| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 HiresPictures.zip | 691.63 KB |
I put together a little collection of Apple II Hi-Res pictures. These are the standard 192x280x6 HGR/HGR2 screens. This one features a little more than 200 pictures, and is in a .po format. It works well in AppleWin emulator. But you can extract them put them on your physical Apple system of course.
I originally posted them on Atariage, but thought a more appropriate site would be here.
So.. Have at it!
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Welcome to the Apple 2 series Hi-Res Pictures Disk!
On this disk you will find some of the better Hi-Res artwork done on an Apple //. These pictures have been gathered over the years when BBS'ing was popular. That would tend to be from around 1979-1989 or somewhere in that timeframe. Many of these were uploaded to our BBS'es in lieu of new warez and as tokens of good will. This is an ongoing work in progress. Sporadically I will add pictures, animations, and perhaps other mathematically synthesized art from the era.
It was especially fun to watch these image form on the screen one scanline at a time, took several seconds per line. About as fast as you read text, or slower. The 300-baud Hayes Micromodem II with Microcoupler was the bomb back then. Eventually we upgraded to the Apple Cat II 1200 baud modem. The pics would then only take a few moments. WOW!
If the 6502 was running interpreted basic code, the contour and bessel plots could take and hour or two to complete. Amazing! And, it is quite fascinating to compare the tools we had back then to the modern day equivalent like Photoshop. A lot of parallels exist. The difference comes in the resolution and refinement of menu structure.
These pics (undoubtedly) were made by a variety of methods including:
Light pen
Freehand
Mathematical formulas (in Applesoft FP Basic)
Blazing Paddles
Koala MicroIllustrator
KoalaPad (the small one)
Apple Graphics Tablet (the monster-sized one)
ComputerEyes Digitizer
Screenshots from popular software
ThunderScan
Typed in program listings from magazines
Each is a standard hi-res picture occypying 33 sectors in DOS (or 17 blocks in PRODOS). 192x280x6 colors. Viewing them is quite simple. This is what you do.
1 - Use an emulator or transfer the files to a real Apple with a real hard disk. This is tested on Applewin.
2 - Mount the HiresPictures.po image in something like slot 7
3 - Boot up the emulator
4 - You will see a PRODOS menu, select #3 and exit to Basic
5 - From the prompt, type PREFIX HIRES
6 - And type RUN PICTURES
7 - The slideshow starts!
You have some really simple options.
The arrow keys "<" and ">" keys will let you manually cycle through the pictures
S or CTRL-RESET means stop and exit to basic
C means to continue running the slide show
That's about all the controls from within the slide show.
Here is a description of the files in the HIRES directory.
All the binary files which are 17 blocks (or 33 sectors dos) are the pictures themselves.
For consistency and simplicity they are all saved to page 2, or mode HGR2.
A1LIST (TXT) is a simple text file that lists the order in which the pictures are displayed. You may edit this to change the order or add & remove pictures.
PICTURES (BAS) is the Applesoft program that parses the list and displays the pics onscreen. It's simple, it works, it isn't optimized, it isn't neat, it isn't rocket science. It gets the job done.
Additionally you may find it interesting to extract these images to a modern-day PC or MAC by using Ciderpress (or other disk image manager). Precisely how to do that is beyond the scope of this document. There are too many varied ways to do it. So have at it!
Commands for working with pictures in Basic. This is not comprehensive, just enough to let you load and save pictures for whatever reason while you're working in the Applesoft Basic prompt.
HGR and HGR2 and TEXT
BLOAD PICNAME
BLOAD PICNAME ,A$2000
BLOAD PICNAME ,A$4000
BSAVE PICNAME ,A$2000,L$1FF8
BSAVE PICNAME ,A$4000,L$1FF8
Enjoy!
Would you like it to autoboot into your program? That could be easily arranged:
1. Delete all .system files except basic.system.
2. Save a program named startup:
10 print chr$(4);"prefix hires"
20 print chr$(4);"- pictures"
3. ????
4. Profit!
Ohh? Yes.. I suppose that would be a nice thing to do.
I had a fit of excitement because they were intact on a Sider drive that had been sitting for 30 years. Unpowered all that time too. So in finding these this became a hasty side project. And I didn't even consider autoloading right into the show.
I've got a couple hundred more, again, minimal screenshots of games. And when I update these soon I can make the change you suggest.
I'm hard up to find the JPL SSTV images from the Voyager probe and its encounter with Uranus and Neptune. I've got ones of Jupiter and Saturn, but those were given to me way after the fact. The Uranus and Neptune ones were downloaded via my Micromodem II (with microcoupler) real-time, as they came into the lab I had an arrangement to get them sent to me. I don't recall if those were DHR or not. We choose 300 baud for reliability. Otherwise it would have been done with my Apple Cat II and 212 card at 1200.
I could refine the slideshow program, and add some more keys.
I have many short animations that would fit well with this type of thing.
I have a few Take One animations, maybe 5 or 10, that are decent have not been seen yet.
And a bazillion of those little 10 line bessel function * grid plot things and page flipping demos and tricks. Many of which I had written BITD. So those could be dumped into a separate "bonus" directory.
And then I've got +200 DHR images to sort through. I'd be getting rid crap like AirHeart screenshots and stupid stuff like that.
So all that will eventually be put on here too.
But the core idea of it being a slideshow disk will remain.
Well thx for the idea of autoloading.