Great news for 9750 fans -- LogoWriter Robotics discovered!

[evank]

I and many other 9750 Interface A hobbyists have spent several years hunting for LCSI's "LogoWriter Robotics" software. There were plenty of false leads. The standard LogoWriter software and TC Logo are widely available, but nobody could find LogoWriter Robotics (which adds back features that were removed from standard LogoWriter.) A few years ago I was in direct contact with the original 1980s software developers from LCSI -- they didn't have it. People have tried reaching Lego corporate historians and many other promising leads, but everything failed -- until this week, when @amine discovered a year-old Reddit thread here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AFOL/comments/1f083cf/got_a_bunch_of_dacta_sets_including_an_apple_iigs/?sort=new

Amine is in France, so he deferred to me because the original poster is just a few hours from me (New Jersey / Maryland). We're all incredibly lucky that the previous people who offered to buy it from him didn't pan out, and that the original poster got busy and forgot about it, so he still had it available. I spoke with him by Reddit chat, text message, and finally by phone. We made a deal for me to buy everything but the computer itself (I have enough Apple II gear, and I didn't want to ship a full computer that I didn't even need.) He sent me a couple of 9767 cards, a 9750, etc. -- the usual stuff you find for that generation of Lego robotics -- but most importantly he send me two copies each of the 3.5 and 5.25 disks, plus the LWR manuals. A couple of other 9750 hobbyists helped me fund the acquisition (I'm not naming them; they're free to identify themselves if desired.)

A friend not on this forum lives near me and owns an Applesauce archiving system, so he's going to properly archive the software -- I was not going to just fire up a super-rare disk and see what happens. That's too risky; what if my drive ruined it? However one of the 5.25 disks was someone's backup copy, vs. the original, so I felt safe trying that since the original is here too.

It booted right up! And of course I immediately copied that backup disk, to have a third copy for a fail-safe.

When I have some time, I'm going to put the .dsk files and scans of the manuals into the Vintage Lego Robotics folder on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/vintagelegorobotics

Here's a picture of LWR running on my Apple //e tonight: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1skiB5yMVc_1F-67dh0D19pJiU0GbepI5/view?usp=drive_link.

Edited 1 hour ago by evank
typo

[Paul B Technic]

That is great news :)