other games were out on the floor adorned with “Out of Order” signs, or just plain turned off. This got me wondering if Funspot’s abundance is also their curse. Perhaps reducing the number of cabinets in their inventory would allow them to better service the games they chose to keep.
Later that same day, I found myself at another gaming establishment nearby, the Pinball Wizard Arcade. PWA’s floor space is less than one third of Funspot’s and they don’t come close to matching the number of games. They do have all the classics though, and a superior selection of pinball tables. When I entered the place, I thought I’d be disappointed but that turned out not to be the case. PWA’s games were all 100% functional, clean and in better shape overall than Funspot’s, and if I’m ever in that area of the country again, I’ll probably return to Pinball Wizard Arcade rather than Funspot if I’m forced to choose.
The Funspot / PWA comparison may be an example of what a non-profit’s presentation will be versus that of a for-profit venture, but there’s still a valuable lesson to be learned here, and that is that less is often more.
With all this in mind, I take a quick inventory of my office: in addition to the two tables’ worth of working machines, there are stacks of Apple IIe’s, IIGS’s, DuoDisk Drive units and more piling up everywhere I look.
Stacks of Apple II gear collecting dust in my office.
More stuff building up under desks and in every corner.
And there’s more in the basement:
More Apple II and III stuff in the basement
I don't even know if these IIGS machines work
It’s clear to me what I need to do. How to go about it, as well as finding the motivation to try to build some momentum around it are different problems entirely.
Like many collectors, I have a hard time letting go of anything. I have this deep-seated fear that if I unload that pile of Apple IIe’s sitting there that haven’t been booted up in years, I’ll someday find myself in a situation where I need a part for repairs and it will no longer be available to me. For me, this is largely unreasonable. I’m active in an Apple II community that is open and willing to share; I’ve rarely been in a position where no one is willing to lend or sell me whatever I’m looking for at below-eBay prices (color me grateful!)
When I first started collecting, around 1997 or so, I got everything I could get my hands on. I didn’t even limit myself to Apple II stuff. As a result, I ended up with a crawl-space full of Commodore and early Macintosh computers I didn’t care about (among other things). A few years back, I loaded up the Commodores in my car and drove them down to a Commie collector in Colorado Springs. The haul included PETs, SX-64s and a bunch of other stuff in which I had little interest. The recipient was ecstatic. I’m still looking for a home for the Macs. This is the same thing I’m going to have to do with most of my Apple IIs. It’s just going to be harder. As I try to make a mental list of what can go, I find myself making up reasons to keep each of them.
The Apple Lisa 2/10 which has been upgraded to a Mac/XL is a good example. I know little about the Lisa and this particular model doesn’t have any software loaded. I have no convenient way to get applications from their native disk image format onto media the Lisa can recognize and I’m not sure what I would do with the thing if I did. I haven’t turned it on in more than a year at least and I have no real sentimental attachment. It didn’t figure significantly into my childhood and holds no special interest for me. As I look at it, I can come up with only one reason I still have it: it’s a Lisa. Not a good reason to keep something around, is it? And yet, I struggle with the thought of letting it go.
And there’s another catch. I despise the USPS with a passion that burns hotter than a thousand suns and I welcome its impending demise. I’m not wild about the other major shippers either and the tedium of properly packing gear for mailing is even worse, which rules out eBay as a possible outlet. So, someone would either need to come to me to get it, or show up at the next KansasFest.
As I plan the reduction, I have to remind myself: I don’t need five of everything. I don’t even need two of everything. Many of these, I don’t care enough about to even keep one. So where does that leave me today? I already have an extensive database of all my vintage computing stuff to use as a starting point. The next step is to look with a critical eye at what I really want and begin sorting and marking what goes, what stays.
This will be a slow process I think, but I’m hopeful that the results will be worth the effort. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, anybody willing to give a good home to a Mac/XL?
To most people working in publishing today, the name Quark is synonymous with the publishing process itself. The Denver-based company’s flagship product, QuarkXPress, set the standard for DTP and anyone looking for a job in the industry had to have at least a basic knowledge of the program. In recent years, increased competition from Adobe’s InDesign application coupled with high prices and a poor customer service record to erode QuarkXPress’s near-monopoly. A delayed appearance on Mac OS X and comments in 2002 by CEO Fred Ebrahimi served to further alienate Quark’s core user base (ever met someone in publishing who doesn’t use a Mac as their primary platform? Yeah, me either.)
So after years of losing market and mindshare, today’s announcement that Quark has been sold to a mergers & acquisitions company intent on selling off Quark’s IP portfolio should come as no surprise.
Those of us who have been playing around with computers for a bit longer than the average user probably remember Quark for more than just a powerful desktop publishing application. Here’s a quick look at some of the stuff they produced for my favorite 8-bit home computer, the Apple II (and III!). Don’t worry, the list is short.
Catalyst
Quark was an early proponent of DRM and implemented draconian copy protection schemes in their products. Catalyst was designed as a program selector to assist users in loading their expensive business products from diskette onto their new, even more expensive hard disk systems while retaining their copy protection. They were going for the best of both worlds here, and didn’t really attain either.
A user would first install Catalyst onto their shiny new $5,000 Apple ProFile 10 MB drive and then, through a series of convoluted steps, load various pieces of software into Catalyst. During the install, the user’s original diskettes would be disabled and permanently tied to the Catalyst diskette so that the originals would no longer boot and could only be reinstalled to the hard drive through the specific copy of Quark’s program to which they were tied. Quark whimsically called these disks, “Catalyzed”.
Additionally, if your newly enslaved applications required access to your printer, Catalyst had to be manually configured through a quick, 30-step process… Okay, maybe not so quick.
Catalyst itself was also copy protected and featured a serial number so that once “Catalyzed” your applications couldn’t be loaded by a copy with a different serial number.
Great stuff!
A version of Catalyst creatively called “Catalyst IIe” was eventually introduced for the Apple IIe and IIc.
Word Juggler
Word Juggler was a popular word processor for the Apple II platform for many years.
Quark’s word processor for the Apple II line was known for its ease of use, extensive feature set and simple learning curve and matched up well against AppleWriter, which served as Word Juggler’s main competition until the AppleWorks suite was released by Apple in 1984. On the Apple III, Word Juggler was the first, and for years only, commercially available word processor.
Word Juggler ad from InfoWorld, Nov 30, 1981
Word Juggler wasn’t immune to Quark’s copy protection schemes and customers had to install a hardware dongle in their Apple II to get the software to boot up at all.
Lurking silently in your Apple II, protecting Quark's IP.
And that pretty much wraps it up for Quark’s 8-bit Apple software offerings. They also sold a number of minor applications, most designed to enhance Word Juggler. Lexicheck was an 8,000-word spelling checker; Terminus provided telecommunications functionality; Mail List Manager Interface also integrated with Word Juggler as did TypeFace, giving you access to typesetting equipment, should you have it.
And so we bid a not-so-fond farewell to the corporate entity known as Quark, Inc.
Here are some pictures I took at the Exhibitor and Vendor fair this afternoon. I have more KansasFest pictures to post, but PicasaWeb’s horrible, stupid interface is making me rage… Maybe later.
Wow, not even a single guess on this one? Ah well.
Yes, the correct answer is Batman Returns (1992). The room full of unplugged Apple IIe’s was featured as Oswald Cobblepot’s mayoral election campaign headquarters.
Oswald Cobblepot for Mayor
So it’s time for another appearance of the Tuesday Trivia Contest. I doubt this one will be too difficult, but you never know. A correct guess wins you nothing tangible – just a “good job” and bragging rights amongst the other three readers of 6502Lane.
Like the previous Tuesday Trivias, you have a week to submit your guesses, either in the comments section below or by email. The first correct answer will end the contest.
I love that most of those Apple II's aren't even plugged in.
So, dear readers. Can you name that movie?
Update 7/14: Okay, here Hint #1: The woman is actress Jan Hooks.
