This episode features My First Alphabet, originally released in 1981 by APX Software, then later by Atari. This is a educational title. It was developed by Fernando Herrera who was the first to win Ataris’ Star aware, and later was one of the founders of First Star Software.
Podcast: Download
Supplement Scans
Ad from APX catalog in winter 1981:
My First Alphabet in Action
Booting
Splash screen:
First item auto run loading after timeout:
Menu
Note the icon next to the menu selection changes color and shape as the menu selection changes:
Usage
Selected Pictures
Used for displaying a set of numbers or letters to train with. Entering the letters and numbers you want to see in succession:
The screens for each are displayed in succession:
Letters & Numbers
Letters and numbers are randomly displayed:
Letters Only
Letters only are randomly displayed:
Numbers Only
Numbers only are randomly displayed:
Call A Picture
Press the number or letter you want to recall and it is displayed. Note there are multiple items that can be taught from each screen: colors, shapes, words, etc.
Entering a number or letter:
Seeing the number or letter. Here is the output for each. I wonder if the gorilla for G is based off Donkey Kong? :D
Alphabet Song
This just plays the alphabet song as heard in the podcast.
Files
The files on the disk are mainly the pictures. Other notables are DOS (DOS.SYS), the auto run (AUTORUN.SYS), and the program (ALPHABET):
Printing
What? You expect printing from this program that takes extreme advantage of the Atari computers audio and visual capabilities?
Show Links:
- AtariMania: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-my-first-alphabet_3622.html
- First Star Software: https://firststarsoftware.com
- First Star Software Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Star_Software
- Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/a8b_My_First_Alphabet_1981_Atari_US_BASIC
- Atari HQ on Herrera: http://www.atarihq.com/othersec/library/herrera.html
- YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIZfJjTUFaA
Intro music is an excerpt from a chip tune by Wizwars named 8 Bit Raceway. It is used under Creative Common license Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.
inverseatascii.info 