Imagesource: http://ascii.textfiles.com/

The archive - archive.org - is one of the best (if not the best) resources when it comes to finding software and games for the platforms of our past. But far too little is learned about those, who do the work of preserving these sometimes rarely found artifacts of our digital hisitory. And preserving is in most cases not simply a combination of inserting a disk / copying files / creating an archive and uploading to some server.

No. Often the issue of copy protection comes into play, and there are only a few, who do the very work to undermine it in a mostly invisible way.

Jason Scott Sadofsky aka @textfiles has dedicated himself to exactly this topic, and looked at two collections of Apple ][ software from 4am. His wonderful post not only goes into detail about the gems to be discovered. No, he also teaches us, that there are quite different ways to archive an original disk for the Apple ][ - especially regarding copy protection.

And if you are already running out of patience, take a direct look at the 4am Library, or the wozaday Collection, both fueled and maintained by 4am.

As usual, every piece of software can be run directly in the browser thanks to the emulator. (I wonder if we will ever be able to load current pearls of modern software culture in the browser in the same way?)

Love the Apple ][? Don't miss!