Author: Bill Martens
From the Glyphel Project: 7 May 2017 Today’s Mini vMac 3.5.5 beta has three bug fixes. After emulating an ADD instruction, if the value of the X flag was needed later, but in between there was another instruction that set the other flags not including the X flag, the lazy evaluation of the X flag was incorrect. This broke signing with MacPGP. While fixing this, I put in some debugging code to allow disabling lazy flag evaluation, so one can…
Marco Verpelli has created a volume of the MECC titles on a single hard disk image. The volume which is the complete collection (Well, 158 titles is a mostly complete collection anyways), contains the available Apple II titles from 1980 to 1999 and is on two digital format .2mg floppy disks. For more on this and the process which allowed this volume to be created, check out the What is the Apple II gs website. The image volume is also…
Another original Apple-1 computer has re-surfaced and is going on the auction block through the LiveAuctioneers.com website. Serial number 01-0073 which according to the Mike Willegal Apple-1 Registry database is not rregistered, is apparently the working Apple-1 computer belonging to one “John D.” and was purchased on 30 November 1976 for a grand total of $692.25. For more information or to bid on the machine, check out the LiveAuctioneers.com website for the auction at: https://new.liveauctioneers.com/item/52749252_original-apple-1-computer-1976
From the realm of Antoine Vignau: i’m fEDD up goes v2.3 and now supports RamWorks 8M from a2heaven.com: – You can load your 5.25″ floppies in a single pass, that may help create images of sync’ed titles, – We have added more messages for Brian Wiser 😉 Get your copy @ http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/apple2/imfEDDup/ Next step is sync support for AppleSauce!
April 1, 2017 /RPNewswire/ — The 8-Bit Bunch announce an unexpected discovery for the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Apple II – an original game from 1977. You may have thought that Lemonade Stand and Little BrickOut were the titles to show off the capabilities of the Apple II. This, Light Cycles 3D, was the game that was supposed to ship with the computer but was pulled at the last minute for unknown reasons. We discovered the cassette…
MARCH 31, 2017 — KansasFest 2017, the 29th annual Apple II convention, is now open for registration. Antoine Vignau and Olivier Zardini, the French Brutal Deluxe Software programming team known for countless original Apple II programs and archiving efforts, will join us in Kansas City, Missouri from July 18 – 23 with a keynote presentation to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apple II. Space is limited to 100 people, so register soon to reserve your spot. Attendees are encouraged…
A new 503 byte Sector Viewer created by John Brook has been released. The viewer includes all source code as well as the executable. According to John’s post on CSA2, ” This is a single-block (503-byte) ProDOS utility which will read DOS 3.3 sectors and dump+display them as both hex and ascii. It runs on all Apple II computers including Integer ROM and ][+ machines. It is a SYS file and can be run from Basic.System or launched directly. It…
Gerard Putter has released a new version of the Virtual II Emulator. The latest version, 7.6 is specifically updated to run on Mac OS X 10.11 and newer. Version 7.6 includes the following fixes and updates: This upgrade requires OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) or better. Rewrote the full-screen feature; it now works for individual windows, using the familiar green button in the window title. The main window can now be resized freely, and is not limited anymore to the…
It has been announced that the team of Olivier Zardini and Antoine Vignau, better known to those in the Apple community as Brutal Deluxe Software, will give the 2017 Kansasfest Keynote. According to the announcement on the Kansasfest Website: KansasFest 2017, the 29th annual Apple II convention, is scheduled for July 18 – 23 in Kansas City, Missouri. Antoine Vignau and Olivier Zardini, the French Brutal Deluxe Software programming team known for countless original Apple II programs and archiving efforts,…
From Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine: January / February 2017 – Over the last 30 years or so of Steve Jobs life, many in the both the Apple community and the philanthropy driven community accused Steve of not giving or hoarding his billions of dollars in wealth. What they did not see was the reality that Steve was a giving person early and often. While Bill Gates has a public media blitz with every gift he has given to various causes over the…
From the VCF: VCF West XII: August 5-6, 2017 VCF East is only six weeks away, but we’re already planning VCF West! The show will be August 5-6 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Visit the show web site. Last year’s VCF West was our resurrection of the original VCF which ran from 1997-2007. This year, Vintage Computer Festival West XII will be even bigger! We have two additional rooms to use at the museum for speakers,…
From the WozFest Website: I’m exceedingly pleased to announce that the next WOzFest, WOzFest PR#6, will be held on Saturday, April 29 2017, starting around midday Sydney time (UTC+10:00). The theme of the day will be “Preservation”, with a special emphasis on grass-roots preservation efforts. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say all retro-computer enthusiasts are preservationists of one kind or another – software, hardware, documentation, books: you name it, we preserve it! With that in mind, I’ve lined up three Skype…
The Apple II Scane website has added a slew of new items including the manual for Apple-Cillin II, another issue of The Apple Education Newsletter, and “A Personal Guide to Computers”. The documents are freely downloadable from the site and can be reached at: http://www.apple2scans.net
The Drop III Inches podcast returned this month with their first episode in 3 months. According to the posting on the Drop III Inches blog, We’re back, with an episode that was three months in the making. Mike and Paul talk (in November 2016) about the state of things in our Apple /// worlds, and then speak at some length with Don Burtis (in December 2016), who designed (among many other things) the Microsoft SoftCard III. Don Burtis, who is probably most…
Gerard Putter has announced the release of the latest version of his Virtual II emulator. Virtual II is a Mac OS X based Apple II emulator which features a bevy of features not found on other emulators including realistic sounds, multiple speed, print to PDF among others. Version 7.5.4 includes a number of changes and fixes including: A new option allows forwarding all Command-key combinations to the virtual machine as “Open Apple” key combinations, instead of being handled by the…
The MacCast, a pod cast for Macintosh geeks has released episode 202 of their pod cast. The Adam Christianson produced podcast goes over their favorite products and stories of 2016 in this episode. The MacCast is an members only pod cast which is available in either 6 month or annual memberships. The memberships are available through The MacCast website. To listen to the current MacCast episode, check out The MacCast website at: http://www.maccast.com/2017/01/03/maccast-members-202-favorite-things-of-2016/
The documentation / manual for the Apple II game, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, is now available from the Apple II Scans website. The 10mb download offers a high definition look into the Silas Warner produced game and is a free download. For more information or to download the manual, check out the Apple II Scans website at: http://www.apple2scans.net/2017/01/04/beyond-castle-wolfenstein-muse-software-1981/ Those users who wish to try the game out, you can find it on the Virtual Apple II website at: http://www.virtualapple.org/beyondcastlewolfensteindisk.html
A new Uthernet card for the Apple II series, announced through the A2Retro mailing list, set the date of sale for the cards as Late February. In the email from the Uthernet creator, Glenn Jones, he says Hi, I am currently sending a refreshed PCB design out for new boards. When I get them back and build a few to do thorough testing to ensure no regressions, I will then be placing an order for additional stock. These boards will…
40 years ago, Apple Computer Inc filed the papers of incorporation. One of the people who was there in those early years, Chris Espinosa posted a copy of the original seal: Happy 40th birthday, Apple Inc. pic.twitter.com/CZTvaPDTrq — Chris Espinosa (@cdespinosa) January 3, 2017 Espinosa is still an Apple employee and along with Daniel Kottke, are the only employees remaining from the fabled Garage from which Apple, Inc. was born.
An intriguing post on twitter today caught my eye. John Brooks, creator of ProDOS 2.4.1 has released a short program which scrolls Apple II gs text at 130 frames per second at 2.8 MHz. John is known not only for his recently released updates to the ProDOS operating system but also for his Bitsy Bye file manager on the Apple II series and the A.P.P.L.E. produced TurtleSoft ProDOS version as well as his old days fame for The Apple II…
