Tag: digital preservation
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Digging in to “Nosh Kosh,” the Jewish Pac-Man clone
In 2022, I published Nosh Kosh — a Jewish spin on Pac-Man for the Apple II — as part of the Kirschen software collection that I rescued from cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen’s floppy disks. Since then, I have played “Nosh Kosh” on and off, but inexplicably I have never been able to get past the first…
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Unearthed: Kirschen’s “Magic Harp” for Commodore Amiga
When I published the original four-part “Bringing dry bones back to life” series where I shared 10 pieces of previously-lost computer programs developed by Yaakov Kirschen, I couldn’t include “Magic Harp,” his original Amiga-based “artificial creativity” music composing software. At the time, Kirschen’s wife, Sali Ariel, believed that it was likely gone forever, because she…
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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.
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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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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”…
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Unearthed: Kirschen’s independent Apple II projects
Is “Doc Possum” a lost Learning Company game? After the end of Yaakov Kirschen’s partnership with the Gesher organization, he had an idea for a secular educational game for the Apple II, which he pitched to The Learning Company. Around the same time he also made a few independent demos and experimental software. “You and…
