huibert-aalbers.com
My home away from home
Old Apple II software preserved
A couple of months ago I returned to my parents home in Madrid, Spain and was able to find some of the early code I wrote for the Apple II. I wasn’t very confident my 5 1/4” floppy disks could have survived 30 years in storage but I decided to send them to my friends Antoine Vignau (from Brutal Deluxe Software) anyway. Some of the disks were damaged but I had enough backup copies that eventually both Teacher’s Wizard and G.A.P.E. could be fully recovered. I was quite amazed to be able to load these products I created over 30 years ago on my Mac and run them in an emulator.
G.A.P.E. (Global Applesoft Program Editor) was an Applesoft editor much like Call A.P.P.L.E.’s G.P.L.E. based on an editor I used on a PR1ME micro-computer when living in Geneva in the early 80’s. I submitted this program in 1985 to a contest organized by Philips in Europe called the Holland Prize (now European Union contest for young scientists) ). Although I didn’t win, it was a great experience and G.A.P.E became my first “professional quality” software title.
Teacher’s Wizard was a tool for teachers that allowed them to easily create courseware. It was quite sophisticated for the time because it could be used with a mouse and incorporated many of the same concepts that would later be made popular by Hypercard. This program was originally developed for Edelvives, a Spanish book editor that worked closely with many schools. I later sold the rights for the rest of the world to Britannica Software.
Both programs can now be freely downloaded.