Apple I Basic, the MP3 -- Boing Boing Gadgets

Posted by Cory Doctorow, July 16, 2008 3:48 AM | permalink

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our John has the exciting news that Apple I BASIC has been extracted from an audio cassette and converted to MP3. It's actually got a pretty good beat.

They very first piece of commercial Apple software — a primordial flavor of BASIC originally released in 1976 that took thirty seconds to load — has been perfectly and authoritatively extracted from a yellowing audio tape and converted into a 38 second MP3, playable in iTunes. Plucky, hyper-intelligent beardos are now dissecting the file and learning its secrets, but their findings are a bit above my head.