Colin Leroy-Mira's SixForty Offers Social Photo Sharing — On Your Apple II
Now even Apple's eight-bit line-up can get in on the fun of photo-centric social media, with a new client for 640x480.com.
Vintage computing enthusiast Colin Leroy-Mira is taking on the like of Instagram and Flickr with a new photo-sharing package — for the Apple II eight-bit personal computer.
"SixForty is an Apple II client for 640by480.com, a picture sharing website with a focus on vintage digital cameras [created] by Brian Benchoff," Leroy-Mira explains of the software. "It is an addition I wanted to make since a while to my Quicktake for Apple II project. I have chatted and exchanged ideas with Brian during the development of this client."
Photo-sharing sites are, of course, a relatively modern invention — requiring first the invention of some way to digitize images, whether that be a scanner or a camera that natively captures to digital files, followed by the invention of suitable digital file formats, broad adoption of network connectivity, and sufficient storage space for user-submitted imagery. Early efforts saw images encoded as text and uploaded to Usenet, or made available over Xmodem on dial-up bulletin-board systems; today, services like Instagram and Flickr let you share high-res photos with the world at large via the wonder of the World Wide Web.
Benchoff's 640x480.com is, as the name implies, not a platform for sharing multi-megapixel images from modern cameras. Instead, it's focused on VGA-and-lower snaps from vintage hardware. Leroy-Mira's client has the same focus, though goes a step further: it allows you to browse, download, view, and even upload images from 640x480.com on an Apple II — an eight-bit MOS 6502-based personal computer launched in 1977 and boasting just 4kB of RAM expandable to 48kB.
The Apple II predates Ethernet, much less Wi-Fi, and so Liroy-Mira's software relies on a serial connection to a more modern system acting as a gateway. Images are downloaded and converted to a one-bit dithered format compatible with the Apple II, then displayed on-screen. Images can be uploaded to 640x480.com from the Apple II, too, complete with support for images captured by Apple's QuickTake digital camera family.
More information, and a link to download the software, is available on Leroy-Mira's website.
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