Subject: Re: Where is Asimov?-- Asimov-GS
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From: Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>
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Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1999 10:49:54 -0600
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Krinibar writes ...
> 
> Every time I try to get to the GS page I get a deadend link.  Where is it?

     At one time Asimov did maintain a collection of out-of-print commercial
IIgs software. That was roughly 2-3 years ago.

     When the Asimov site manager decided to concentrate on out-of-print
commercial software for 8-bit Apple II's, another site was created to maintain
out-of-print commercial IIgs software. It came to be called "Asimov-GS".

     My recollection is that Asimov-GS lasted for a few months before being
trashed by hackers. The successor to Asimov-GS was Apple Cabi.net-- also often
called "Asimov-GS" but frequently "Cabi" and "ACN", too. "Apple Cabi.net" and
"ACN" are the designations which eventually became popular.

     ACN was a creation of Dr. Tom. With out-of-print commercial and other IIgs
software (plus graphics, info files, ...) obtained from the earlier "Asimov-GS"
and collected from other sources, Dr. Tom built ACN into the chief IIgs
archive. For a year or so, it was the only place users could find large
collections of out-of-print commercial IIgs games and utilities.

     ACN closed down earlier this year in late Spring. Before it disappeared,
most of it's contents were transferred to a new site, Tarnover, run by Celtic.
Soon, Tarnover was joined by GS Ed's mirror of the old ACN site's content.

     Since ACN was gone, it did not make sense to speak of "ACN mirror sites".
Also, the new sites were developing their own collections-- including a good
deal of 8-bit A2 software-- beyond the original ACN content.

     To show that the sites maintain closely matched content built upon that
from Apple Cabi.net and, yet, are different, they adopted the names "ACN
Tarnover" and "ACN Florida":

ACN Tarnover- ftp://tarnover.dyndns.org/cabi/
ACN Florida-  ftp://24.96.48.134:6502/Cabi_Archives/


     Widespread interest in IIgs emulation is a relatively recent phenomenon.
So, Apple Cabi.net concentrated on serving users of IIgs machines; and, most of
the ACN collection is in standard Apple II ShrinkIt files, not in some disk
image format.

     For a time it was up to IIgs emu users to convert software as required for
their particular IIgs emulators or depend upon relatively small collections.
This changed with the arrival of Helix Energy's Apple IIgs Gaming Memory
Fairway. 'Fairway includes nearly every out-of-print commercial IIgs game in
.2mg disk image (and, now, .shk, too) form:

Apple IIgs Gaming Memory Fairway- http://www.inwards.com/~fairway/


     So, I guess you can say that the GS part of Asimov is 'all over the net'. 



Rubywand