- Absolutely Mad Magazine - 50+ Years
- Absolutely Mad Magazine - 50+ Years
- Absolutely Mad Magazine 50 Years
- Absolutely Mad Magazine - 50+ Years Download
Al jaffee’s fold-ins for mad magazine Wednesday, April 2, 2008 Al Jaffee started at Mad not as an artist but as a writer.Eventually, he said, the sketches he used to illustrate his ideas caught the eye of Nick Meglin, an editor, who realized they were funnier than what the artists were producing.So Mr. Jaffee became a writer-artist. Genuine Absolutely Mad Magazine 50 Years Collection 600 Issues on DVDROM Disc. 5.0 out of 5 stars. 5 product ratings. 5.0 average based on 5 product ratings. 5 users rated this 5 out of 5 stars 5. 0 users rated this 4 out of 5 stars 0.
“Totally MAD” is a collection of the issues of MAD Magazine from the start until 1998 published by Broderbund. The software was designed for Windows 95/98 or NT 4.0 (remember Windows NT?). I’ve successfully installed it under Windows 7, and it kept working when I upgraded to Windows 10; however, when I tried to install it on a new 64-bit Windows 10 machine, the installation program just didn’t do anything.
Installing the program
Before trying the steps below, try the much simpler approach in this comment. If that fails, come back here.
I installed the program manually. Reply OK when asked for permission to copy the files in the following steps:
- For 32-bit Windows: create a folder called “Totally MAD” under c:program files
- For 64-bit Windows: create a folder called “Totally MAD” under c:program files (x86)
- From the CD, copy all files from the WIN32 folder on the CD into the “Totally MAD” folder you created. Copy the files individually, not the directory itself.
- Copy the following directories from the CD into the “Totally MAD” directory you created: ANIM, BIN, BTNSND, FAVORITE, MSREG, NMS, PLS. Copy the directory itself, not just the files.
- Right-click on the file TOTMAD.EXE file in your “Totally MAD” directory, and select “Create shortcut” from the context menu. It will ask you to put the shortcut on the desktop. Say yes.
- Edit the file CNM.INI located in the “Totally MAD” directory in program files. In the section called “DIRECTORIES” change “=cd” to “=ed” in three locations so that it looks like the example below:
In order to change files in a protected system folder, you have to right-click your text editor program and “Run as administrator.” Edit and save the file.
You’re done. Just double-click the new icon on the desktop to run Totally MAD.
There’s one other thing you might want to do to complete the installation. Totally MAD wants to save its settings in the Program Files directory, which is a no-no under Windows 10. Again as administrator, edit the PREFS.INI file in your Totally Mad directory and make a couple of changes. The first is:
That turns off the annoying registration prompt. The second turns off the prompt when you try to exit the program.
Save your file.
Installing the CD’s
The process above imitates the intended installation of Totally Mad; however, you still have to insert a CD to play the content on that CD. With modern computers, there’s probably plenty of room to store the contents of the CD on the hard drive. The way I did it was to convert each CD to an ISO file and to do that I used a free program called Magic ISO and ImgBurn is another excellent free solution I use, but no matter how you make the conversion, just store all of the ISO files on your computer. You can “mount” the ISO files as pseudo-CDs just by double clicking on each ISO file in turn. This lasts until you reboot your computer. If you have Roxio software bundled with your computer, it may be able to create the ISO files also with that. Other options are shown on this page. Once you have the ISO files mounted, Totally Mad accesses any issue almost instantly.
THEMAD COMPUTER PROGRAM
The cover of MAD magazine No. 258 from October 1985 announces a “special computer section featuring the MAD Computer Program”. Take careful note of the image displayed on the computer monitor.
“The MAD Computer Program” title spread across pages 36 and 37. Below it reads, “Here's a great way to waste time, energy and money! Enter into your computer the program below and create your own MAD logo and Alfred E. Neuman face! (Yecch!!!)”. It's filed under the, “Data All, Folks! Dept.”.
The zoom up of page 36 below reveals that Sergio Aragones drew the associated artwork and wrote the copy.
The program is written in BASIC and the programmer was kind enough to supply bootstrap code for systems by Apple, Atari, Commodore and IBM. A few comments appear near the code:
Absolutely Mad Magazine - 50+ Years
“APPLE USERS NOTE: After you finish entering the program, be sure to “save it” before calling for a printout or you're screwed! You can try this program on a MAC—but it won't work!”
“ATARI USERS NOTE: There is no Atari users note!”
If you look carefully at the bootstrap code, you'll notice that instead of wrapping long lines, the editor just pasted the overflow below and to the right of those lines. That's a brilliant way to generate syntax errors.
Sergio Aragones' artwork on this page features a man stuck on a tiny tropical island discovering a box that washed up on shore. He looks disappointed upon revealing the contents: floppy disks, useless to him and to most people today. Another panel shows a cleaning lady sweeping up ones and zeros that accumulated around a desktop computer. Another shows 2 nerds telling each other a joke in binary and inevitably laughing hysterically. Another reveals the havoc caused by a young hacker. The bottom of the page features a man that replaced his typewriter with a new desktop computer and word processor. Unfortunately, he couldn't figure out how to operate the machine and he ended up retrieving his typewriter from the trash.
The zoom up of page 37 below reveals that the MAD Computer Program was designed and programmed by Lauretta Jones and Toma.
The notes read:
“COMMODORE USERS NOTE: After entering allow 20 minutes for the graphics to fully appear. If it takes any longer, your computer probably isn't plugged in!”
Sergio Aragones' artwork on this page features a woman in an office slapping a man sitting opposite to her after he apparently sent her an offensive instant message. In another panel, a man repairing his computer is shocked to discover that it's powered by an abacus! Another shows what a child thinks about computers (video games) versus a parent (a loss of a huge chunk of cash). In another, a father brags to a friend how he replaced his entire filing cabinet with a single floppy disk. Unfortunately, his young child assumed the floppies were toys and mutilated them. The bottom of the page features an army at the mercy of a broken desktop computer.
The program continues onto page 38:
Notes on it read:
“IBM USERS NOTE: You have to spring for a “color card” for your unit or this program will not work correctly! Tough nuts!”
At the end of each bootstrap segment, there's a comment directing the person typing in the program to the common section of code. Those comments read:
Absolutely Mad Magazine - 50+ Years
“You're not finished yet! Go to line 500 on page 38!”
“OK, rotate your eyeballs and go to line 500 on page 38!”
“Still awake? Good! Now go to line 500 on page 38 and continue entering!”
“You're doing great—for a second-rate hacker! Now go to line 500 and continue entering!”
I'm kind of disappointed that the writer didn't say, “GOTO line 500 on page 38.”
Sergio Aragones' artwork on this page features a panicking man whose tie is getting sucked into an ATM machine. Another comic shows concerned parents who buy their son a new computer because he spends all his time zoning out in front of a TV. Unfortunately, the father enjoys the new machine too much, forcing his son to return to the TV. The bottom features a comic spread over 2 pages:
An old secretary is initially happy when they replace her mechanical typewriter with a new desktop computer. Unfortunately, she's then replaced with a new, young secretary.
The code listing flows into page 39:
It encourages readers to send a printout to:
It's good to know that they have a “Hackers Department”. Also, note how they took advantage of MADison Avenue. Here's what that location looks like on Google Street View, though in the mid-1990s they relocated to 1700 Broadway.
Sergio Aragones' artwork on this page features a panicking school principal whose computer malfunctioned and gave A's to students that obviously didn't earn them. Another comic shows tractor-feed paper—traditionally used in dot-matrix printers—being used in place of toilet paper in a household bathroom.
Here's the Apple version of the source:
Here's what it looks like when you run it in AppleWin, the Apple II emulator:
Most of the program consists of coordinate-pairs, the end-points of line-segments. It's unfortunate that the article did not describe how the numerical values were determined. They may have traced the image with a puck, a mouse-like device used for CAD work that detects absolute position. Or the image might have been printed onto a transparency and fixed to the front of a monitor to serve as a template. Then, they could have incrementally entered coordinates directly into BASIC, tweaking as necessary, until the entire transparency was covered. A third possibility is that the entire thing was worked out using nothing more than graph paper, a ruler and a pencil.
I created a Java version that generates this image file:
Below is a Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) version. If your browser does not support SVG, tough nuts!
You can download the BASIC source, the Java source and the SVG version by clicking here.
Absolutely Mad Magazine 50 Years
Thanks to Lawrence D'Oliveiro for explaining one of Sergio Aragones' comics to me. Thanks to Andy Klock for helping me type in the program. And special thanks to Kris Kennaway for discovering a typo that Andy or I accidentally introduced into the copyrighted source code that owner E.C. Publications, Inc. apparently highly encourages their loyal readers to manually reproduce by keying it into a computer.
Absolutely Mad Magazine - 50+ Years Download
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