Any clue what software/hardware package this could be?

[unity]

Sometimes I do silly things, like buy items out of curiosity. Might be a could days before I get a change to play with this so I am wondering if anyone has any clue as to what it could be.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/291298209341

The card is very heavy for its size. Appears to be a resin cast around the card. No seams at all.

 

[westcoastech]

some 80s government job save program? lol

the curiosity purchases are the best!

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Well, Apple IIe and Gerber Design Station are two things that fit together in that time frame. I convinced a couple of people NOT to buy those proprietary things for digitizing artwork for making signs. The printing on the floppy label looks familiar. If that's what it is, it's an interesting artifact and something to research. That hardkey/program module is the lynchpin of the system.

 

[unity]

Well I did hook up the IIe since I had some free time. Nothing. The floppy does not seem to be bootable. And honestly my Apple II knowledge is rusty as can be. So I am not sure if there is anything on the floppy disk or not, if its corrupt or if its been erased.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Now that I think of it, Gerber did have some dumb@$$ proprietary job save system back then. That cartridge may BE the program, but it would have plugged into a Font Cartridge slot in the SignMaker console, not the IIe. It saved text parameters for cutting jobs so you didn't need to re-type them for a future copy. Almost everyone used paper forms instead of Gerber's incredibly expensive kluge.

The SignMaker III series font slots were exactly the same as Apple IIe expansion slots. First to market and the class of the industry, but Gerber's line remained a horrible proprietary kluge from top to bottom. One of the guys I convinced to pass on the GDS and to buy a real computer (generic PC clone) to run a real program (Generic CAD) with a stock digitizing tablet later thanked me for giving him his start on the off the shelf DTP path by gifting me with a 40" CAMMjet printer/vinyl cutter and the $5k hard-keyed Mac program to run it. They were upgrading to a PC based system and didn't need it any longer. It's still in my living room next to the HackStation, makes a great entertainment center!

edit: let me rephrase that, the IIe was a perfectly fine computer, but everything but Gerber's stuff ran on PCs at the time. There weren't many Mac folks in the sign business in the late 80s, that came later, what I used on the Mac was primitive, but I could do things with it that nobody else could do there for a while.

 

[olePigeon]

I know what it is.  A senator who owns stock in a company said that he'd "save jobs" by funding said company.  So they dumped millions in pork, produced 1 floppy, a fake card with a black box on it, and labeled it "save jobs."  They then patted themselves on a job well done and voted another pay raise before going on vacation.

 

[Gorgonops]

Hogwash. The card is actually a prototype Positronic Brain and it contains a copy of Steve Jobs' (mistakenly shortened to "JOB") mind clandestinely harvested when he passed out in the middle of a pineapple pizza-and-LSD-fueled creativity binge at Apple HQ in 1981. The problem is that you can't unlock it without the disk, and that can only be read by a customized forerunner of the Twiggy drive, the "Fatty", named for the hamster that was hermetically sealed inside of a treadmill inside of it in an attempt for Apple to save 50 cents over the cost of a stepper motor, interfaced to an early IIe prototype. (Then known as the "II-eeeeeee!" based on the sound an Apple secretary made when Fatty escaped and ran across her foot that one day.) "GDS" is an acronym for "Global Domination Syndicated", a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Illuminati that exists to regularly make copies of notable personalities so their knowledge can be harvested at will in the future without having to keep their biological brains alive in jars after "death". (The latter is only resorted to if absolutely necessary.) Quite sloppy of them to let one of their people-cartridges to leak out like this.

 

[techknight]

last time I checked, we were way past April 1st. 

 

[unity]

Actually I finally found out what it is. But I can not say. And the Apple IIe it was in is no longer, as well as any other computers I owned....

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Gerber product, Govt. jobs program or the Steve's brain, we're pretty much talking KLUGE whichever way it goes.

 

[SuperToaster]

Global Distribution System to implant Steve's brain in all Apple IIe computers

 

[SuperToaster]

I got it. Geriatric Depression Scale

 

[CC_333]

Unity: Huh? Some sort of Non-Disclosure Agreement?

Also, I can't believe nobody's figured it out, but this box (whatever it is) contains all answers to every unknown in the entire universe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :lol:

c

 

[olePigeon]

Edit:  Nevermind.