Sealed Collectible CD-Rom Rare OOP from original Voyager Production Release
Planetary Taxi
by Robert Mohl & Margo Nanny
Collectible CD-Rom produced by the original Voyager Company, 1994
Interactive CD-Rom-Rare OOP - Sealed Factory OriginalMulti Media CD-Rom Software
Produced in the Mid-1990s by the Original Voyager Company
One of the best developers of multimedia CD-ROMs that ever existed, Voyager Company, released dozens of high-quality educational CD-ROMs between 1993 and 2000 before being bought out by Learn Technologies, which then quietly went out of business sometime in 2002. This is one of their interactive CD-Roms for PC/Windows or MAC.
Format: Macintosh/Windows CD-ROM
SRP: $39.95
Age Level: 8 and up
Curriculum: Science and Nature
Zoom through a scale model of the solar system at the wheel of your own cosmic taxicab, dropping off wacky passengers--mountain climbers, aliens, little old ladies--as you go. In the process, find out where a golf ball will fly the farthest, bounce the highest, or freeze the fastest. These and a thousand more facts about our solar system come to life in this entertaining game of discovery. Aspiring astronomers and physicists will also love the spectacular QuickTime movies of recent space missions and NASA fly-bys. System Requirements: Windows: 486SX-25 or higher processor; 640 x 480, 256 color display; 4MB RA M (8 recommended); MPC2 compatible CD-ROM drive and sound card with speakers or headphones; Windows 3.1; MS-DOS 5.0 or later. Macintosh: Any color-capable Macintosh with a 13" monitor; System 6.0.7; 2.2MB available RAM (4MB installed), CD-ROM drive (double-speed recommended).
"Kids get so sucked into this game they may not know they are learning something."--The Atlanta Journal/Constitution
". . . an entertaining romp through the solar system. . . Children and adults who have an interest in learning more about our solar system will enjoy using this CD-ROM and the excellent photographs and video clips for entertainment as well as reference."--CD-ROM News Extra
About the authors . . .
Robert Mohl and Margo Nanny are well known multimedia designers who worked together at the Apple Multimedia Lab on the original Visual Almanac. Their backgrounds are in media and education; their goal is to bring content, humor, and interaction together into engaging activities for kids.
FEATURES
- QuickTime movies of recent NASA missions
- 300 spectacular color photographs and illustrations
- A cast of colorful characters
- Three different skill levels
Over one hour of audio
Technical requirements for Voyager's CD-Roms
Windows: 486SX-33 or higher processor; 640 x 480, 256 color display; 8 MB RAM MPC2-compatible CD-ROM drive and sound card with speakers or headphones; Microsoft Windows 3.1 (TM); MS-DOS 5.0 or higher.
Macintosh: Any Macintosh (25-MHz 68030 processor or better); System 7 or higher; 5,000K of available RAM; 13" color monitor; double-speed CD-ROM drive.
The Voyager collection of CD-ROMs represents an era that is fading into oblivion.Due to a lack of computer systems still capable of executing this software, Voyager products that are still available in the original sealed packaging have significant historical value for collectors only.
The following discussion of CD-ROM technology and its preservation is found inThe International Journal of Digital Curation;Volume 7, Issue 2 | 2012:
Virtual CD-ROM Collections
Although the Voyager CD-ROMs have substantial historical significance, they, and most other published CD-ROMs, are destined to have a dwindling user base whose expertise in the systems required to use them is in sharp decline. The physical machines required to execute them have already disappeared from most educational institutions and even the operating systems are increasingly hard to find; at Indiana University, which once had many hundreds of ?classic macs?, only one person within our University IT Services had distribution disks of the corresponding operating system software. The physical copies of these CD-ROMs are disappearing from library shelves. In seeking examples for this paper we made extensive use of interlibrary loan and we found that many cataloged copies of Voyager CD-ROMs are either missing or damaged.
The long-term probability for individual libraries providing physical access to the Voyager and other published CD-ROMs is nearly nil. The user base is dwindling, the existing hardware and softwaresupport disappearing, and the physical media degrading. While we believe these materials have substantial historical significance, their ultimate survival depends upon spreading the preservation burden across many institutions through a virtual collection that enables networked access for a sparsely distributed base of patrons using modern work-stations.
