The complete archive of the German Commodore 64 magazine INPUT 64 (PDF, tapes, disks) is now available here.
And here is an article on how the tapes were dumped.
12 thoughts on “INPUT 64 Magazine Complete Archive”
Thanks for – as usual – excellent job! There seem to be a small problem with the title of that archive page:
“INPUT 64 – Das elektronische Magazin (Gesamtarchiv)” – please note the most probably invalid charset characters after the “64”. Regards, silverdr
This is lovely! This was probably the most high quality computing magazine in the entire world at the time. I remember I got the INPUT-Ass Macro Assembler and the LISP64 system all in the same issue back in 1986. These were super high quality and got me hooked with LISP and the INPUT-Ass wasn’t just my standard Assembler that I used ever since, it’s editor (remember CTRL-k sequences?) was so powerful that I used it as my standard text editor. And it got me all ready to adopt emacs when I moved to an 80286 PC and soon 386bsd UNIX. There was no stopping my career from then on. It is just amazing to have these vast libraries available today for the C64 (and possibly easily ported to the new Commander X16 hardware that will come out soon.)
Great work, well done! Thank you for sharing. I remember browsing through those magazines at supermarket newsstands because they were not affordable from my pocket money budget back in the day (as well as a disk drive wasn’t).
I’ve completetd my C64 computing environment mid 90ties getting accessories at flea markets.
Which scanner, postprocessing and OCR SW settings have you used to archive this excellent final quality @ this small file size?
* I took the clips out
* scanned the A4-like sheets with a ScanSnap iX500 into a 1200 dpi b/w PDF
* used shell scripts and ImageMagick to cut and reorder the pages
* used Affinity Photo to retouch all pages (removed the clip holes etc.)
* scaled the pages to 600 dpi and combined them into a PDF using ImageMagick
* for OCR, I used FileReader OCR Pro on macOS (rotation turned off, German, English and BASIC as languages) and saved it as PDF/A.
The title pages were scanned with a flatbed scanner at 1200 dpi, color corrected and scaled down to 150 dpi.
I’m happy to share my raw/work data. It’s about 14 GB. Just contact me.
Hi Michael.
the first one 1/85 is not working.
sounds like something is missing at the beginning of the file. The long-lasting high tone maybe?
I`ve tried it in Vice on Windows and copied it on tape to try it on original hardware.
Both not working.
The 2/85 is still fine.
Really interesting perspective. I’ve been exploring astrocartography tools like AstroChart lately, and it’s fascinating how location can influence different aspects of life.
This complete archive of INPUT 64 Magazine is an absolutely incredible preservation effort! The level of detail you’ve put into the digitization process — from the 1200 dpi scans to the OCR with multiple language support — is exactly the kind of rigorous archival work that retro computing history needs. I love how you’ve documented every step of your workflow, from the ScanSnap capture through ImageMagick processing to the final PDF/A output. Your willingness to share the 14 GB of raw data is incredibly generous to the community.
I’ve been getting into casual browser games lately while waiting for large scans to process and OCR jobs to complete. Head Football has become my go-to — it’s this simple physics-based soccer game that’s surprisingly addictive for quick breaks. My retro computing preservation friends and I compete for high scores during our virtual archiving sessions, and it’s become a fun way to pass those long processing hours. The matches are short enough that I never miss a batch completion or a file transfer!
The fact that you included BASIC as an OCR language is a beautiful touch — these magazines deserve nothing less than perfect preservation. Thanks for this monumental contribution to computing history. Page Table continues to be the gold standard for retro computing archaeology!
Thanks for – as usual – excellent job! There seem to be a small problem with the title of that archive page:
“INPUT 64 – Das elektronische Magazin (Gesamtarchiv)” – please note the most probably invalid charset characters after the “64”. Regards, silverdr
Thanks, fixed!
Also – input64-8501.tap seems to be corrupt?
This is lovely! This was probably the most high quality computing magazine in the entire world at the time. I remember I got the INPUT-Ass Macro Assembler and the LISP64 system all in the same issue back in 1986. These were super high quality and got me hooked with LISP and the INPUT-Ass wasn’t just my standard Assembler that I used ever since, it’s editor (remember CTRL-k sequences?) was so powerful that I used it as my standard text editor. And it got me all ready to adopt emacs when I moved to an 80286 PC and soon 386bsd UNIX. There was no stopping my career from then on. It is just amazing to have these vast libraries available today for the C64 (and possibly easily ported to the new Commander X16 hardware that will come out soon.)
Great work, well done! Thank you for sharing. I remember browsing through those magazines at supermarket newsstands because they were not affordable from my pocket money budget back in the day (as well as a disk drive wasn’t).
I’ve completetd my C64 computing environment mid 90ties getting accessories at flea markets.
Which scanner, postprocessing and OCR SW settings have you used to archive this excellent final quality @ this small file size?
* I took the clips out
* scanned the A4-like sheets with a ScanSnap iX500 into a 1200 dpi b/w PDF
* used shell scripts and ImageMagick to cut and reorder the pages
* used Affinity Photo to retouch all pages (removed the clip holes etc.)
* scaled the pages to 600 dpi and combined them into a PDF using ImageMagick
* for OCR, I used FileReader OCR Pro on macOS (rotation turned off, German, English and BASIC as languages) and saved it as PDF/A.
The title pages were scanned with a flatbed scanner at 1200 dpi, color corrected and scaled down to 150 dpi.
I’m happy to share my raw/work data. It’s about 14 GB. Just contact me.
Hi Michael.
the first one 1/85 is not working.
sounds like something is missing at the beginning of the file. The long-lasting high tone maybe?
I`ve tried it in Vice on Windows and copied it on tape to try it on original hardware.
Both not working.
The 2/85 is still fine.
I`ve got a working one.
If you like to get it just write an email or contact me on forum64
Really interesting perspective. I’ve been exploring astrocartography tools like AstroChart lately, and it’s fascinating how location can influence different aspects of life.
I’ve tried a few PDF conversion tools, and I like how straightforward pdftopng is—just upload and convert.
Nice resource
This complete archive of INPUT 64 Magazine is an absolutely incredible preservation effort! The level of detail you’ve put into the digitization process — from the 1200 dpi scans to the OCR with multiple language support — is exactly the kind of rigorous archival work that retro computing history needs. I love how you’ve documented every step of your workflow, from the ScanSnap capture through ImageMagick processing to the final PDF/A output. Your willingness to share the 14 GB of raw data is incredibly generous to the community.
I’ve been getting into casual browser games lately while waiting for large scans to process and OCR jobs to complete. Head Football has become my go-to — it’s this simple physics-based soccer game that’s surprisingly addictive for quick breaks. My retro computing preservation friends and I compete for high scores during our virtual archiving sessions, and it’s become a fun way to pass those long processing hours. The matches are short enough that I never miss a batch completion or a file transfer!
The fact that you included BASIC as an OCR language is a beautiful touch — these magazines deserve nothing less than perfect preservation. Thanks for this monumental contribution to computing history. Page Table continues to be the gold standard for retro computing archaeology!