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Christmas Software

K

Kevin Adams

Member
Joined
Jul 4, 2010
Messages
35
This time of year I love to dig out old Christmas demo software and run them up on my old machines!

I'm wondering if anyone has any recommendations for other Christmas demos for retro computers!

Here's a list of the ones I enjoy every year! Merry Christmas!

IBM PC DOS:

JingleDisk - Holiday Musical Story with
computer Animation. (1985) (also for C64,
Atari and Apple II)

Twas the Night before Christmas (1986)
- Animated Musical Christmas Greeting Disk
- from the producers of PCLife magazine.

A Christmas Carol (1992)
MPC CD Storybook - Ebook Inc

C64:

Commodore SX-64 Demo Disk
Christmas Demo

Tandy Coco3:

Radio Shack Christmas Demo
 
I used to have an old IBM one with Charlie Chaplin doing various things - ice skating, opening a christmas gift (rather, pulling the ribbon that opened it), etc. It's somewhere on one of my old floppies - I haven't used it in years. My high school computer teacher had an original disk from back in the day, and he would have it running as a sort of screen saver during December on his old 5160 w/ CGA. Upon request, he gave me a copy. I thought it would be too cool to have it running on our minty-new first computer, a Packard Bell 486 (yes, my school was REALLY behind the times in their computer and programming labs)
 
Kevin Adams said:
JingleDisk - Holiday Musical Story with
computer Animation. (1985)
Click to expand...

There is a version that came on an IBM/C64 flippy and the earlier one which was IBM only. The IBM only one takes up the entire disk and has more screens/sections/animation. If you need it, let me know and I can dig it out.

Twas the Night before Christmas (1986)
- Animated Musical Christmas Greeting Disk
- from the producers of PCLife magazine.
Click to expand...

Since I am trying to collect all PCLife mags, and since I don't have this, is there any way you could upload it to ftp.oldskool.org in the /incoming directory? I'd really appreciate it.

I also didn't see you mention the Sierra Xmas demos, they were some scenes that ran on anything but supported 16-color graphics and the 3-voice Tandy/PCjr sound chip. Those should be freely available, let me check... It looks like they're downloadable from here: http://sierrac.free.fr/series.php?platform=PC&seriescn=cards
 
Maverick1978 said:
I used to have an old IBM one with Charlie Chaplin doing various things - ice skating, opening a christmas gift (rather, pulling the ribbon that opened it), etc. It's somewhere on one of my old floppies - I haven't used it in years.
Click to expand...

I've never seen or heard of this before -- if you dig it out someday, I'd love a copy. I'm curious how good the graphics and animation were, and who IBM contracted the work out to (there were a select few advertising houses who took on work like this, the most famous being The SoftAd Group).
 
I forgot to mention... it would play various tunes through the pc speaker while the Chaplin animations played- I don't remember which ones. I'll have to pull out the old archives and see what I can find. Knowing my younger days and how much I used to cram on a diskette, I probably just wrote "stuff" to keep from having to pull out the notebook paper to list its contents!

In regards to the sierra site you linked, I've read about the christmas cards that they did, but never seen them, nor have I ever heard of or seen the old AGI demos. Thanks for that. Does anyone have any info on these products? Were they distributed through Sierra's BBS, or do disks of these things actually exist?
 
Last edited:
Scrounging around, I find a couple of likely suspects that have been sent to me years ago. I don't have a working Win machine handy, so I'm not sure what we have here, but you can give it a try and let me know if it's OK. XMAS.ZIP
 
Not directly related but as a side-note it was a required project in our computer class (first semester end) to write a holiday animated demo. Probably more common than not, so a lot of demos folks remember could have been home written software vs commercial ware. I know that was my first time to do (bad) graphics with sound and then since it made sense did whatever the equivalent of getpixel putpixel was in Pascal and had it do some falling and piling up snow. (Very simple code to randomly drop a white pixel, scan the lines for white pixels and move them down one line and randomly y-1, y, or y+1). Long as you didn't draw in white it was the only thing it'd find and if white was under it leave it so it could pile up on the font/graphics.
 
Trixter said:
Since I am trying to collect all PCLife mags, and since I don't have this, is there any way you could upload it to ftp.oldskool.org in the /incoming directory? I'd really appreciate it.

I also didn't see you mention the Sierra Xmas demos, they were some scenes that ran on anything but supported 16-color graphics and the 3-voice Tandy/PCjr sound chip. Those should be freely available, let me check... It looks like they're downloadable from here: http://sierrac.free.fr/series.php?platform=PC&seriescn=cards
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link to the Sierra stuff!

I uploaded Night Before Christmas to your FTP.

I have PCLife Vol1 No 1 and Vol 3 No 3 which I think came from you! Do you have any other issues?

Cheers!

Kevin
 
I've got some Christmas software too. Actually, I've had it for quite some time, and never used it. There's some that play songs, one called XMASSONG. Others that display, "HAPPY NEW YEAR," and many more.
 
The Charlie Chaplin one I have is on a disk labeled Chaplin. It was a demo disk IBM gave to dealers in the early 80's. There's a file on the disk that can be edited to add the dealer's name (don't recall which file) but at the end of the animation it shows a screen that says "Merry Christmas from IBM and (dealer name)".
 
strollin said:
The Charlie Chaplin one I have is on a disk labeled Chaplin. It was a demo disk IBM gave to dealers in the early 80's. There's a file on the disk that can be edited to add the dealer's name (don't recall which file) but at the end of the animation it shows a screen that says "Merry Christmas from IBM and (dealer name)".
Click to expand...

Thanks for reminding me... that was one of the screens on my demo, though it could be set to loop infinitely, which is what I always did. I want to say that it was either a text file that you edited for the "dealer name," though that might have just been the cheap execution as I may have lacked the installer.
 
anyone know where i could get a copy of the jingledisk for the c64? not the floppy itself but the d64 image, have a pc to 1541 cable + soft so transfering it is not a problem :)
 
Kevin Adams said:
I uploaded Night Before Christmas to your FTP.
Click to expand...

Excellent, thanks!

I have PCLife Vol1 No 1 and Vol 3 No 3 which I think came from you! Do you have any other issues?
Click to expand...

Sadly no, those are the only two I have.

Every few years, I try to find "Mike Sullivan" who was the publisher of PC Life (and artist, which is the main reason I'm trying to collect them and contact him) but complicating things is that there is already an artist in New York called Mike Sullivan, who is not him (I contacted him and he said he's not the guy). And all of the web references in finding artists called Mike Sullivan in New York point to the "wrong" guy, because the "wrong" guy did the background art for The Best Damn Sports Show Ever which was more popular than PC Life of course.

If I ever get truly desperate, I may try to contact every single person who ever worked on any issue of PC Life, but so far it hasn't come to that yet.
 
Elvi,

I've sent you a private message with the files. (There r two versions)

If someone has a public place I can upload them let me know.

Kevin
 
Trixter said:
Sadly no, those are the only two I have.

Every few years, I try to find "Mike Sullivan" who was the publisher of PC Life (and artist, which is the main reason I'm trying to collect them and contact him) but complicating things is that there is already an artist in New York called Mike Sullivan, who is not him (I contacted him and he said he's not the guy). And all of the web references in finding artists called Mike Sullivan in New York point to the "wrong" guy, because the "wrong" guy did the background art for The Best Damn Sports Show Ever which was more popular than PC Life of course.

If I ever get truly desperate, I may try to contact every single person who ever worked on any issue of PC Life, but so far it hasn't come to that yet.
Click to expand...

I really enjoyed that magazine. I hope you manage to find more issues. Thank you for the two you've shared!

Kevin
 
Elvi said:
seems i managed to find the 86 1 side version before you even posted here, wasn't easy.
Click to expand...

I have both of these as originals; I will dump them and put them on ftp.oldskool.org. In fact, thanks to the recent PCLife submission, I think I'll put all xmas-display software I find on my ftp site. I'll work on that tonight and post back when done.
 
I have a couple of the Sierra ones on floppy somewhere that they sent me in the mail for registering their software (or something like that.)
 
only version 1 of the 1985 version worked on my pal c64, verson 2 and version 86 stalls on the jack in the box, no music just a slow animation.
 
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