Category: Vintage

Well, the mind of the Charles Mangin has once again come up with a project which will rock the world at its core. Bit Coin Mining on the Apple II. Yes, you heard right. Mining actual Bit Coins on the proverbial Apple II computer, the 1MHz wonder machine which has lasted 40 plus years now. While this project would have been almost a perfect April Fools project such as the now very real Java Virtual Machine for the Apple II…

Daniel Henderson has given the Apple II community the latest Apple II game. Oubliette is a simple yet effective game for the Apple II which puts the user in the position of trying to work their way through seven levels of a dungeon, collecting the prize in each level. According to the author, “Ok… It basically a medieval themed puzzle game. The knight is trapped in a dungeon (or oubliette) you and has to work out how to get to…

When it comes to Apple II, I’m easy to please. Every time I see a new product or something that gives new use, combines new technology and makes my retro computing more fun, I’m very happy with it. Now add some lights to the equation and let me control it within the computer – I’m in heaven! That’s just what Plamen Vasilov from a2heaven did: the newDisk II LED, is a perfect addition to the retro gadgetry. It allows me…

The Apple II disk crack/conversion program, Passport, has been updated. The latest release includes the following cracks: NEW: verify pure 13-sector disks (by qkumba) NEW: verify Infocom 18-sector disks (by qkumba) NEW: patchers/artsci.a (AceCalc, Magicalc, Photar) NEW: patchers/choplifter.a (Russki Duck, Choplifter) (by qkumba) NEW: patchers/dakin5.a (Neutrons, MIRV, Rings of Saturn) NEW: patchers/e7everywhere.a (Curious George series, Garfield Trivia Game) NEW: patchers/hallabs.a (Sheila, Super Taxman II) NEW: patchers/hoffman.a (Good Thinking! series) NEW: patchers/holle.a (Crime Wave, Sherwood Forest) NEW: patchers/muserwts.a (Caverns of Freitag,…

Denis Molony has updated his Apple II DiskBrowser app. This new release, version 1.0.35, includes the ability to reset the directory in which DiskBrowser looks for your disk images. DiskBrowser is a Java based app which allows users to display the contents of Apple II disk images with a high degree of file type accuracy. The app has been developed over the past couple of years and has WOZ support. The Apple II DiskBrowser is a free download from the…

The 6502 Workshop team is pleased to announce that the Kickstarter campaign for the boxed edition of Nox Archaist is now live! Click here to pledge! What’s better than a brand new, hand-coded 8-bit classic 80s era tile based RPG?  Answer: One that comes in an awesome collector’s edition box with lots of cool physical goodies! What’s even better than that?  When the game will also feature an NPC appearance by Lord British, the alter ego of Richard Garriott, the creator of the Ultima series of…

It’s official, Lord British will appear as an NPC in Nox Archaist! It is a dark time for the metaverse.  Ripples of discord radiate out from Vali, the world of Nox Archaist.  Lord British learns of the dangerous omens and seeks to return order to the chaos that threatens to consume creation!  He has journeyed to the world of Vali to assist and guide adventurers as they unravel the mysteries and face the challenges of Nox Archaist. This is a big…

It’s official! Nox Archaist will have at least beta support for Mockingboard music when released. For more details check out the blog post here! https://www.6502workshop.com/2019/04/mockingboard-support-update.html

Charles Mangin has announced an update to his SIM8800 Altair Emulator for the Apple II. SIM8800 is a graphical version of the Apple80 Altair Emulator by Dann McCreary and shows the standard Altair “lights” in low resolution graphics on the Apple II screen. The Update to SIM8800 includes the a menu giving the emulator ability to run two flavors of BASIC and also includes Microchess as well as the original Kill-The-Bit as a demo now. SIM8800 comes complete with a…

The Nox Archaist Kickstarter launch on May 2nd is right around the corner so we thought you might enjoy seeing a preview of what we have in store! We hope to earn your support!

The 6502 Workshop team is launching a Kickstarter campaign on May 2, 2019 to produce a collector’s edition of Nox Archaist! Nox Archaist is a brand new tile based 8-bit RPG inspired by classics like Ultima and Bard’s Tale.  It is written for the Apple II computer, but is easily playable on any modern Mac or PC via emulation.  It’s been designed and hand-coded from scratch by a team of awesome programmers and artists, and even a few legends from the golden…

For those in the Apple community who were wondering what happened to the Nishida Radio site, it is now back online. Nishida Radio, run by Apple II hobbyist, Koichi Nishida, is well known for their Video adapters for the Apple IIGS as well as their UNISDISK Air storage and wireless card for the Apple II series computers. Currently, no products are listed for sale, however the main contents of the site seem to be fairly current. Also a product lineup…

A commit to the Passport Github today adds support for the MUSE Software RWTS. The MUSE RWTS can be found in games such as The Caverns of Frietag, The Function Game and other MUSE titles. Daikin5 RWTS support has also been added to the app. Passport is a tool which allows users to strip a disk of the copy protections, which have been in place for the past 30 plus years, with the purpose of giving users a look under…

A new Alpha of the Apple II Desktop has been released. This update of the Apple II Desktop, a graphical mouse driven interface, includes a bevy of enhancements to the program including: Current time shown on right side of menu bar, if system has a clock. (#7) Up to 13 volumes are shown on the desktop (was 10). (#20) Up to 12 Desk Accessories are shown in the menu (was 8). (#90) Drag “unlimited” number of icons (was 20). (#18)…

This morning, I saw a post from Tim Cook which caused me to take pause of what I was doing and reminisce a bit. 35 years ago, I was a young computer lab technician working in the college computer lab, supporting 100 Apple II systems on a Corvus Network. We began receiving new computers in a trickle so that the college could determine which computer they would be purchasing next to replace the aging Apple II and II plus systems….

Christopher Mosher has released a software package which allows a more precise recovery method of recovering Cassette tapes with data on them. Being as most of the tapes created for computers with cassette interfaces were created in the 1970’s the quality of the tapes and the data recovered from them can be quite problematic. But according to Chris’s Facebook posting, he says, “I’ve tested it on a limited number of images and it has successfully recovered some that wouldn’t load…

For nearly 20 years, Wordperfect 2.21a for the Apple II gs did not support the year 2000 and beyond. That is no longer the case. Thanks to some skillful hacking by Brutal Deluxe’s Antoine Vignau, Wordperfect now has full Y2K compliant date support. For nearly 20 years, Wordperfect 2.21a for the Apple II gs did not support the year 2000 and beyond. That is no longer the case. Thanks to some skillful hacking by Brutal Deluxe’s Antoine Vignau, Wordperfect now…

A couple of months ago I returned to my parents home in Madrid, Spain and was able to find some of the early code I wrote for the Apple II. I wasn’t very confident my 5 1/4” floppy disks could have survived 30 years in storage but I decided to send them to my friends Antoine Vignau (from Brutal Deluxe Software) anyway. Some of the disks were damaged but I had enough backup copies that eventually both Teacher’s Wizard and…

Chris Morrison has posted an interesting new item to his VintageGeek Blog this past couple of weeks. He takes the viewers on a ride through the ups and downs of building a MicroDrive Turbo card for the Apple IIgs using images from the Alex Lee curated WITA2GS website as well as the utility CiderPress running on Windows. If you are interested in running real Apple IIgs hardware with the Microdrive Turbo then you definitely will want to have a look…

Original Posting: 13 January 2017 Ryan Suenaga was a well known Apple II gs programmer and Ryan’s Apple Software curator, with a number of Apple IIgs tools and utilities to his name.   He was an active Apple II community member until his unexpected death hiking the Alamona Trail in Hawaii in 2011. Sadly, when his website disappeared so did his utilities that were previously available to the Apple computing community. Now, Apple2Scans.net curator Mike Maginnis has created an archive for…