Cursor (later called BASIC Express) is an excellent newsletter, on par with the Arcadian, that was created in 1980 as a for profit newsletter to focus more on hardware than the Arcadian was currently doing. The Cursor's publisher went through various methods of "copy-protecting" the print (blue ink, and awful colors that made it difficult to read). For this reason, some of the issues I have are not complete. I am not sure which issues I am missing either. Could someone help me out here? I have been unable to contact Fred Cornett (the publisher) or anyone that was part of the Cursor Group. Anyone know where to find any of these people?
I debated with myself for some time about posting the issues I have here. Unlike with the Arcadian, I was not able to get anyone's permission to do this. Even Robert Fabris, publisher of the Arcadian, could not contact the Cursor group beginning in 1984 (by then the newsletter had folded). He reprinted some of the programs in his newsletter, and I am posting the newsletters here as a service to Astrocade users.
Here are the steps I take to get the Cursor newsletters (and all other documents) to you. I scan them in at 300DPI using an HP Scanjet 6100C flatbed scanner. Then I use Photoshop to clean up images. Issues with hand-written notes need the most work, currently I have been re-typing what is hand-written so that it is readable. It takes time. When I am through, I add volume, issue and page numbers to the bottom of each page. I save them as 2-bit TIFF images that are about 1 megabyte each. If there are any pages that are very hard to read (the Zgrass article in volume 1, issue 2, for instance), then I retype them using Word. I print the Word documents to a Postscript file and use Adobe Distiller to convert the Postscript file to PDF. Finally, I import the TIFF images and any PDF files (created previously with Distiller) into Adobe Exchange. Notice that the 8 megabytes worth of TIFF files are now a file that is about 400K. We now have a completed PDF that I upload to Bally Alley for everyone to enjoy.
Special thanks go to Rob Mitchell for photocopying and sending me all these issues issues of Cursor.
| Vol. 1, Issue 1 | Cursor, Volume 1, Issue 1 -- Added Feb 21, 2001 |
| Vol. 1, Issue 2 | Cursor, Volume 1, Issue 2 -- Added Feb 21, 2001 |
| Vol. 1, Issue 3 | Cursor, Volume 1, Issue 3 -- Added Feb 21, 2001 |
| Vol. 1, Issue 3-S | Cursor, Volume 1, Issue 3 - Special -- Added Feb 21, 2001 |
| Vol. 1, Issue 4 | Cursor, Volume 1, Issue 4 -- Added Feb 22, 2001 |
| Vol. 1, Issue 5 | Cursor, Volume 1, Issue 5 -- Added Feb 22, 2001 |
| Vol. 1, Issue 6 | Cursor, Volume 1, Issue 6 -- Added Feb 22, 2001 |
| Vol. 2, Issue 1 | Cursor, Volume 2, Issue 1 Pages 52 and 53 in this issue are unreadable. This is because the original print was light blue with large orange vertical bands to make the programs difficult to photocopy. The method worked. Does anyone have an original of this issue that I can scan so I can add readable pages? -- Added Feb 23, 2001 |
| Vol. 2, Issue 2 | Cursor, Volume 2, Issue 2 -- Added Feb 23, 2001 |
| Vol. 2, Issue 3 | Cursor, Volume 2, Issue 3 -- Added Feb 23, 2001 |
| Vol. 2, Issue 4 | Cursor, Volume 2, Issue 4 -- Added Feb 23, 2001 |
| Vol. 2, Issue 5 | Cursor, Volume 2, Issue 5 -- Added Feb 23, 2001 |
| Vol. 2, Issue 6 | Cursor, Volume 2, Issue 6 -- Added Feb 23, 2001 |
| Vol. 3, Issue 1 | The BASIC Express, Volume 3, Issue 1 This is first issue known as The BASIC Express instead of Cursor. -- Added Feb 23, 2001 |
| Vol. 3, Issue 2 | The BASIC Express, Volume 3, Issue 2 -- Added Feb 24, 2001 |
| Vol. 3, Issue 3 | The BASIC Express, Volume 3, Issue 3 -- Added Feb 24, 2001 |
| I have no more issues, do you? -- Added Feb 24, 2001 |