Author: A.P.P.L.E.

The Applewin Apple II Emulator has been updated. Version 1.28.2 was released today with a few changes and fixes. According to the Github, these include the following: [Change #616] Support vertical blending for ‘RGB (Color Monitor)’ for hires. Support the old AppleWin 1.25 vertical blending for hires via a ‘Vertical Blend’ checkbox. [Change #621] Support RGB AppleColor card’s 160-color pixel mode by squashing 640 pixels into 560 pixels. Squashing is done by losing every 8th pixel. [PR #623] Do not…

For those in the Apple community who were wondering what happened to the Nishida Radio site, it is now back online. Nishida Radio, run by Apple II hobbyist, Koichi Nishida, is well known for their Video adapters for the Apple IIGS as well as their UNISDISK Air storage and wireless card for the Apple II series computers. Currently, no products are listed for sale, however the main contents of the site seem to be fairly current. Also a product lineup…

Remy Gilbert has announced an update to his A2osX Multi-Tasking operating system for the Apple II. Version 0.92+ of A2osX has introduced a number of major updates to the kernal and APIs of the OS. According to the A2osX Github page, some of the changes to the system include: support of an enhanced shell support of many new scripting capabilities the ability to redirect and eventually piping output Current kernel also supports multiple virtual terminals Support for TCP (via TELNETD)…

Gerard Putter, author of the Virtual II Emulator, has announced another patch release. Version 9.1.2 is set to address a few issues according to the author: It appeared that ProDOS diskette access often failed. This was due to the rewrite I did of the disk head stepper motor (to implement quarter-track access). In the new code I mixed up two variables, and as a result the head position and the stepper phase were not always in sync. This especially affected…

Now available due to popular demand is a spiral bound version of the Apple II DOS 4.1 manual. You can order your copy of the DOS 4.1 manual by going to our A.P.P.L.E. Bookstore. Be sure to check the discount code in the Specials posting on our website. https://www.callapple.org/books

A commit to the Passport Github today adds support for the MUSE Software RWTS. The MUSE RWTS can be found in games such as The Caverns of Frietag, The Function Game and other MUSE titles. Daikin5 RWTS support has also been added to the app. Passport is a tool which allows users to strip a disk of the copy protections, which have been in place for the past 30 plus years, with the purpose of giving users a look under…

The Virtual II Emulator has been updated. Version 9.1.1 of Virtual II is intended to address a couple of issues that came up in version 9.1. It is recommended that all users update their emulator with this patch version. Also, for those users who are having problems with the ROM not being found by the emulator on startup, you should be using the Application Support based ROM file for Virtual II to store the ROMs for the emulator. The directory…

The NAUG Appleworks Forum, which was hosted by Apple2scans.net is now back online. The issues have been scanned by Mike Maginnis and Bill Martens over the years with Mike doing the bulk of the scans. AppleWorks Forum was the official newsletter of the National AppleWorks Users Group (NAUG), dedicated to all things AppleWorks on the Apple II. Ten volumes of AWF were published, beginning in August, 1986 and ending December, 1995. The archive has been enhanced to include higher quality…

Hidden in the wings of the Apple II world has been a gem of an operating system re-build, DOS 4.1. The new DOS is a complete re-work of DOS 3.3 from the perspective of retired Raytheon engineer and former Sierra On-Line developer, Walland Philip Vrbancic. Changes in DOS 4.1 Included in this new version of DOS, is the ability to have full lowercase commands for all commands, a 24 letter volume name, the ability to include DOS Version and Build…

The Apple II DiskBrowser, the popular disk viewing app created by Denis Molony has been updated. DisBrowser Version 1.0.33 includes several new capabilities including the ability to view DOS 4.1 floppy disks as well as CPM/DOS and PASCAL/DOS hybrid disks. The Apple II DiskBrowser is a free download in .JAR format from:https://github.com/dmolony/DiskBrowser

The Virtual II emulator has been updated. The penultimate Apple II emulator for Mac OS X, Virtual II has a number of new features and changes including the following: Disk drives can be configured with a “read only” switch. While the virtual machine runs, just flip the switch to “on” to prevent the disk from being modified. The “Make All Drives Read-Only” entry in the Quick settings menu is a shortcut to protect all mounted disks in one go, essentially…

A bug in Facetime which allowed users to listen in on their contacts without the contact answering a call forced Apple, Inc. into firefighting mode today. Facetime Group Conferencing was taken offline and according to the status website is still offline. (https://www.apple.com/ca/support/systemstatus/) As of 12pm EST 31 January 2019, the Group feature of the app still was down.

Big Mess O’ Wires (BMOW) announced this morning that they were releasing the Yellowstone controller card to the public. The release makes the cards a Creative Commons license open source project. Yellowstone is a Liron compatible disk controller for the Apple II. The original Liron cards were created in 1985 but this card uses FPGA to handle all aspects of the cards control features. You can download the source and design data from the BMOW website at: https://www.bigmessowires.com/2019/01/28/yellowstone-goes-open-source/

Melody Ayers-Griffiths, co-publisher of the Paleotonic computer magazine, has converted the Peter Gunn theme to Chiptune. The conversion of the theme song was performed with a converter program inside of the Apple II emulator created by Paleotronic, the Microm8 Emulator. to listen to the conversion, click on the embedded sound player below or go to the Soundcloud website at:https://soundcloud.com/girlybits/peter-gunn

Homeputerium, sponsors of the 10 liner contest, have announced the 2019 rendition of the contest. The 10 Liner Contest is for 8 bit systems and is focused on 8-Bit systems. The object of the contest is for programmers to develop a complete playable arcade game within 10 lines. Three categories exist in the contest with the 80 character per line 10-liner, the 120 character per line 10 liner and the Extreme category or up to 256 character per line 10…

The MacCast, a podcast produced by Adam Christianson, has released the 690th episode of the podcast. This latest episode goes over a myriad of Macintosh related topics including: AirPower still, still, coming… Snow in the underworld. Target will have Apple Pay. Apple Stagelight not a new video app. Apple updates all the OSes. AirPod 2 rumors. Apple reduces Titan staff. iPhone XR is ‘bestselling’ iPhone. AR app recommendation. Scheduling a Genius Bar appointment. The trouble with trade-ins. Stopping robocalls on…

Brutal Deluxe has announced the addition of over 150mb of new Cortland documents. The documents, from 1985 through 1987 include a hose of items covering topics from Apple Talk to SANE Tools to the addition of the APDAlog France. You can download the documents in a series of individual files or in zipped batches from the Cortland documentation site at: http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/documentation/cortland.html

The Apple II Slice project has been completed. The Apple II Slice, basically is an Apple IIe emulator running on a raspberry Pi inside of a majorly shortened Apple II case. This project was undertaken by its creator, well known Apple fan and co-host of the RetroMacCast, John Leake, in order to utilize a broken Apple IIe case. The case, which was broken beyond repair, was then cannibalized by slicing the useful and needed sections from the original and then…

Brutal deluxe software announced the immediate release of the entirety of their Applesauce Disk image collection. The Brutal deluxe collection created by Antoine Vignau is a 1680+ program collection containing more than 3000 disk sides. The entire collection is now available for download via Bit Torrent through the Archive.org website at:https://archive.org/details/Antoine_Applesauce_Vignau

The dates for the Apple II Festival France 2019 have been set. According to the announcement from Stephane Briancourt, the event will be held August 7, 2019 to August 11, 2019 at the Domain Le Castagne in Auch, France. The Apple II Festival France is an annual gathering of the French Apple II fans with Apple II fans from across Europe and from around the globe attending the event. Displays of the latest hardware and software from the French Apple…