Author: Bill Martens
Target Stores are now apparently getting into the Realm of the Retro Machine. A new hand held game being sold exclusively at Target emulates the original 1984 version of The Oregon Trail. While most games related to the property in recent years have focused on renewing the property, this one plays squarely on the original. In a form factor that looks a lot like some of the Akalabeth emulators for iPhone, The Oregon Trail hand held has all of the…
The guys over at RetroMacCast have released their 260th episode of the RetroMacCast. This time around, they take a look at Descent as well as some really old Apple-1 Relica stuff. To listen to the RetroMacCast, check out their website at: http://retromaccast.ning.com/
R&D Automation LLC has put the CFFA 3000 card on sale once again. Run # 5, totaling 1000 units is expected to go fairly quickly judging from the demand for it. The CFFA 3000 Card which allows users to use compact flash and USB drives to emulate hard drives and floppy drives with real Apple II series hardware, is being sold on the R&D automation website for $174.95 for just the bare card and $374.95 for a completely ready to…
The Vintage Computing Federation has announced the dates and the locations of three more of the VCF events. According to the VCF website, Vintage Computer Festival Southeast 6.0 (produced by our friends at the Atlanta Historical Computing Society) is April 21-22 in the Atlanta area (Roswell, Georgia). Vintage Computer Festival East XIII is May 18-20 at the Vintage Computer Federation museum in Wall, New Jersey. Vintage Computer Festival West XIII is August 4-5 at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley…
The Macintosh Repository recently added Mac OS X for the PPC based Macintosh machines. For those Mac Users who have older iBooks and Power books with the PPC architecture, these disk images are key. The Macintosh Repository has placed Mac OS X version 10.0 through 10.5 into the repository. For more information or to download the older OS versions, check out their website at: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/45-mac-os-x-for-ppc-osx-10-0-10-1-10-2-10-3-10-4-10-5- Also, be sure to check out their wanted list for items missing from the repository…
Today marks the 40th year since just over a dozen intrepid Apple II users held a meeting at the ComputerLand in Federal Way, Washington. A letter distributed by the store manager at the time, allowed Val Golding to get the word out and bring together like-minded computer users who were just becoming familiar with their newly-purchased Apple II computers, to share ideas and software, and to help each another get the most out of the Apple II. …
David Schmenk has updated the PLASMA disk images. For those of you who have been running on the original version 1.0 floppy disk images, you will want to download the new disks. Included in this update are a number of Keyboard related updates for both the Apple II and the Apple III version of the programming environment. To download PLASMA, Check out the GitHub page at: https://github.com/dschmenk/PLASMA
This month, Felipe Pepe, announced the availability of his long awaited CRPG Book. Felipe, a native of Brazil who resides in Tokyo, has been hard at work in between jobs, putting together reviews of over 400 games and RPG systems from the 1975 to 2015 time frame. The result is an almost 600 page book which not only delves into the realm of the games but also how they affected the overall industry. The project, Which Pepe started in 2014,…
We got the surprise of the week earlier today when we were testing one of the newer Unity-based apps for iOS. We have assumed for a long time that Apple, Inc. was controlling all aspects of the iOS infrastructure. That means all hardware, software, interfaces, advertising, and any other aspect of iOS device life with more than a billion iOS devices. Our assumptions though seemingly hit a major roadblock this week when we discovered that third parties were not only…
MacCast has released their 645th episode of the Adam Christianson produced podcast. Topics this time around include: You CAN remove HomePod cable. Don’t. Apple’s changing OS release policy. Apple moves up in global laptop shipments. Apple developing TV show based on NBA’s Kevin Durant. Apple working on fix for Indian character bug. Another option for remote iOS support. How to reset a HomePod. Apple needs to fix album categorization. When Apple won’t replace your battery. To listen to the latest…
Earlier this month, Matthew Clark posted a long held mystery of Eamon #80 – Search For The Key by Eamon’s creator, Donald Brown. Apparently, Dr. William Trent had a unique way of winning the game, however, he never disclosed the secret. In follow up emails with Dr. Trent, he no longer seems to remember what that solution was and thus Matthew Clark has put our a call to the entire Eamon community looking for those who might have a clue…
This week, the Vintage Geek Blog highlighted on of the better and least expensive video converters for the Apple IIgs. This video converter was also a highlight of the presentation at FAPPLE2 Fest 2018 by Atsushi Suzuki and is known to produce some of the best and clearest form of conversion. The CiBest HDMI to SCART Converter-Composite Video Stereo Audio Adapter not only handles NTSC but also PAL conversion for a bevy of gaming and computing platforms from your computer…
Alan Garfield has managed to put together another Apple-1 implementation, this one completely in Verilog. The project sucessfully runs both the Woz Monitor and Integer BASIC. Font and Color support has also been added to the project. Thus far, there have been two boards which have been tested and successfully work with this implementation of Apple-1 Emulator. You can see the implementation of one of them in the photo below: If you would like to try this out for yourself,…
Rich Dreher, owner of R&D Automation LLC which produced the CFFA 3000 card has released a new update on the next run of the cards. According to his website, Rich says: The first 500 boards have arrived back from the assembler! I have just tested 3 boards and they all work. My tentative plan is to open for pre-orders next Saturday (Feb 24) in the afternoon. This date is subject to change. I will email everyone on the waiting list…
James and John have been busy and a massive dump of episodes to the RetroMacCast website brings them up to date. A number of topics are discussed including the latest EBay finds, VCF and other retro Macintosh related topics. Be sure to catch all of the latest episodes by going to the RetroMacCast website at: http://retromaccast.ning.com/
Roger Wagner KansasFest 2018, the premier annual Apple II convention, is scheduled for July 17 – 22 in Kansas City, Missouri. This year marks the 30th time that this event has been held. In July 1989, Resource Central held the first A2-Central Developer Conference, focused on the individuals and companies who were still producing hardware and software for the Apple II and IIGS computers. Within a couple of years, the event transformed into a conference for Apple II developers and…
Over the next few days, we may have periods of going dark due to our servers being migrated to a new service provider. We started with VServers in Tukwilla,Wa. in 1997 where we would just call the server support guys out on the server farm and have problems with the machine fixed. That has changed with the latest change after the current provider took over Peer1 and basically began to insist on us paying fees that are not realistic. Thus…
For those of use who used Apple computers in the early 1980’s, there have been two constants in the gaming world. The first was Oregon Trail which every school age child of that generation still recognizes today. The other, while not as recognizable, was just as influential in the Text Based Interactive Fiction realm. That would be Eamon, the adventure system created in 1980 by Donald Brown. Over the years since his initial version of the Beginners Cave appeared in…
MacTracker, the Ian Page produced Apple product information tracking app has been updated. The latest release, version 7.7.2, includes the following changes: HomePod added to the database The latest OS updates have been added Support status and obsolete status of Apple products added Other minor changes, fixes and additions. MacTracker is a Free app and is available from the Apple app store. For more information, check out the MacTracker website at: http://mactracker.ca/
PLASMA, the modern programming language for the Apple 1, II, and III series computers has been officially released. Version 1.0 was announced today by the developer, David Schmenk. The new version includes disks which will run on a variety of Apple platforms including the entire Apple II series as well as the Apple III. While the program does not run on the Apple-1, it does provide the means by which to develop programs for it as well. According to the…
