17/06/2017: 8-bit Eduware on 32meg Disk Image

With the recent addition of so many 8-bit educational titles (see the Pelican / Toucan archives), I've decided to finish up a ‘beta' version of a 32meg image including nothing but 8-bit eduwares...some of which run correctly from a 'hard drive' or any large ProDOS volume. Others, not so much.

 8-bit Eduware (A self-booting collation of 8-bit educational software, ~8.3meg)

 8-bit Creative (A self-booting collation of 8-bit creative software, ~10.1meg)

Why am I particularly obsessed with hard drive installable software? Well, if ever there was going to be a museum that allowed people to use Apple II's to see what it's really like to use one, I feel having a solid state drive is a good compromise - yes, it does remove the experience of using real 5.25" and 3.5" floppy disks (but at the same time, putting less wear on these mediums and the drives that read and write to them), but it will provide (after a three finger salute reboot if a program doesn't offer a ‘quit' option) a more intuitive and familiar way of presenting a menu to select which program to load next. Also, this method should be much faster than traditional media, allowing more time to actually explore the software and less time waiting for things to load. Using 3.5" disk based 8-bit software is a good base to do this as the software has been designed to run the program and its data from a single volume, where as many 5.25" disks ask for different disks – this may simplify the process of getting as many working titles onto a ProDOS mass storage volume.

 

 

This 32meg image self boots and runs Sneeze v2.2 by Karl Bunker, a good program launcher (and then some, with some file management abilities and allowing you to read text files and view graphic files). 8-bit eduware is allocated across folders representing different educational categories. I've used the IIGS utility Universe Master to alphabetise the order of the files in every directory, which should help find what you're looking for more quickly if you keep this in mind.

The following is a list of what does and doesn't work on this 32meg ProDOS volume. It's possible that many of these titles could work if, when sector editing, the hard path looking for the program's data is changed to a file path for this 32meg volume. HOWEVER, this crude method (the only way which I am capable) might be limited by the already large number of characters in the volume name and then the name of a sub directory.

I encourage anyone with more programming and sector editing skills than I to see if you can correct any of the following:

40,000 Selected Words - Seems to work great
Alge Blaster - The only executable is SHELL.SYS...which takes you to a shell.
Alge Blaster Plus - Asks for original disk to be inserted after you enter your name
Algebra Shop - Seems to work perfectly
Animal Watch Whales - Explore Version date display - then hangs
Atlas Explorer - Hangs after launch
Banner Books Across America - Works perfectly
Fairy Tales Big Book Maker - Works perfectly
Children's Writing & Publishing Center - ‘*** UNABLE TO FIND STARTUP ***' error message, 
Classmate - Asks for original disk. Now works from a hard drive, however is still looking for data on floppy disks.
Destination Mars - Works great
Electric Crayon - All work great
Explore Australia - Displays a crack date but then hangs
Gertrude's Secrets - works great with v2.3
Hollywood Squares - Works perfectly
Homeworker - Asks for original disk
Joshua's Reading Machine - Works perfectly
Magic Slate II - asks for original disk
Magic Spells - now includes v2.3, which works from mass storage volumes.
Math and Me - Works great!
Math Blaster - Fails after launching the BASIC startup program
Math Blaster Mystery - From System 6, works great with v1.3! ProDOS 8 - quits immediately! Replaced with a fresh crack by LoGO – now works from both ProDOS 8 and GS/OS now! However it doesn't quit back to GS/OS! Still, this is the better version so far.
Math Blaster Plus - Asks for original disk (may also require patch for record keeping to maintain students' progress)
Math Rabbit - Works perfectly
Math Shop - ‘CHECK YOUR DISK DRIVE' error message
Math Shop Fractions & Decimals - ‘CHECK YOUR DISK DRIVE' error message
Monsters & Make Believe - Works perfectly
Nature Park Adventure - Seems to work fine
Perfect Career - Error! Disk #2 not found message
Playroom, The - Works fine from ProDOS 8, but hangs when run from System 6.
Pow Zap Kerplunk Comic Book Maker - Works perfectly
Read n Roll - Works with v1.1, HOWEVER, record keeping is still looking for the floppy disk - patch required to save students' progress
Reading & Writing with the Boars - runs but with graphic glitches
Reading and Me - Runs perfectly!
Reading Team People and Places - Asks for original disk to be inserted after you enter your name
Report Card - Works from GS/OS, but I haven't found how to make it work from Sneeze.
Return of the Dinosaurs - Hangs on HGR screen ‘Please wait'. Works only from the root directory!
Scholastic Slide Shop - Works great! (essentially Powerpoint for the 8-bit Apple II!)
Sensible Grammar - Seems to work great
Sensible Speller - Seems to work great
Sesame Street Learning Library Volume 1 - Seems to work great
Speed Reader II - Fails after launching the BASIC startup program
Spell It - Fails after launching the BASIC startup program
Spell It Plus - Works perfectly!
Story Starters Science - Works perfectly!
Story Starters Social Studies - Works perfectly!
Studymate - Seems to work perfectly
Super Print - Works perfectly
Super Print II - Works perfectly
Super Story Tree - Works perfectly
The Treehouse - Works perfectly
The Whole Neighbourhood - Works perfectly
Think Quick - v1.4 works with ProDOS 8, but doesn't with System 6
Vocabulary Team Science & Health - Asks for original disk to be inserted
Where in Europe is Carmen? ‘Error 45 on file 00' error then hang
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? ‘Error 45 on file FF' error then hang
Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? - Crashes to monitor
Where is Carmen Sandiego in America's Past? - Works great, but this isn't cracked - you can play 1 case before the game then asks for a word look-up in the manual.
Word Attack - Fails after launching the BASIC startup program
Word Attack Plus - Asks for original disk to be inserted after you enter your name. Updated with version 1.2.
Word Attack Plus French - Asks for original disk to be inserted after you enter your name
Word Attack Plus Spanish - Asks for original disk to be inserted after you enter your name
Writer Rabbit - Doesn't work. According to the documentation the Learning Company released regarding newer versions of their classic eduware, there isn't a newer official version that will support hard drive installation. it will require a hack.
Your School Day - Works fine

 

With recent 8-bit 32meg disk images being done by John M Holmes Jnr and Jason Kersten on the Apple II Enthusiasts group on Facebook, Jason did a particularly good job using Prosel-8 to make a menu selection screen. I think I'll adopt this approach instead of using Sneeze for future revisions of this 32meg image of 8-bit educational software, as it's much more user friendly and efficient to loading each of the programs, not to mention that if the only to fix some programs is changing the hard path, an edited menu system can hide the ugly folder naming that would be required for hard path changes.

For those who have been in close contact with me, my wife and I have just had our second child and it's getting increasingly challenging to find time for the Apple II. For the meantime though, I'll get this 'beta' version out there so all can have a play with it, and if you're inclined 'fix' some of the programs listed above that aren't currently working on this volume.

UPDATE: 18/6/2017 – qkumba has already been able to hack Alge Blaster Plus! to work from a large ProDOS volume! The disk image has been updated with the newer version.

 

 

UPDATE: 19/6/2017 – qkumba has now patched both Explore Australia and Whale Watch and they now work from the 32meg image! Marco Verpelli has also done great initial work – Where in Europe is Carmen Sandiego is now playable from any directory, and we've now also got the rare ProDOS based version of Where in the U.S.A is Carmen Sandiego – now fully working from any large ProDOS volume. Great work! There will be more to come!

UPDATE: 28/6/2017 – qkumba and Marco have been making great strides, meeting each new challenge with aplomb! Marco's got the entire 8-bit Carmen Sandiego series working from a hard drive (with thanks from Antoine Vignau for providing a disk image of the ultra rare Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego on 3.5" disk). But it's turned out it's not as simple as that – additional patches had to made to ensure saved games 'stick' after a restart, that references to saving games to floppy drives are removed, and there are still vestiges of each program asking for manual word look-up after the first case is solved, although entering anything will work. But it's awesome to play each of these influential titles from a single volume. For an encore, Marco's also made Math Shop and Math Shop Fractions and Decimals work.

qkumba's fixed Whale Watch and Explore Australia, and they required more than simply running from a hard drive too, requiring additional patches to load and save data after editing the built in stories. This has also led to adding additional 'Explore' titles, which have only been found in 5.25" format, but run beautifully from a large ProDOS volume including Rosie the Counting Rabbit, A Brand New View and What Makes a Dinosaur Sore? There are still many more in the Explore series to be found, so please archive them if they're on 5.25" or 3.5" disk – they are currently unpreserved. Additionally, qkumba's also made the Perfect Career and Classmate work from a hard drive, as well as the original Math Blaster and Spell It!

UPDATE: 8/7/2017 – I checked if there were other Pelican / Queue titles that had been archived on 5.25" disk to add to this collection and sure enough, there are: Monstrous Monsters, Bulletin Board Maker - City and Country, Bulletin Board Maker - Your Neighborhood and Banner Books - All Along The Alphabet - all thanks to 4am. Copying their application files to a folder created for each title, then creating a new folder in each called 'Pelican.Art' and copying all the artwork files from the 3 other 5.25" floppy disk images seemed to be doing the job of the single volume 3.5" disk release...although I also copied the 'DISK.INFO' file from other 3.5" disk releases to replace the one found on the first 5.25" disk image for each of these titles. Then they work great from a hard drive, not expecting files to come from the 5.25" disk drive.

In reviewing everything done for this 8-bit 32meg Eduware disk image, I found I forgot to copy over the 3.5" disk version of the original Word Attack – that's on the 32 meg image now, but still requires a patch to make it work from a hard drive, as well as look locally in its folder for additional files from separately released data disks. The same patch still needs to be done for all the original Davidson releases - Math Blaster, Spell It!, and Speed Reader II.

I also realised I forgot to copy over Read 'n Roll, so I did that from the v1.1 800k disk version 4am archived. Conveniently, it works from a large ProDOS volume straight away, HOWEVER, further testing revealed that record keeping is still looking to load/save from a floppy drive, so a patch will be required to provide full functionality to the game. This in turn also made me realise that I forgot to copy over Reading Team People and Places and Team Vocabulary Health & Science to the 32meg volume and In doing so, we've now run out of disk space (Team Vocab is too large to fit). Apart from shaving 3k from the Icons file, I'm out of ideas of saving more space on this volume for more programs!

One other minor note was that I tried 4am's crack of Math Blaster Plus! (a rather definitive educational title for the Apple II) to replace the version previously on the 32meg image that would quit back to the launcher almost immediately. The 4am crack will now load the 'fake' desktop of Math Blaster Plus, but now a dialogue appears asking to insert the floppy disk. At least that's progress. Old version must have been corrupted somehow.

Also, Report Card works fine from GS/OS now, but for the life of me, I can't figure out how to make it run from ProDOS 8 and Sneeze.

UPDATE: 4/8/2017: I forgot to mention, Report Card has been working fine now – I forgot to update its status here. I also forgot to copy a file over to the 32meg image, ummm, the cause of it not working (thanks for letting me know Marco!). I don't know how parents function with 3 children – 2 is enough!

UPDATE: 5/8/2017: As the Eduware volume has now surpassed its 32 meg capacity, I've taken the largest category (in terms of file size) and spun it off into another 32 meg ProDOS volume (8-bit Creative) and added not only educational creative software, but all-round creative software as well. Reason being is that 4am recently cracked some nice 'new' ProDOS 8 based double-hi res eduware that's never been cracked before (Journey to the Age of Dinosaurs - North America and Europe & Asia) and Marco has snapped up the opportunity to get these newly discovered wares working from a large ProDOS volume. He notes that despite the time period these were released (1990) they STILL didn't think to make them work from hard drives! Anyways, there's more edu software to run from a hard drive, so we're now better prepared for it! Speaking of which, I remembered that Donald's Alphabet Chase, an eduware on 5.25" disk used ProDOS thanks to Jeremy Barr Hyde's recent full archive of the title. It's cracked, so what's the harm in trying to copy it to the Eduware volume to see if it runs from there? It asks for a look-up sheet to correctly number a pose of Donald Duck after the title screen, but you can enter any number and it will accept it...and voila! It works from a hard drive! Feel free to write in with any ProDOS 8 based eduware titles that you know of so we can trial them running from a hard drive. Stay tuned, more to come.

 

 

UPDATE 19/8/2017: Marco has made the rather excellent ‘The Weather Machine' by National Geographic (a 4am crack) work from a hard drive, although there are still minor quibbles like the program asking to flip the disk, and the program making references to files that aren't there, but it's fully useable regardless.

Given in the last update I split the creative eduware into its own 32meg volume called ‘Creative', that freed up a lot of Space on ‘Eduware'. How could I fill that space on both volumes when we've already collected every ProDOS 8 compatible 8-bit eduware from 3.5"? Look for more ProDOS 8 based titles on 5.25" disk, like Donald's Alphabet Chase, I guess. But searching through ALL the educational archives on Asimov would take a LONG time...and then I remembered, 4am wrote very nicely descriptive and often humourous notes for his cracks...including whether the format was custom, DOS 3.3 or...ProDOS. Using Spotlight on macOS to find mentions of ProDOS across everything I'd downloaded from Asimov, I found the following titles.

The following is a log of how they did or didn't work by copying files to the ‘Eduware' or ‘Creative' volumes, and where within a sub directory. For those titles that didn't, other brave souls may step in to help getting them working. They are grouped by publisher, which reveals some trends. For example, any Electric Crayon title will run from a hard drive if it's been cracked, no modification required (are there any more in this series to be archived?). Gameco Industries ProDOS based titles, even spread across two 5.25" disks, all worked too. Sunburst titles are mixed - some work, others not:

Sesame Street Crayon Letters For You (4am crack). Simply copied to hard drive - no additional modification needed to run from a large ProDOS volume. Sorted into folder with other Electric Crayon titles. Copied to ‘Creative/Electric.Crayon' volume and folder.

Sesame Street Crayon Opposites Attract (4am crack). Simply copied to hard drive - no additional modification needed to run from a large ProDOS volume. Sorted into folder with other Electric Crayon titles. Copied to ‘Creative/Electric.Crayon' volume and folder.

Sesame Street Crayon Numbers Count (Clean crack) Copied to hard drive - no additional modification needed to run from a large ProDOS volume. Sorted into folder with other Electric Crayon titles. Copied to ‘Creative/Electric.Crayon' volume and folder.

MuppetVille (4am crack) by Sunburst. Copied to hard drive - no additional modification needed to run from a large ProDOS volume. Copied to ‘Eduware/Math' folder.

Muppet Slate (4am crack) by Sunburst. Copied to hard drive - no additional modification needed to run from a large ProDOS volume. I included disk 2 as a folder named the same as disk 2 inside the folder with the application and it seems to find the two sample stories straight away! Does this require a special keyboard provided with the boxed software however? Copied to ‘Eduware/Read.n.Write' folder.

Muppet Word Book by Sunburst. Cracked by 4am and copied to hard drive - no additional modification needed to run from a large ProDOS volume. I included disk 2 as a folder inside the folder with the application and it seems to find the two sample stories straight away! Copied to ‘Eduware/Read.n.Write' folder.

Curious George in Outer Space by DLM (4am crack). Copied disk 1 to a folder and combined files from disk 2 - works great! Copied to ‘Eduware/Curious.George/In.Outer.Space'

Curious George Visits the Library by DLM (4am crack). Copied disk 1 to a folder and combined files from disk 2 - works great! Copied to ‘Eduware/Curious.George/Visits.Library'

Curious George Goes Shopping by DLM (4am crack). Copied disk 1 to a folder and combined files from disk 2 - works great! Copied to ‘Eduware/Curious.George/Goes.Shopping'

Spy's Adventures

Spy's Adventures (North America) (South America) (Europe) - none work (crash to monitor after launching), but presumably one fix will work for all three (and weren't there more in the series, like Asia and the Pacific?) Non-4am cracks used as they are newer versions going by file dates. Copied to ‘Eduware/Not.Working' folder.

Troll First Start Writing Program (4am crack) Copied to ‘Read.n.Write/Troll.Writer' folder.

Scholastic Homework Writer (4am crack) runs from hard drive, but anything to do with requesting files is always looking for specific 5.25" floppy disks. Copied to ‘Eduware/Not.Working' folder.

Memory Building Blocks (Sunburst) freezes on a screen saying ‘X - Touch Here'. Some weird touch screen support that Sweet 16 can't emulate? Copied to ‘Eduware/Not.Working' folder.

The Boars' Store (Pelican) Copied contents of both disks to hard drive. Asks for disk 2 after main menu, but pressing return continues the game on. Copied to ‘Eduware/Math/Boars.Store'

Troll Printmaker - Holiday Fun (4am crack). Copied both contents together. While the program loads fine, it's expecting data to be found on a 5.25" disk, so not fully working. Copied to ‘Eduware/Not.Working' folder.

Tiger's Tales by Sunburst. Cracked by 4am and copied to hard drive - no additional modification needed to run from a large ProDOS volume. Copied to ‘Eduware/Read.n.Write' folder.

Type to Learn by Sunburst. Cracked by 4am crack. Copied both disks to separate folders. Launched BASIC program STARTUP from disk 1. Crashed to blank screen.Copied to ‘Eduware/Not.Working/QWERTY1' and ‘QWERTY2' folders.

Royal Rules rev 2 by Sunburst. Cracked by 4am crack. Copied both disks to separate folders. Launched BASIC program STARTUP from disk 1. Game plays, but will eventually ask for the program disk and you can't continue. Copied to ‘Eduware/Not.Working' folder.

Teddy and Iggy by Sunburst. Cracked by 4am crack. Copied contents to folder on hard drive but quits back to GS/OS Finder immediately. Runs fine from the 5.25" disk from GS/OS, so must immediately be looking for support files in slot 6, drive 1. Curiously, the original disk image is named ‘TEDDYIGGY5.25', almost is if a 3.5" disk version might be available to name it so specifically that way. Hopefully, a redirect to support files can be made. Copied to ‘Eduware/Not.Working' folder.

Subtract with Balancing Bear (4am crack) by Sunburst. Copied to hard drive - no additional modification needed to run from a large ProDOS volume. Copied to ‘Eduware/Math' folder.

Simon Says (4am crack) by Sunburst. Copied to hard drive - no additional modification needed to run from a large ProDOS volume. Copied to ‘Eduware/Math' folder.

Regrouping 1989 (4am crack) by Sunburst. Copied both disks to separate folders. Launched BASIC program STARTUP. Crashed to blank screen after displaying Sunburst title screen. Copied to ‘Eduware/Not.Working' folder.

Algernon (4am crack) by Sunburst. Copied to hard drive - running STARTUP BASIC program no additional modification needed to run from a large ProDOS volume. Copied to ‘Eduware/Computer.Skills' folder.

Bounce (4am crack) by Sunburst. Copied to hard drive - running LOADER.SYSTEM program no additional modification needed to run from a large ProDOS volume. Copied to ‘Eduware/Math' folder. Crashes if you quit to run another program, but that's no real problem given most of these titles restart the computer rather than quit to a launching application.

Creativity, Unlimited by Sunburst (4am crack) Copied contents of both disks to same folder, as well as keeping disk two contents in a folder of the same as the disk it came from. Neither way of storing files from both disks ensured the program launched successfully. Starburst logo appears very briefly, then the screen is full of ‘2's. Tried alternate display mode on IIGS, which is known to fix this display of a screen full of ‘2', which revealed different gibberish that wasn't any more helpful (to me).

End Punctuation by Gamco Industries, Inc. (4am crack) Copied disk 1 to it's own named folder (End.Punctuation). Copied data files from disk 2 into the ‘G128' folder. Voila! Game works fine from a hard drive! Copied to ‘Eduware/Read.n.Write' folder.

Essential Punctuation by Gamco Industries, Inc. (4am crack) Copied disk 1 to it's own named folder (Essen.Punctu8n). Copied data files from disk 2 into the ‘G156' folder. Game works fine from a hard drive! Copied to ‘Eduware/Read.n.Write' folder.

Eureka - Following Directions Level B (4am crack) by Gamco Industries, Inc. (4am crack) Copied disk 1 to it's own named folder (Essen.Punctu8n). Copied data files from disk 2 into the ‘G175' folder. Game works fine from a hard drive! Copied to ‘Eduware/Read.n.Write' folder.

Math Football (4am crack) by Gamco Industries, Inc. Copied disk 1 to it's own named folder (Math.Football). Copied data files from disk 2 into the ‘G137' folder. Game works fine from a hard drive! Copied to ‘Eduware/Math' folder.

Math Leapfrog (4am crack) by Gamco Industries, Inc. Copied disk 1 to it's own named folder (Math.LeapFrog). Copied data files from disk 2 into the ‘G134' folder. Game works from a hard drive! Copied to ‘Eduware/Math' folder.

Mission Control Word Games - Homonyms, Antonyms, and Synonyms v4.1.6 (4am crack) by Gamco Industries, Inc. Copied disk 1 to it's own named folder (MC.Word.Games). Copied data files from disk 2 into the ‘G132' folder. Game works from a hard drive! Copied to ‘Eduware/Read.Write' folder.

The Word Problem Game Show (4am crack) by Gamco Industries, Inc. Copied disk 1 to it's own named folder (WrdProbGameShow). Copied data files from disk 2 into the ‘G183' folder. Game works from a hard drive! Copied to ‘Eduware/Math' folder.

Reading Magic Library - Jack in the Beanstalk (4am crack) WORKS great! Copied contents of both disks into the one folder and voila! Moved to ‘Eduware/Read.Write'

Five in a Row - Addition and Subtraction by Critical Thinking Press (4am crack). Can copy over contents of both disks, but there's no obvious executable to run from GS/OS or ProDOS 8. There is a ‘STARTUP' file, but it's a binary file. Added to ‘Not.Working' folder.

Five in a Row - Division by Critical Thinking Press (4am crack). Can copy over contents of both disks, but there's no obvious executable to run from GS/OS or ProDOS 8. There is a ‘STARTUP' file, but it's a binary file. Added to ‘Not.Working' folder.

Force and Motion by Queue, Inc. (4am crack). Tried copying over everything from both disks, as well as keeping disk two contents in a folder of the same as the disk it came from. The program gets to the menu, and even the first menu selection and another gets you into an intro description of physicals, but when an example of motion is shown (presumably an animation) it crashes. Selecting the last item from the main menu crashes also - I assume it's looking for data files from the second disk and can't find them.

Grizzly Bears by Audubon (4am crack). Copied all files into a single folder, and amazingly, works fine. Copied to ‘Eduware/Science' folder. Unfortuntaely, Audubon Whales (LoGo crack) does not work, however.

 

 

UPDATE 13/9/17: Added DLM Math Fluency – Division Facts to the 'Math' folder. It seems to work fine, but you setup the disk for individual students for ongoing progress of their math learnings. Teacher utility included as well, but not tested to see if it's able to use the student data.

Replaced Math Blaster Mystery with a fresh crack from Antoine (LoGo). It's better, as it now runs if you've booted from ProDOS 8 or GS/OS (4am's crack didn't work from ProDOS 8 for some reason) but this version doesn't quit back to GS/OS properly and hangs! Still, this is the better version so far.

UPDATE 18/2/18: Added another newly found Explore-a-Story title Where Did My Toothbrush Go? Thanks to Foone for coming across an original copy and 4am for a crack. I was able to get it working for hard drive by copying the 'Story.System' and 'Disk' files from Explore Australia, a previous hack done to those files by qkumba. Older Explore-a-Story title, Rosie the Counting Rabbit, didn't work when duplicating its 'Story.System' and 'Disk' files so there's a difference between older and newer titles in this series where hacks do and don't work. As always with Explore-a-Story titles, it's difficult to categorise them – I've placed this in Read.Write, for lack of anything better.

UPDATE 24/3/18: Dagen Brock reminded me of a curious site that I hadn't been to in a while: www.cvxmelody.net/AppleUsersGroupSydneyAppleIIDiskCollection.htm. It's a mysterious collection of unique disk images (this is where I found out about the amazing 8-bit Apple II Powerpoint usurper Scholastic Slide Show) and documented experiences and experimentations with Apple IIs and early Macs, but it now includes two titles I was very keen to archive Explore-a-Science Dinosaur Construction Kit and Explore-a-Story Quasar Kids. Using qkumba's previously modded files of Rosie the Counting Rabbit's 'Story.System', 'Disk' and 'Setup' files, replacing those within both of these titles allowed hard drive installation and successful opening of different 'stories' from a hard drive as well. Interesting that they used the older Rosie circumventions rather than the newer ones used for Explore Australia and more recent Learningway titles. Dinosaur Construction Kit is not quite as good as I imagined based on the Explore-a-Science Whales program, for which I rather loved how you could break down a whale's anatomy from skin, muscle, to bone, but Dinosaur Construction Kit offers a lot, however, you'd need to refer to what was included in the box to make the most out of it, similar to other Learning Ways titles. At first, it appears it only offers a 2 page presentation, but you need to access the iconic menu from the top left and corner and from the 5.25" disk icon, open the 'T REX' file for the main feature. Likewise, Quasar Kids has best context when loading the 'KIDS TEXT' file, which adds narration to the story. Really, it's a library set of graphics and animation that kids can use to create their own trippy space themed stories. These titles have been in the Science folder and Read.Write folder, respectively.

Also on the cvxmelody site, I found another ProDOS 8 based program called Field Trip to the Rainforest, which includes nice double hi-res graphics and point and click interface, although it's not part of Learningways series. I tried piecing the three 5.25" together quickly, but unfortunately, although the program initially runs from a hard drive, it stops with an error when it can't locate the necessary data it expects from the 2nd and/or 3rd data disks. I've placed this program in a folder called 'Rainforest' in the 'Not.Working' folder. I hope someone can make it work from a hard drive – it looks like another of those ignored and under-appreciated double hi-res life sciences programs.

There are no contact details on the cvx Melody site, but I left a message on one of their YouTube videos. I hope they get in touch.

UPDATE 20/6/18: CVXMelody has since archived four more Explore-a-Story titles! We now have 5.25" disk images for Just Around The Block, The Bald-Headed Chicken, Not Too Messy, Not Too Neat & The Best Bubble-Blower. However, The Bald-Headed Eagle and Not Too Messy, Not Too Neat I haven't been able to make hard drive installable, even after trying to copy the Story.System, Setup and Disk files from all of the other Explore titles, so I've placed them into the 'Not.Working' folder. Hopefully qkumba can check these out later on. Interestingly, CVXMelody ran each title through Passport and it reported that none of these had any copy protection. The hard drive happy titles Just Around the Block and the Best Bubble Blower are in the Read.Write folder (for lack of a better place).

 

 

UPDATE 13/1/19: Added qkumba's recent ProDOS update for Robot Oddyssey version 2.0. It's in the Math folder and works fine when run from System 6.

UPDATE 18/2/19: Randomly came across Muppet Math and it runs from ProDOS. Copying it to the Eduware volume, it works fine from System 6. It's in the /Math folder. Also added "MuppetAdventure" on the root directory, fixed the BASIC program to the new prefix to run in from the Eduware volume and folder its in, but the game doesn't seem to work, but I've only tested it on Sweet 16 so far. It works fine on a real ROM3 IIGS.

UPDATE 16/4/19: I love what my fellow Australian Jeremy Barr-Hyde turns up and archives (these days in the new Woz format) in regards to Apple II software. Amongst the ProDOS based titles, he's archived Learningways Learn About Insects, which uses the Explore-a-Story engine (a later version that includes some nicer ways to interact with content faster) and lo and behold this 1991 title works on a hard drive without any modification! That's what I like to see! Also working is Science Explorers Skeletons by Scholastic (although this title doesn't work with the Sweet 16 emulator). Both have been placed in the Science folder. Also ProDOS based, Outback Explorers is Australia's answer to the Oregon Trail, although copying it to a hard drive, it asks for a physical disk location as soon as you start to play. I haven't had time (yet) to look any deeper to see if it can get working from a hard drive.

UPDATE 9/6/2019: Thanks to a new archive from Antoine, Rocky's Boots v4.1 replaces the older USO ProDOS conversion. This should be the last known version of the program officially released by the Learning Company. As such, it had hard drive support built-in.

UPDATE 14/7/2019: Antoine has made a disk image and cracked Magic Spells v2.3 (previously only v2.2 was on archive which is not HD installable). I've further hacked it using Learning Company's instructions on how to make it universally hard drive installable – the included installer with v2.3 only seems to work with SCSI drives. So Magic Spells now works from a hard drive, at last! This now covers all the official 3.5" disk releases for the Learning Company, however Reader Rabbit doesn't work properly (the sorter game can't find the required files) and Writer Rabbit did not get an official update that makes it hard drive installable, so we'll still need to fix those.

I've also moved all non-working apps into the Not.Working folder – quite a few of the earlier apps I tried were still in their category folders.

UPDATE 7/6/2020: 4am imaged and cracked previously unarchived Explore-a-Science titles Wolves and Animal Tracks. I've tried getting these to work from a hard drive using previously modified versions of the Story.system and Disk files from earlier mods from Explore-a-story or science titles, but these are not working for these titles, sadly, so I've moved them into the Not.Working folder, ready for when qkumba might be able to take a look at them after Total Replay v4 is complete.