The software in the attached .d64 disk image is from " Databar - The Monthly Bar Code Software Magazine " which was published in 1983, and turned out to only have one issue published, so it wasn't very monthly after all.

These programs were to be scanned in from barcodes using a special barcode reader that attached to the Commodore 64 computer.

Only 9 C64 programs were ever published in this format, and they are all here. Also included in the ZIP file is the raw output of each barcode file.

You can see the original articles with barcodes here: Databar - The Monthly Bar Code Software Magazine Commodore edition

Editions were also published for the Atari 8-bit and TI 99/4A

Thanks to

on Twitter for writing the python script to decode the barcodes without the scanner,

for the

'zine, which was instrumental in bringing the pieces together. And

for converting the files into a .d64 virtual disk.