A couple of Softalks

The Softalk magazine (1980–1984) has become surprisingly rare. Surprising because it used to actually be given for free (at least for a while) to anyone who bought an Apple. And it was a good magazine too. But although many other computer magazines of the 80s have been scanned and made it into various online archives, Softalk is conspicuously absent.

Scouring the net, I have managed to find a few. Yesterday I found a couple that were hosted in Switzerland and for me at least downloaded very slowly (by my estimate, at about 2400 baud), which prompts me to now host a mirror of those copies of those few that I have so far acquired. Someday I hope to physically have the magazines again, at which point I'll attempt non-destructive color scans. I still may have some of those physical issues somewhere (I was a subscriber from 1982–1984), but I have not as of yet been able to find them.

So far, I have the following issues sourced in a couple of different places (but I suspect mostly the work of one person). They are not great. For one thing, they are mostly black and white, and (presumably on some kind of principle, possibly legal), the advertisements have been removed. (While I'm sure that it took a lot of time and effort to remove them, I also miss the ads, they're interesting too, 30 years on.) The covers were also often not included. In at least one place I noticed, a page was duplicated. But, it's better than nothing, for the moment.

• September 1980
• November 1980
• December 1980
• January 1981
• February 1981
• March 1981
• April 1981
• May 1981
• June 1981
• July 1981
• August 1981
• November 1981 (partial, but in color: cover, one article [Brøderbund profile])

[Addition: Steven Weyhrich has a page of images of many of the covers and column banners posted at his Apple II History site, and for a couple of years has been specifically scanning some of the ads from the pages of Softalk, organized by year and hardware/software.]