Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine Volume 36, Number 6 — June 2026

World’s Largest Apple User Group Magazine — Since 1978

Issue Summary

The June 2026 issue marks fifty years since the first Byte Shop with Floppy Days’ complete set of anniversary interviews with people who knew Paul Terrell and his pioneering store. Simon Boak shows how he shrank an Apple II Plus into the SB Mini II, a homebrew clone that has taken the internet by storm. A.P.P.L.E. relaunches the MECC Project with its new KEGS-JS in-browser emulator, with every MECC title headed online and the manuals to follow. A.P.P.L.E. also unveils a set of new web tools (a global events calendar, an Apple II disk viewer, the KREBF Z-Machine player, and the Z-Gen disk generator) alongside its Ultima III port for macOS 26. Also inside are Kirk Pathos’ native FAT32 file system translator for GS/OS, Andy Hertzfeld’s story of the Apple II Mouse Card, and Forrest Lowe’s SAB 4K Pilot Part 9. Rounding things out are a calendar of July and August events, RetroMacCast, an updated emulator rundown, Applesauce FDC 2.07, and the usual utility roundup.

Table of Contents

The Editor Still Bytes Back!
by The Editor (Bill Martens)
The editor notes a month of projects nearing completion ahead of the summer events, with Phase 1 of the MECC.co project well under way and Phase 2 waiting in the wings. With in-person KansasFest registration closed, he points readers to the Digital KansasFest on July 31–August 1, where A.P.P.L.E. will present its behind-the-scenes projects, and highlights Randy Kindig’s interviews and Simon Boak’s Apple II mini. An editor’s note reports a second relocation in two months, with some production moving back to the Japan office.

New Nifty Tools From the Minds of A.P.P.L.E.
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A set of side projects spun off from A.P.P.L.E.’s larger “Thunderdome” project. The Global Computing Events Calendar is searchable by event type, location, and keyword. The Apple II Disk Viewer reveals disk contents by drag and drop, shows Big Mac and Merlin source as text, and can rebuild a z5 story file from two disk sides. KREBF, the web-based Z-Machine player adapted from Fredrik Ramsberg’s KREBF, handles z3 through z8 except z6, and Z-Gen builds Apple II Z-machine disks that run on real hardware. Also covered are the Ultima III port for macOS 26, now in beta build 0183 ahead of a KansasFest finish, and its companion Ultima III Cheater.

Apple II Series Emulators: The Complete Rundown Updated
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
This no-favorites directory covers more than 50 Apple II series emulators, listing each project’s URL, author, and status. This edition adds AppleEm IIe, a new browser-based Apple IIe emulator, and updates the Ample, AppleWin, Clock Signal, GSSquared, MAME, Mariani, and Virtual Apple ][ entries.

RetroMacCast Episode #739: A Free Macintosh
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A recap of the RetroMacCast episode in which James and John share their latest eBay finds: a PowerBook 145B, a Classic II, and an LC III. They also look back at the June 1986 issue of Macworld and cover news including the WWDC 2026 stickers and swag and the story of the Apple ad that broke Microsoft.

Floppy Days #161: The Byte Shop 50th Anniversary Interviews
by Randy Kindig / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
For the 50th anniversary of the first Byte Shop, Randy Kindig presents nine full interviews with people tied to Paul Terrell and his pioneering computer store. They are:

  • Rick Kahn of the Byte Shop of Placentia
  • Commodore VIC-20 “czar” Michael Tomczyk
  • Terrell’s nephew Rob Terrell
  • Chuck Mauro of Apple and Byte Shop #2
  • Sol and Osborne designer Lee Felsenstein
  • Longtime customer Scott Shekels
  • North Star distributors Teryl and Gloria Burt
  • Exidy Sorcerer developer Howell Ivy
  • Computer historian Paul Freiberger

A Return to the MECC Project
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
After a decade as a slow-burning side project, the MECC website returns thanks to KEGS-JS, A.P.P.L.E.’s new JavaScript port of the KEGS Apple IIGS emulator. It replaces the long-dead ActiveGS plugin and runs original disks directly. Phase 1 brings the final generation of MECC’s Apple II and IIGS programs online, about 100 titles drawn from Antoine Vignau’s 359-title database. Phase 2 will add more than 240 manuals as PDFs and in-browser pages, along with a teacher’s guide, in time for the 2026–2027 school year.

The SB Mini II: A Lesson in Miniaturization
by Simon Boak / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Simon Boak shows how he built the SB Mini II, a homebrew Apple II Plus clone in a 3D-printed case modeled on the Apple ProFile. It swaps TTL for CMOS logic and DRAM for SRAM, drops the video circuitry in favor of an Apple II VGA card, and uses a Raspberry Pi Pico for USB keyboard input. It runs real software with a Saturn 128K card and a Floppy Emu. Schematics, BOM, and CAD files are on GitHub, and there is a matching Studio II LCD monitor.

The July / August Global Event Calendar
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A roundup of July and August 2026 events worldwide, each with dates, a link, and a short description. It spans Apple II and retro gatherings including KansasFest, VCF Southeast, and WOzFest; demoparties from Edison, Sommarhack, and Assembly Summer to Silly Venture; maker and gaming events such as EMF Camp and the Esports World Cup; and conferences including ICML, ACL, SIGGRAPH, and KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Japan.

Apple Folklore — Apple II Mouse Card
by Andy Hertzfeld / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Andy Hertzfeld recounts how a mouse wired to the Apple III’s 6522 VIA, combined with Bill Budge’s fast proportional text and BitBlit routines, grew into a GUI demo. Burrell Smith then designed an elegant two-chip mouse card to bring it to the Apple II. Steve Jobs claimed the card for Apple and the Apple II division ballooned it to more than a dozen chips, while Budge’s work led to MousePaint, bundled with the card.

SAB 4K Pilot — Part 9
by Forrest Lowe / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
The ninth installment of Forrest Lowe’s recovery and analysis of Steve A. Baker’s 4K PILOT interpreter covers two command processors. L: (LOAD) loads a string into string storage here, rather than linking programs as in other PILOTs. S: is a computed-goto variant of U: driven by the M: comma count. Includes byte-saving changes and annotated original and revised assembly listings.

FAT32 FST: A Link from the Past
by Kirk Pathos / A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Kirk Pathos shares his first public GS/OS project, a native FAT32 File System Translator with full read/write long-filename and multi-volume support (volumes currently capped at 32GB). It is in alpha/early beta on MAME and KEGS and passes more than 1,100 automated tests. He asks for expert help bringing it up on real hardware such as the CFFA3000 and MicroDrive/Turbo. A demo image and the FST binary are on GitHub, with full source to follow.

Genius 1-3 for the Apple II Release 20 Downloads
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Download links for all three Genius episodes (Into the Toy Warehouses, Into the Toy Caves, and Into the Toy Planets) for the Apple II (via the A.P.P.L.E. store), Commodore 64, Commodore Plus/4, and Atari 8-bit.

The Handy Reference Directory — Quickdraw Demo for LISA
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A.P.P.L.E. brings back the LISA Quickdraw Demo Workshop, its handy reference to the Lisa’s QuickDraw, Hardware, and SysCall Pascal routines produced courtesy of David Redhed. It is now available in the A.P.P.L.E. Store with a newly updated PDF manual and the original 3.5-inch disk image for the Lisa and Mac XL.

Applesauce FDC: 2.07 Software Update
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff / John Morris
Release notes for Applesauce FDC software 2.07 (June 17, 2026). New support covers Heathkit HDOS 640K and 720K disks, a “combined” side option for CP/M, and CoCo RS-DOS disks beyond 78 granules. The release also remembers the drive controller window position, names damaged extracted files better, and fixes how the Fast Imager shows corrupt files, with several contributions from David Schmidt. The earlier 2.06.x notes are included as well.

Apple II Files and Utility Programs
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A quick-reference roundup of essential Apple II software and where to get it: ADTPro 2.1.0 for disk imaging and bootstrapping over serial or Ethernet, Apple Game Server 3.1 for floppy-free booting, the Highlands Computer Services (HCS) software archive, Virtual II 13.0.1, and the KEGS 1.38 Apple IIgs emulator.

itty-bitty-vtty 1.06 / Clock Signal Emulator
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Kelvin Sherlock’s itty-bitty-vtty delivers accurate, operating-system-free VT100 emulation on the Apple IIgs via the modem port at 9600 baud 8-N-1 (matching MAME’s defaults), leaving out only a few hardware-limited features. Also covered is Tom Harte’s latest Clock Signal multi-platform emulator release, which updates its Apple II and Macintosh emulation.

TimeOut Edit BASIC / ROM-inator for Mac
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Hugh Hood’s TimeOut Edit BASIC 5.4 lets AppleWorks 5.1 users load, view, and edit Applesoft BASIC programs without leaving AppleWorks (source code included). Kay Koba’s Mac ROM-inator I kits for the Mac Plus, 512K, and 128K remain available in Economy, Standard, and Luxury versions.

Ciderpress II 1.1.0 / Apple II Disk Browser II
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
Two essential disk-image tools. Andy McFadden’s CiderPress II, the successor to CiderPress, offers a Windows GUI and a cross-platform command-line version supporting numerous archive and disk image formats, multi-partition layouts, physical drives, and file conversion. Denis Molony’s DiskBrowser II, a JavaFX rewrite, lets you flip through disk images down to the sector level, with full source available.

AppleCommander 13.0
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff
A brief spotlight on AppleCommander 13.0, the Java-based disk image utility that runs on most major platforms and converts and exports files between Apple II disk image formats.

URLs used in this month’s issue

Advertisers

Our thanks to our advertisers for helping us to continue to bring the best of the Apple Computing related news and notes to the Apple community on a monthly basis. Be sure to patronize these folks as they are true supporters of the hobby that is Apple Computing.

  • A.P.P.L.E. Store
  • A.P.P.L.E. Books
  • 8 Bit Shack
  • Kero’s Mac Mods
  • 8bit-Slicks
  • ClamXAV
  • 8-Bit Stuff
  • The Eclectic Light Company
  • Apple-1-manuals.com
  • BlueSCSI
  • Forth Interest Group
  • Huibert-Aalbers Software
  • Eamon Wiki
  • Nibble Magazine

How to become an Advertiser

  • Contact the editor at callapple.org for information about advertising on the A.P.P.L.E. website and in Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine
  • Reasonable rates offered to both hobbyists and companies supporting the Apple community