Over a year ago, someone uploaded to ftp.funet.fi some educational
software that was supposed to be for the PET. I finally went through this
bunch and found some educational games that were for the C64 only. Most
programs were for the PET, as indicated by the uploader (who remained
anonymous).
Among the files, there was a copy of Superscript that does not seem to
work. If I interpreted the code in the 4040 disk image correctly, it
expects to find a 23,READ ERROR,30,15 (I'm not sure about the sector
number). Disabling the comparisons did not have the desired effect; maybe
this software has also ROM protection? Does anyone know? Or could
someone compose a list of various copy protection ROMs for the PET?
I also finally had a look at the *.lha files Olaf Seibert uploaded in
early 1995. I decided to reorganize them as .lnx.gz files in various
subdirectories. Why gzipped Lynx? Well, there is a Lynx creator and
dissolver for the PET now, thanks to Ken Ross, and files in Lynx archives
can contain any valid C= file name characters, including '/'. Why
gzipped? I'm hoping that some day, Gunzip64 would have an option for
dissolving .lnx.gz files. Until then, the files can be decompressed on
the system that is used to access the FUNET file archive.
I must say that I was truly impressed by the level of the educational
software. It ranged from elementary school to advanced high school. In
the Dutch "Onderwijs" collection, there were programs that did basic
symbolic derivation and integration, in CBM BASIC V2! It at least
appeared to construct some sort of a parse tree of the formula. I wonder
if it was done by simulating pointers with arrays.
There are still some uploads I haven't processed: most of the PET software
uploaded by Ken Ross, some CD-ROMs I've received from various sources, and
some C64 and C128 files I downloaded from somewhere in 1997 or 1998. I
can't make any promises when I've sorted all those files, but I certainly
will at some time.
Marko
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