Antoine Vignau

Mar 22 2013

Brutal Deluxe Takes Page Of Apple’s Playbook For Latest Release

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Brutal Deluxe, the French software company known for bringing a host of super enhanced Apple IIgs products to market over the years, has been taking a page from Apple, Inc.’s playbook during their latest product release.

Over the past week, Brutal Deluxe Software has released a series of clipped photos including the one from yesterday seen above.  Each photo has shown a bit more of the product cover image but yet no one apparently has figured out what the product will be.

Speculation has been rife among the Apple ][ community with people guessing everything from machine accelerators to well known software packages including Sim City for the Apple IIgs among the guesses.

With the release expected late evening Paris time, Brutal Deluxe programmer, Antoine Vignau has said “Be Patient.  It is a long day!“.  We soon will know what this latest big time release is from the same company that brough us LemmingsGS, Deluxeware, MountIt among others.

By • Apple IIgs, Apple ][, Vintage • 0 • Tags: , ,

Mar 4 2013

Brutal Deluxe Apple ][ Cassette Collection Updated

Brutal-Deluxe-logo

The Apple ][ specific Cassette Tape collection maintained by Brutal Deluxe has reached 589 tapes and is continuing to grow nearly daily.  Antoine Vignau, curator of the site has added a number of items in the past few days including items from the following vendors:

  • A.P.P.L.E. (Library pak 1C/2B),
  • Hayden (Applesoft utility programs, Engineering mathematics-1, Revive, Slow list/stop list)
  • MUSE (Maze game)
  • Programma (Ampersoft, Jumpout/Shooting stars, Saucer war, Time clock)
  • Systems design lab (Funpak I by Chuck Sommerville)
  • Tsukumo (Apple invaders)

More tapes are coming soon according to posts from Antoine.  To download items from the collection go to the Brutal Deluxe Apple ][ Cassette Page at:

http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/index.html

By • Apple ][, Vintage • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

Oct 8 2012

Brutal Deluxe Releases fEDD up Archival System

Antoine Vignau and Olivier Zardini, founders of Brutal Deluxe Software, are proud to introduce their newest software to the Apple II community.

“I’m fEDD up” is Brutal Deluxe’s second answer to nowadays preservation of 5.25″ diskettes on the Apple II. Its main features are:

• Essential Data Duplicator compatible
If Utilico Microware’s EDD or compatible card is installed in your system, it will use the card’s powerful features to read track data.
• Nibble and timing preservation
It saves raw nibbles and their associated time cycles in separate files.
• ProDOS compatible
That may sound weird but that is important. SST is no longer needed ;-) The requirement of two drives is no longer needed.

Discover more at http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/apple2/imfEDDup/

By • Apple ][, Vintage • 0 • Tags: , , , , ,

Sep 10 2012

Brutal Deluxe Software Releases DeluxeWare CD-ROM as Free Download

Brutal Deluxe Software has announced that their January 1996 version of the DeluxeWare CD-ROM is now available as a free download.  The DeluxeWare CD-ROM contains over 650mb of Apple IIgs related software and was the first French CD-ROM dedicated to the Apple IIgs.

COntents of the DeluxeWare CD-ROm include:

  • Apple programs
  • Documentations
  • Creative visual
  • Hypermedia
  • Games
  • Music
  • System
  • Utilities

The CD-Rom is available as a 311.5mb zipped file and includes all of the software on the original disks.  Also the CD Jackets are available on the DeluxeWare website.  According to the website, the system requirements for the CD Image is:

  • Apple IIgs ROM 01 or 3, cd-rom 1x or 2x speed with the associated extensions. Some software require the use of System 6.0.1.
  • The disc is in HFS and can be played on a IIgs or a Macintosh computer.
  • The shareware on this disc must be paid to their respective authors.

While the third requirement is that the shareware authors be paid, it is unknown how much of the Shareware titles are still being maintained by the authors.  The CD is a wealth of information from the 1996 time frame and is available from:

http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/apple2gs/deluxeware/

By • Apple IIgs, Software, Vintage • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

Jul 11 2012

Brutal Deluxe Posts more New Apple ][ Cassettes

Brutal Deluxe Software has added more cassettes to their Apple ][ Cassette archives.   The project, run by Antoine Vignau has set out to archive every cassette ever produced for the Apple ][ computer and as of this posting has a total of 566 tapes in its collection.

The new additions to the archives include:

  • The Micromint, Inc.: Applesoft Sweet Talker Program
  • Softape: Saucer invasion / Rocket pilot, Solitaire poker

According to a posting in the comp.sys.apple2 newsgroup, there are 17 more tapes which will be added in the coming days.  For more information about the project, check out the Brutal Deluxe Software Apple ][ Cassette archive at:

http://brutaldeluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/index.html

By • Apple ][, Vintage • 0 • Tags: , , ,

Jun 29 2012

Brutal Deluxe Software Releases CADIUS

Brutal Deluxe Software has released a new command line too for managing Apple ][ Disk image files in Windows.  According to the press release from Antoine Vignau of Brutal Deluxe Software, ”

Brutal Deluxe Software is proud to announce the release of CADIUS, a command-line tool for Windows to manage Apple II image disk files (.2mg, .po, .hdv).

The first purpose of Cadius is to write the output of the 65c816 Assembler directly into an Apple IIgs disk image (usually a .2mg) in order to quickly test the result, avoiding many keyboard & mouse manipulations.  Cadius may also manage Source Code files, by setting/cleaning the High Bit and formatting the Source Code to make it easy to read and edit in the Windows world.

Cadius is part of Brutal Deluxe’s Cross Developpement Tools Project, a full set of utilities available on Windows (and other) platforms to enable the creation of new Apple IIgs software : 65c816 Assembler, 65c816 Desassembler, 65c816 Simulator, Graphic File Converter, Resource Catcher…

You can download CADIUS from Brutal Deluxe Software’s website at:

http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/crossdevtools/cadius/

By • Apple ][, Vintage • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

Jun 13 2012

Brutal Deluxe Adds More Apps to Cassette Library

The Apple ][ Cassette Library, started by Antoine Vignau of Brutal Deluxe Software now has several new apps added to the library.  Cassettes were produced for the Apple ][ from 1977 to 1982 by over 50 companies but they lost popularity as the floppy disk took over the Apple ][ software realm.

The new Apple ][ apps added to the cassette library include:

  • Apple: Color demos 4K
  • Apple: Breakout 4K
  • Programma International: Home accounting
  • Programma InternationalStar voyager
  • Softape: Screen machine

The additions to the library now bring the total number of cassettes in the library to 564 as of 11 June 2012.   You can find the entire Apple ][ cassette Library at:

http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/index.html

By • Apple ][, Vintage • 0 • Tags: , , ,

Jan 31 2012

Brutal Deluxe Releases Fishhead Copier for the Apple IIgs

Antoine Vignau of Brutal Deluxe has posted a new software package for the Apple IIgs.  According to the posting:

Brutal Deluxe Software is proud to introduce Fishhead, the Caped Copier, to the Apple II community.

Fishhead is a GS/OS desktop file copier application. It offers several features which make it a powerful software for diskette and file preservation purposes:

  • Attributes preservation — All copied files keep their original date, time and other attributes (e.g. invisible or locked) information
  • Batch mode — Removable devices can be ejected and Fishhead will wait for the next medium to be inserted before copying it, and so on
  • Error handling — Fishhead does not stop on read errors, it copies as much data as possible
  • History log — The program displays and saves a log file including the result for each copied file from the source disk

Fishhead recursively copies files from a selected volume by chuncks of 256 bytes. The main idea is to recover as much data as possible from a bad medium. Fishhead has been tested (for months) on an Apple IIgs ROM 01 and ROM 3, with Appleshare (localtalk, netatalk) under System 6.0.1.

You can Download the program from the brutal deluxe website at:

http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/apple2gs/fishhead/

 

By • Apple IIgs, File Utilities, Software • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

Jan 5 2012

Brutal Deluxe Software Starts New Cracking Series Videos

Brutal Deluxe Software has published the first three videos in a their Apple II Cracking Senses series.  The video series is designed to teach the current generation of Apple ][ fans what it takes to crack old software from the 1980's game by game.   While much of this software is long abandoned through either non-existence of the company that made it or through the loss of the original code by the author, it is an interesting insight into what these publishers and authors did to prevent or at least slow down people from copying their software.

You can watch the entire Apple ][ Cracking Senses series at:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2AF40F3DB52FFA22

UPDATE: Antoine Vignau has posted three more videos to the series.  He has also posted a sample unprotected disk for those who wish to try their own hand at the cracking.

By • Apple ][, Cracks, Disk Imaging, Disk ][, Emulation, Software • 0 • Tags: , , ,

Jan 4 2012

Brutal Deluxe Adds Two More Cassettes to Collection

Brutal Deluxe has added two more new titles to their Apple ][ Software Cassette collection.  The collection which spans the years 1977 to 1982, contains 563 titles as of 3 January 2012.   The new titles included in this update are Powersoft’s Financial wizard 3 and Memory dump.

They have also updated Ciderpress and and their disk archives in addition to the new titles.  To browse the collection, go to the Brutal Deluxe Apple Cassette page at:

http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/index.html

By • Apple ][, Cassettes, Software • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

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