[HN Gopher] An Apple II Tale
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An Apple II Tale
Author : blakespot
Score : 129 points
Date : 2022-10-30 14:09 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bytecellar.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bytecellar.com)
| notRobot wrote:
| As someone who wasn't introduced to computers until the early
| 2000s, there's so much jargon in the story that I don't
| understand that it's a bit difficult for me to follow it.
|
| - \ _ ( tsu ) _ / -
| reaperducer wrote:
| Think if it as an opportunity to increase your knowledge,
| rather than to whine in public and be dismissive.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| They weren't rude or whiny, just stating their experience.
|
| This is a really weird thing to get angry about.
| notRobot wrote:
| I really wasn't whining. Just stating. It's interesting.
| benjaminpv wrote:
| I'm not terribly familiar with Apple ][s either but given the
| surrounding context it sounds like there was a computer and
| fixed disk that was sent to a junk sorting center. It was
| initially thought that the disk they were sent was bad (with
| the owner having written as much on it), but evidently there
| was a component or two that had gone bad.
|
| With the author's knowledge and some nearby spare parts he was
| able to revive the disk and computer and then started looking
| through its contents by dumping it to the screen (sorta like if
| you look at a raw hex dump from dd or a tool like Spinrite).
| From that he realized that the source code for that copying
| software was on the disk, the source code everyone theorized
| had been lost.
| Someone wrote:
| > but evidently there was a component or two that had gone
| bad
|
| The disk head got stuck because the head was 'glued' to the
| platter by stiction
| (https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?t=1051141,
| https://hardrecoveryman.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/release-
| of-... a fairly common issue in the day for certain brands of
| hard disk, and he did a quick and dirty 'repair', first by
| trying to get it unstuck through inertia, then by opening the
| enclosure and forcing the head to get unstuck.
|
| He likely did not use a clean room, so that repair probably
| was temporary.
|
| > and then started looking through its contents by dumping it
| to the screen (sorta like if you look at a raw hex dump from
| dd or a tool like Spinrite)
|
| They 'just' booted the disk and used the ProDOS CATALOG
| command (or its shorthand CAT) to list the files on the disk.
| blakespot wrote:
| I have added some potentially helpful links in the text, and a
| bit of explanation for what IRC is, in an effort to help the
| uninitiated. I should have done so earlier.
| chiph wrote:
| The important part is to know that Copy II Plus v8 source code
| was lost, and this guy Tony found it on an external hard drive
| that was in a scrap bin. He got the drive spinning working
| through some percussive maintenance (a common repair technique
| of the time - I've done it myself) and found it had the source
| code. His theory is that the drive had been held by the courts
| in probate as part of the author's estate when he died, and
| they threw it out afterwards (it wasn't claimed by an heir or
| creditor, maybe).
|
| The part about Print Shop not working off a hard drive is
| likely because a lot of software of the time was heavily copy
| protected. So he had disassembled it and changed the parts that
| restricted it to only running off a floppy. He had the skills
| to do this because he was the author of Copy II Plus, which
| could copy such protected software (ahem, make local backups).
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| For anyone else like me that was unaware, "gaylord" is a
| genericized term for a bulk box.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulk_box
| benjaminpv wrote:
| I was gonna say, from context it was clear it's some sorta
| container but I'd never heard it used that way.
| Aloha wrote:
| For years I'd thought it was a universal term - the blank
| looks on peoples faces when I used it, eventually clued me
| otherwise.
| ojhughes wrote:
| Also a common playground insult
| ok123456 wrote:
| It's also a, not so popular these days, first name.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| That's where the box got the name, but it was clear the
| gaylord in the story wasn't someone's name.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _It 's also a, not so popular these days, first name._
|
| It remains a very prominent surname in Nashville business.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaylord_Opryland_Resort_%26_.
| ..
| thought_alarm wrote:
| For those who aren't familiar with this particular chapter in
| Apple II history:
|
| - "Copy-2-Plus" was the ubiquitous disk copier/disk utility
| software for Apple II computers in the mid to late 80s. The
| makers of Copy-2-Plus, Central Point Software, had a distribution
| deal with VTech, makers of a popular legal Apple II clone, the
| "Laser 128".
|
| - The Laser 128 was a legal clone because because VTech provided
| a clean-room implementation of the Apple II firmware that was,
| for the most part, not super buggy. They also legally licensed
| Microsoft BASIC. The Laser became very popular in the late 80s as
| VTech was able to undercut Apple's pricing while extending the
| hardware in ways that Apple was unwilling to do.
|
| - At some point in the late 80s, the source code to Copy-2-Plus
| went missing. In order to keep the lights on, Central Point
| Software had to re-implement their premier product from scratch.
|
| - In the early 90s, a dead hard drive shows up in dumpster of a
| hardware recycler. This hard drive apparently contained a copy of
| the Copy-2-Plus source code that went missing in the late 80s, as
| well as the code for VTech's Laser 128 firmware and Microsoft
| BASIC.
|
| - By fluke, a worker at this recycler happens to notice something
| about this dead hard drive, fixes it, and discovers all of this
| missing and/or notable Apple II source code.
| bombcar wrote:
| The era of infinite git mirrors of everything has made people
| forget just how fragile the source code for so many things was
| (and still is!) - Microsoft has lost the source for a number of
| things that _still ship_ with Windows (as evidenced by them
| doing _binary patches_ at times.
|
| If you have _any_ old equipment, especially if it is of unknown
| origin, try hard to check it before you wreck it.
| [deleted]
| richardfey wrote:
| The source code has not been released though?
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Latching on here to continue the topic ...
|
| I wonder if someone might be able to hand it off to the
| archive.org folks.
| blakespot wrote:
| I've just heard a rumor that a very capable, active developer
| in the Apple II community was handed the source code at some
| point. That would be nice.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Yeah I was really hoping there'd be a link at the bottom
| [deleted]
| notamy wrote:
| Loading quite slow for me, so just in case:
| https://archive.ph/AuO4O
| LocalH wrote:
| Preservation is a fascinating thing
| thewebcount wrote:
| Can someone who did professional development on the Apple II at
| the time comment on what it was like? I was doing x86
| DOS/Win/Unix development in the mid 90s for a Fortune 500
| company, and even there we used some janky home-grown version
| control system that, if I recall correctly, required us to ftp
| our changes to some server somewhere. I know Apple had
| Projector[0] for Mac development with MPW (Macintosh Programmer's
| Workshop[1]). Was there any sort of source control for the Apple
| II?
|
| I have to admit it's somewhat ironic that a company that made
| disk copying software didn't have a backup copy of their source
| code.
|
| [0]
| http://preserve.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.14/14.06/Ve...
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Programmer's_Worksho...
| didgetmaster wrote:
| I wrote my very first program using BASIC on an Apple II. My
| high school in Oregon bought two of them in 1979 (one for the
| math dept. and one for the business dept.) and I was one of the
| few students who had a class in both classrooms during the day.
| The teachers would let us play on them after finishing our
| regular class assignments.
|
| Neither one had a hard drive so we had to store all our code on
| a 5 1/4" floppy. The teachers didn't know much of anything
| about programming, so us students basically self-taught
| ourselves how to do simple programming on them using the manual
| and stuff we read about in magazines.
| teddyh wrote:
| jonathanoliver wrote:
| Whenever these tales arise, I can't help but read them. I know
| that they're not particularly relevant to anything I do or even
| have done. Even so, it's like watching an archeological dig.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2022-10-30 23:00 UTC)