Category: IBM PC
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ANSI art and webcomics, Part 2: BBSes and the artscene
This is the second part of a multi-part series. Both Eerie and Don Lokke emerged from opposite ends of the ANSI art spectrum. But … what is “ANSI art”? Before we can profile the two main subjects of this series or explore their work, it’ll be important to understand the BBSing subculture of the early…
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ANSI art and webcomics, Part 1: Filling in the blanks
This is the first part of a multi-part series. Does ANSI art have a place in the history of webcomics? One of the first chroniclers of webcomics history thought so. In the first chapter of his 2006 book, “A History of Webcomics,” T Campbell tackled the “prehistory” of webcomics by discussing ARPAnet, ASCII art, and…
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Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 6: Legacy
This is the sixth part of a multi-part series. The Instant Graphics and Sound format reached its zenith in September 1991 when artist Steve Turnbull published two psychedelic animations on a messageboard on the CrossNet network for Atari ST bulletin boards. Both were built around large triangles: a pyramid in one, a volcano in the…
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Try Kirschen’s games and software on the Internet Archive
It’s been a little over a year since I began publishing the Kirschen software collection, and during that time I have also worked to upload Kirschen’s software to the Internet Archive and make it playable in the browser. The entire collection is tagged “kirschen-software” to make it easier to find. The emulation works well for…
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Unearthed: Kirschen’s “Music Creator” for IBM PC
Decades before the debut of DALL-E, Israeli cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen was developing an “artificial creativity” system to let computers compose their own music, by extracting components of existing songs and combining them in new ways. The software was originally written for the Amiga, but business changes led them to abandon that platform and port the…
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Introducing our first special collection: Door World Magazine
Today I’m adding a new section of special collections to Break Into Chat. These are going to be small, targeted collections unique to this website. The first such collection is Door World Magazine, a monthly online magazine about BBS door games, which was published from 1995-96 by RoAnn Vecchia and Dave Wendling of the N.U.G.I.…
