Break Into Chat

Josh Renaud’s blog about BBS history, retro computing and technology reminiscences.

  • test-mem

    testing members only

  • Unearthed: My old OASIS BBS Atari floppy disk

    Unearthed: My old OASIS BBS Atari floppy disk

    For the last few years, I’ve been researching and imaging other people’s old disks — but recently someone turned the tables and salvaged one of mine! Let me tell you the story.

  • Slides yield glimpses of Kirschen’s lost “Magic Harp” software

    Slides yield glimpses of Kirschen’s lost “Magic Harp” software

    Yaakov Kirschen and his wife, Sali Ariel, are in the process of downsizing and moving to a new home in Israel. Sali has been hard at work, sifting through decades of collected belongings in preparation. She found a bunch of things related to Kirschen’s 1980s software development firm, LKP Ltd., and sent them to me…

  • Talking about Kirschen’s software at Arch Reactor

    Talking about Kirschen’s software at Arch Reactor

    This Sunday I spoke about my retrocomputing hobby and digital preservation work at Arch Reactor, a hackerspace/makerspace in St. Louis. I was honored to be invited, and I had a blast sharing some of the things I’ve learned as I researched (and rescued) the lost 1980s software of Ya’akov Kirschen. I recorded the talk, and…

  • Unearthed: Kirschen’s “Music Creator” for IBM PC

    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…

  • Unearthed: Kirschen’s Atari ST projects

    Unearthed: Kirschen’s Atari ST projects

    The artificial personalities “Murray” and “Mom” were among the very first entertainment offerings for the Atari ST computer. They were also the first products released by Israeli cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen’s new “LKP, Ltd.” software studio in Israel, in partnership with his American firm, “Just For You, Inc.” “Murray and Me” (monochrome, 1985) “Murray and Me”…



Archives

Categories