Author: dfinnigan

Marina, the newest TCP/IP project for the Apple II series, is now fully compatible with the new Uthernet II card from a2RetroSystems. The January 2016 edition of Marina, available today, adds an Uthernet II driver, improvements to the Berkeley Sockets API, and many other changes and improvements which are noted at the end of the Marina user’s manual. In addition, several advances toward a working TCP implementation are in this new edition of Marina, and it is hoped to have TCP fully working…

The October 2015 edition of the Marina IP stack for Apple II is now available. This project is a completely new TCP/IP networking implementation written in 6502 assembly language for the Apple II series. The Uthernet card is the network interface used, and programs interface with a Berkeley sockets-style API. Marina is not complete, for it has only a UDP implementation, and not TCP, but it does have a good DNS resolver and DHCP client. The October 2015 edition of…

At last, the 14 photo entries for last month’s Retro Apple II Photo Contest have been judged, leaving us with a first prize winner for an Uthernet II, a second prize winner for free shipping on the same, and three honorable mentions. To keep everything fair, the judge was someone who is not a part of the Apple II community, but who has a BFA degree and has a basic familiarity with the Apple II. Entries were judged based on composition, elements from…

First prize donated by A2RetroSystems. What do you love most about using an Apple II? Probably that it’s an open system, will expand only to the limits of your imagination, and that it’s straightforward to understand and program. But be honest: you probably also love the retro feel of the machine: the curves, the glow of the CRT, the sounds of the Disk II, the rainbow Apple logo. The theme of this contest is to recreate that vintage feel in…

The Ninjaforce programming group, the people who brought you Wolfenstein 3D for Apple IIgs, have released their latest action game: KABOOM! The game supports 4-players simultaneously– the first Apple IIgs game to do so! “Not only does KABOOM! play like a charm – its visuals and acoustics are of top quality to satisfy even the most demanding GS gamer!” Visit the official site for screenshots and downloads

Legendary Apple II virtual machine programmer David Schmenk has returned from his secret underground Apple II lair to reveal a pre-release announcement of the next-generation virtual machine for the Apple II family: PLASMA 123. It is so called because the same code segments will run, without change, on the Apple I, the II, and the Apple III. PLASMA is the system behind the upcoming game for Apple II, Lawless Legends. Mr. Schmenk states that he has developed new interpreter technology that is…

Posted on the Skype blog is the announcement that group video chats are now free. The blog goes on to say, “For the last few years, we’ve offered group video calling to Premium users on Windows desktop and Mac and more recently Xbox One. Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re making group video calling free – for all users on these platforms. And, in the future, we’ll be enabling group video calling for all our users across more platforms…

As promised, the beta Uthernet II card has finally arrived for me to test out and share my feedback. Big thanks to Glenn Jones of A2RetroSystems for including me in his beta testing program and allowing me to give the Apple II world a preview of this exciting new technology! My first impression after opening the box and removing the bubble wrap is that this is definitely a little card! If you thought the original Uthernet was small, the Uthernet…

Apple has released the first update to iOS 7 since last September to the general public after a long beta test period. This update includes fixes for the TouchID fingerprint system, a fix for the home screen crashing issue, as well as the new feature for automobiles: CarPlay. Apple calls CarPlay “a better way to use iPhone while driving.” The system is only available on select new cars for 2014. iPhone 4 users will enjoy improved responsiveness and performance with…

Margot Comstock, co-founder and editor of the much-loved Softalk magazine, will join us with a keynote presentation at KansasFest 2014, which is scheduled for July 22 –27 in Kansas City, Missouri. Comstock and Al Tommervik founded Softalk in 1980 to share the hardware, software, and people behind the Apple II. At its peak, Softalk had 250,000 readers and uniquely offered broad and deep coverage of everything Apple II related, including programming, game playing, business use, and home use. The Apple II magazine ran for four years before…

The Silvern Castle RPG by Jeff Fink has been updated to version 9.5.  Silvern Castle is the longest running RPG specifically for the Apple II series computers which still recieves regular updates. Bugs Fixed in v9.5: Thanks to Choi Youngjoo for reporting error #53-4035 (and subsequent #53-143 at title page) due to potential overflow of message time delay variable at Red Dragon Inn. Stuff Changed in v9.5:  Added rarity byte to each monster. Low-level encounters more likely to be patrols…

MacNN reports that Apple has released a third beta of iOS 7.1 to developers, accounts say. The code was seeded to select testing partners on December 23rd, but at the time, not the general developer community. The beta is said to make a number of adjustments and bugfixes, bringing v7.1 much closer to its finished state. Some fixes deal with listening to audiobooks, creating a new iCloud account during device setup, and errors seen when enabling iCloud Keychain. Read More

Apple is making the push for iOS developers to adopt the iOS interface and standards. Chuong Nguyen writes on gottabemobile.com The company has advised iOS developers that all apps submitted after February 1, 2014 must be optimized for iOS 7 and built using Xcode 5. The move would at the very least remove visual fragmentation in the way apps look and feel for the iOS operating system. This is Apple’s plan to fight fragmentation of users who have not upgraded to…

As we all know, it’s never a dull moment in the world of Apple II. Let’s look around and see what’s happening. We are all still looking forward to Dr. Weyhrich’s Apple II History book. The Daily Apple blog is talking about podcasts, emulators, and the prices of old Apple equipment. option8 made a USB to Apple joystick adapter. It lets you plug in a USB joystick. Bill Buckels is still at work with Aztec C, and now has Aztec…

Dr. Steven Weyhrich’s upcoming history book, Sophistication & Simplicity, is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com for $22.40. It will go on sale 1st December 2013. Weyhrich states on his blog that, I will say that although the core of the material in the History has not changed much, there is additional information in nearly every section, as well as a more interesting presentation of that material. In other words, the $29.95 price of the book (before Amazon’s discount) is not…

Quite a lot has happened since last time. Let’s take a look at what’s new in the world of Apple II! David Schmenk has made an Apple II card that will interface with the Raspberry Pi. It is called Apple II Pi. A new utility called Spyglass is an online disk image browser that will show disassemblies, hi-res graphics, and BASIC listings. It is in beta and will be improved in the coming weeks. Option8 is selling Apple IIe card…

Volume 18, Issue 3 (September 2013) of Juiced.GS, the longest-running Apple II publication in print, has been mailed to all subscribers. This issue features coverage of KansasFest 2013 and Oz KFest; reviews of the book The First Apple and the movie Jobs; the concluding chapter in our history of Electronic Arts; and much, much more! This is Juiced.GS‘s third quarterly issue of 2013. Subscriptions are available for both 2013 and 2014 at $19 for United States customers, $24 for readers in Canada and Mexico, and $27 for international customers, with several free sample…

The world of Apple II is never dull; there are new projects and things happening each month! Let’s take a look at what’s going on this week:

Jim Salmons has announced The Softalk Apple Project, a site dedicated to preserving one of the most iconic (and ironically short-lived) Apple II magazines ever published. Softalk magazine was published in four full volumes between September 1980 and August 1984. In total, over 9,100 information-rich pages chronicle a pivotal period in the history of Apple microcomputing. Currently this on-line archive contains only a brief profile of each issue available to the project. A Kickstarter funding campaign is coming soon.

The Usenet newsgroup comp.binaries.apple2 contains about 2-3 thousand Apple II programs, but they’re tricky to download to an emulator or a real Apple II, owing to the fact that they’re all encoded with ASCII armor. Well thanks to Format Converter, technology that will decode all the Apple II and Macintosh file formats, these files from comp.binaries.apple2 can be easily downloaded to your computer as a ShrinkIt file. BinSCII files will be decoded (usually to ShrinkIt archives) and so will Executioner…