S2EB1 Hi Tech Expressions JingleDisk

This special holiday episode features JingleDisk, originally released in 1986 by Hi Tech Expressions. It was programmed by Sean Michael Puckett using the Action! programming language.

Podcast: Download

Box and Supplement Scans

The product was not packaged in a box. Instead it was enclosed in 8.5″ x 11″ heavy card stock folded in half. A disk sleeve permanently attached on the inside for the diskette.

Scan of the front:

Scan of the back:

JingleDisk in Action

When the program first boot a color animated boot splash appears:

After a few seconds the color animation stops and the load proceeds:

The main menu screen uses an artifacting graphics mode to produce colors:

Module 1 – Jingle Tunes

There is no interaction with the program with this module. Sit back and enjoy the songs and animation. The animation uses an artifacting graphics mode. Highlights of the animation are:

Module 2 – Holiday Greeting

The Holiday Greeting menu. You can create a greeting disk or different printouts:

Section 1 – Create Greeting Disk

First you are asked to enter 3 lines of text with each line limited to 12 characters:

Confirm your entry. If you say No you are returned to the main menu. You can not edit:

This warns you about things to come. Make sure your JingleDisk is write protected so you don’t accidentally mess up during all the disk swaps that follow:

Ready, insert your blank disk:

After its formatted, insert the JingleDisk program disk:

After it reads part of the disk, swap your data disk back in:

After it writes to your data disk, insert the JingleDisk program disk again:

That process repeats for a total of 3 times. At the end put the Jingle Disk program disk back in:

The disk you just created is now previewed. It will loop forever as well:

Section 2 – Full Page

The Full Page card menu has three options. 1 and 2 print cards. The 3rd exits back to the main menu:

For full page cards you can enter one line of text limited to 33 characters:

Once you confirm it, it will be displayed on the screen and sent to the printer (see the screen displays below in the Printing section of this post):

Section 3 – Quarter Page

The Quarter Page card menu has 5 options. The first four options print cards on a single sheet of paper that can be folder twice into a card that opens. The last option exits to the main menu:

Each card here is allowed three lines of text limited to 33 characters each:

Once confirmed, the card will be drawn on the screen and sent to the printer. See the screen displays in the Printing section below.

Section 4 – Full Page Message

This prints your message in the snowflake font without any border on a full sheet of paper. The input is just like with Greeting Disk creation, except that you are limited to 15 characters per line instead of 12. The card is drawn on screen and sent to the printer. See the screen display in the Printing section below.