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Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

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Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#42

Post by ern_ave »

justin66 wrote: post #40
MisterTea wrote: post #31

The first computer I touched was a Franklin Ace 1200 which my father bought. It had a joystick and a Sakata video monitor. The first game I remember playing is Short Circuit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoY8iWJAgVQ . It was replaced by a Canon 8088 then by an AT&T PC6300. I don't know who my father sold it to but he kept the Sakata and it floated around until I realized you could hook a Nintendo to it. Then it be…

> IBM System 23 Not to discount the awesomeness of the others, but that's a real prize. Talk about a strange artifact of its time and place! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/23_Datamaster

8 inch floppies! wow.

Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#43

Post by fauria »

ctmnt wrote: post #33
rob74 wrote: post #11

> Shockingly, Franklin.com, with its 85 words of unstyled HTML, still links to the latest iterations of these devices. If you look at the source code of this page, you'll be even more shocked: looks like it's simply a MS Word document saved as HTML, it's overly complicated and contains lots of "Mso*" classes. And no, it's not unstyled either, it's just that on computers that don't have Times New Roman installed, the…

That is amazing. Compounded by the fact that there's a product listed as "COMING SOON JULY 2025"! This isn't an abandoned site.

Also, the footer reads "© 2026 FEP Holding Company LLC" (probably not automated, the web seems like an HTML exported Word document).

Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Electronic_Publishers

Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#44

Post by cindyllm »

ern_ave wrote: post #42
justin66 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IBM System 23 Not to discount the awesomeness of the others, but that's a real prize. Talk about a strange artifact of its time and place! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/23_Datamaster

8 inch floppies! wow.

[dead]

Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#46

Post by MisterTea »

ern_ave wrote: post #42
justin66 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IBM System 23 Not to discount the awesomeness of the others, but that's a real prize. Talk about a strange artifact of its time and place! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/23_Datamaster

8 inch floppies! wow.

The machine came with a few new boxes of 8" still in the cellophane.

Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#47

Post by NittLion78 »

Never used a Franklin, but I remember the Albert which was a IIe clone. Had a voice synthesizer which you could type words into and it would say them back (poorly) which as a young kid was a good time. Also had a stylus/drawpad for graphics which was kinda neat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_(computer)

I remember the text Games Apples Play and typing the code manually in from the pages on that machine in Basic. Some of them were pretty fun. https://archive.org/details/gapa2

Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#48

Post by celsoazevedo »

fauria wrote: post #43
ctmnt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is amazing. Compounded by the fact that there's a product listed as "COMING SOON JULY 2025"! This isn't an abandoned site.

Also, the footer reads "© 2026 FEP Holding Company LLC" (probably not automated, the web seems like an HTML exported Word document). Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Electronic_Publishers

That part uses javascript to get the year: https://celsoazevedo.com/files/2026/franklin-date.png

The "Last-Modified" HTML header suggests it was last updated on "Sat, 05 Jul 2025 04:27:21 GMT": https://celsoazevedo.com/files/2026/franklin-mod.png

Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#49

Post by WillAdams »

amelius wrote: post #45
WillAdams wrote: post #2

For the effect this had on Apple, see: https://www.folklore.org/Stolen_From_Apple.html

Good artists copy, great artists steal ...

Please provide one example of "art" which Franklin originated.

Re: Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

#50

Post by WillAdams »

NittLion78 wrote: post #47

Never used a Franklin, but I remember the Albert which was a IIe clone. Had a voice synthesizer which you could type words into and it would say them back (poorly) which as a young kid was a good time. Also had a stylus/drawpad for graphics which was kinda neat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_(computer) I remember the text Games Apples Play and typing the code manually in from the pages on that machine in Basic…

Possibly from Cognivox? I remember getting their voice synthesizer/recognition module for the Apple ][ at school when I was young.
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