Author: Bill Martens

If you were not able to attend the Australian version of Kansasfest, OZ KFest 2017, Sean McNamara has a thorough wrap up of the event for your enjoyment at https://the.europlus.zone/ For more information on OZ KFest or for announcements of the next event, you can follow the official Twitter account at: https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=%23ozkfest2017&src=typd

Daniele Liverani has released his latest rendition of the Genius arcade game.  Genius 2 – Into the Toy Caves introduces another 80 levels of the graphical arcade / adventure game, take the player deeper and deeper into the toy caves. The game comes complete with Manual, Disk Image and Diskette Label for those who want to produce their own copy of the the original. You can download Genius 2 — Into The Toy Caves from A.P.P.L.E. at: http://www.callapple.org/soft/ap2/genius/Genius-2.zip The original…

Andy McFadden has announced the official release of Ciderpress version 4.0.3.   According to the official Ciderpress release page, the update includes the following changes: This is a minor update. Bug fixes and features since v4.0.2: Changed the behavior of file extraction so that file extensions are never added unless “add file extension” is checked. Previously, files whose contents were converted for use in Windows always had the file extension added. Added support for MouseText and inverse text in AppleWorks 5…

RetroMacCast has in quick succession posted both Episodes 451 and 452 of their podcast. Episode 451 covers a number of topics including: “eBay finds: Apple playing cards, set of 6 classic Macs, and unused Mac box. They discuss the Mac EvangeList, and news includes the end of Apple fanboyism, Apple MacBook sleeve, and Steve Jobs’ BMW auction.” Episode 452 is the RetroMacCast Holiday Buying guide. Both episodes can be heard on Flickr or iTunes via the RetroMacCast website for free…

James Friend, the Australian programmer who ported the Mac 128 and Mac Plus to run in a browser, has a new port which is making the initial rounds.   Basilisk II, is now available in your browser thanks to the efforts of James.  According to the posting on his website,  he says: I recently ported the Basilisk II classic Macintosh emulator to run in a web browser. I’ve been hoping to get it running for some time, and originally attempting to…

Tom Charlesworth has released a new experimental version of the Applewin Apple II Emulator.  Applewin Version 1.26.3.5 is available on the Applewin website and includes the following changes: [Bug #504] Full-screen: hide mouse pointer after 2 seconds of inactivity (and show again if mouse is moved) [Bug #469] New -no-printscreen-key switch to prevent the PrintScreen key from being registered. [Bug #488] New -fs-height=<best|nnnn> switch to select a better resolution for full-screen mode. best: picks the highest resolution where the height…

Denis Molony has released a new version of his Java based Apple II Disk management utility, Apple II Disk Browser.  This disk image utility was covered in the Summer 2017 issue of Call-A.P.P.L.E. magazine and is one of the hottest net utilities available for management of Apple II disk images, allowing users to see the real content of the files in a host of different programs and program types. Apple II Disk Browser Version 1.0.24 is the result of several…

Andy McFadden, curator of the CiderPress GitHub repository, has made his latest changes to the app available through the CiderPress releases page.  According to his posting, this latest version includes the following changes: Changed the behavior of file extraction so that file extensions are never added unless “add file extension” is checked. Previously, files whose contents were converted for use in Windows always had the file extension added. For more information about current releases or to download the latest version…

In one of its not-so-loud updates to iTunes, Apple has re-introduced the ability to control your iOS apps from your computer with a release of iTunes 12.6.3.   According to the website, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208079, Deploy apps in a business environment with iTunes Learn how to deploy apps with iTunes. Apple offers Volume Purchase Programs and Apple Configurator on Mac to help enterprise environments manage and mass-deploy apps on iOS devices. But certain business partners might still need to use iTunes to install apps. Install apps…

Gil Megidish, known for his Apple II binary file emulator, has captured and released the Apple IIe Hebrew Character ROM.   This ROM allows the Apple II to display the Hebrew alphabet.   According to Antoine Vignau’s Apple II Documentation Project RTF file included with the files, “This is the Apple IIe Hebrew ROM kindly provided by Gil Megidish. It comes from an Apple IIe motherboard 820-188-A. You might need that when renaming the video ROM. The associated files are: 1. 8KB…

The PLASMA (PLASMA: Proto Language AsSeMbler for Apple)programming language, developed and curated by  David Schmenk has gotten an overhaul and update. For those who have never used PLASMA, ” PLASMA is a medium level programming language targeting the 8-bit 6502 processor. Historically, there were simple languages developed in the early years of computers that improved on the tedium of assembly language programming while still being low level enough for system coding. Languages like B, FORTH, and PLASMA fall into this…

Chris Torrence comes to us once again with an interesting Assembly Language problem. Wizardry, one of the early Apple RPG’s, on the Apple II and II plus runs normally, however, running it on the Apple IIe causes an issue with the computer switching to 80 column mode and causing weird issues with the displayed text. Suddenly instead of the normal display of the text, it puts spaces between each character of the text. While most people who have played the…

The latest episode of Adam Christianson’s MacCast is now available.  Episode 205 covers some of the idiosyncracies of tthe latest version of iOS and how they affect the user.   You can listen to the podcast at: http://www.maccast.com/2017/11/18/maccast-members-205-ios-notes/

Tickets went on sale for the Comicon dinner event with Steve Wozniak this week.  The event scheduled as part of the Tokyo version of ComiCon is set for 4 December 2017 and is being held at The Prince Park Tower Convention Center in Tokyo.   While most of the tickets for the event are much more reasonable (in the $100-200 range), the tickets for the 300 person limited event for Steve Woznaik are selling for a whopping $715 (¥80,000 JPY) showing…

The long running messaging and forum service, CompuServe is now on its last month of borrowed time.   With messaging and chat services no longer being viable money makers and the forums pull dwindling, the longest running communications service in America is coming to a close. According to a posting on the forums, Dear Forum friends and family, We regret to inform you that the Forums will be removed from the CompuServe service effective December 15, 2017. For more than two…

The Applewin Apple II emulator has been one of the longest surviving of the Apple II Emulators and this year has seen a particularly large amount of work on the program.   Driven by Tom Charlesworth, there have been a number of experimental releases including the latest 1.26.3.4 which contains a myriad of bug fixes and changes including Fixes to the UI Changes to the device features so that detached HDD’s give appropriate error message Status Indicator fixes Fixes to the…

The Apple II hacker, 4am (@a2_4am) has announced that the Apple II Disk Image cracking utility Passport has been updated.  Passport is a utility for the Apple II computer which automatically removes the disk protection schemes from the original disk, leaving the program completely unprotected. Passport v20171114 includes a host of new features and fixes including: Supports ProDOS RAM disks to read an entire disk at once (IIgs RAM disk, RAMFactor, RAMWorks, modern clones) NEW: DOS 3.2 support (MUSE, Edu-Ware,…

The Nox Archaist RPG Team has added two new members to their programming team.  According to the note from their lead programmer, Mark Lemmert: The team at 6502 Workshop had a blast with the Nox Archaist Kickstarter!  While it fell short of our goals, hundreds of people pledged a substantial amount, which proved to us that there is a real interest in a new Ultima-inspired Apple ][ RPG.  As we forge the plan for our reboot campaign, we are continuing…

Ciderpress 4.0.3 a2 is now available from the Ciderpress releases page.   Ciderpress allows users to manipulate disk images and hard drive images on a windows machine. This update to the program in this minor alpha release ncludes the following changes: Added support for MouseText and inverse text in AppleWorks 5 WP docs. MouseText can be converted to similar Unicode symbols or ASCII. You can download the release from the Ciderpress website at: https://github.com/fadden/ciderpress/releases/

A new version of the Beagle Bros game, I.O. Silver for the iPhone and iPad has been released.   The iOS game, developed by Evergreen Computer Services, LLC has been updated to version 1.3, includes updates to the package for iOS 11 as well as fixing a host of items including: – Fixed a problem when bugs are released and come back on the screen, sometimes they act as if they’re squashed by a non-moving chip and vanish — to be…