Chris Galfo's Apple II, HAM Application
In 1978, Dr. Christopher Galfo, released one of the first
microcomputer applications for HAM radio. With external
hardware support, it allowed communication on the HAM bands with
morse code and RTTY (radio teletype).
Soon after I got involved in HAM radio with vintage computers, I
found out about this application, but I couldn't find documentation
or copies of the program, itself. After a bit of searching, I
found contact information for a Christopher Galfo and contacted him
directly. I was lucky and it turned out to the right
guy. He told me that he sold about 2000 copies of the software
shipped on both cassette tape and floppy. As the software
wasn't copy protected, he thought that there were likely to have
been many bootleg copies made. He still had floppies and
documentation in storage
He didn't have a working Apple II, so he sent me copies of the
documentation and a floppy with the software to see if I could
rescue it. We were lucky and were able to read the floppy and
using ADT, I was able move a copy to a modern computer in DSK file
format.
Dr Galfo's Apple II HAM software
I scanned the documentation, and created a PDF
file. I tried using OCR technology, but because of
the dot-matrix format that the original was printed with, the OCR
results were incredibly bad. I ended up manually retyping most
of the contents of the document so there likely are some
mistakes. Formatting of the original was maintained as much as
possible. Some minor edits for readability were made.
Dr Galfo's Apple II HAM documentation
Chris Galfo told me that there is no commercial value, so feel free
to distribute to other vintage computer enthusiasts.
I have yet to try the software with my radio, but will try it out at
some point.
