Category: Apple IIgs

Ewen Wannop has released two software updates this week.  The first is to his Apple IIgs Byte Editor, Chewbagger.   The second update is to his NNTP client, SNAP.   According to the press release in CSA2, “ Version 1.1.5 of ChewBagger and 1.1.5 of SNAP are now available from my website: http://www.wannop.info/speccie———————— This is an update of ChewBagger, and amongst many small bug fixes and  cosmetic changes, has two new features: Please read the Manual and ‘Changes’ files for more details…

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:

The CFFA3000 compact flash drive card for the Apple II series computers is now on sale again. Rich Dreher, the creator of the CFFA3000 has made a total of 575 boards available for the third run of the card. The new CFFA3000 RevC board also now works in the Apple /// computer and comes with the David Schmidt produced driver.  The CFFA3000 is available for $149.95 from the R&D Automation website at: http://shop.dreher.net/

After an extended downtime due to a server issue, the “What is The Apple IIgs” website has returned.  Alex Lee, the website’s curator posted a note in CSA2 announcing the return.  WITA2GS is an Apple IIgs related website that contains information, programs, photos and documentation from nearly every software package produced for the Apple IIgs computer. For more information, check the What is the Apple IIgs website at: http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/

Paris, September 1st, 2013 – Brutal Deluxe Software is proud to introduce BenchmarkeD to the Apple II community. BenchmarkeD is a benchmark utility for the Apple IIgs. It allows you to calculate the average throughput in reading and writing files and sequential disk blocks of your ProDOS volumes. BenchmarkeD uses standard GS/OS routines to perform its tests. Until now, there were no such utilities for the Apple IIgs. Nowadays, disk devices are USB sticks or Compact Flash cards, physical devices…

A2Command, the Norton Commander style file manager for the Apple ][ series computer has been updated.  Version 1.1 was releaved by author Peyton Byrd with the following updates and changes: This new release features several bugfixes and some improvements including: Added support for the new cc65 functions for listing devices. Fixed viewer to avoid crashing when many spaces are present in one line. Corrected the single file selection when copying. Lowercase and uppercase commands are now active. Date and time…

Eric Shephard, owner and operator of the Apple IIgs Software producing SheppyWare, has announce a new push for an Apple IIgs based SMB2 client.  According to his posting on  CSA2, ” We’re now accepting pledges to increase the value of the S-Prize! The Prize has been established to encourage Apple II developers to create an open-source SMB2 file system for the Apple IIgs which meets certain functional requirements. We’ve started with the $400 seeded by myself and the Apple II…

Ewen Wannop has released an upgrade to his original ByteBagger hex editor program. It is now called ChewBagger and it is a stand-alone file viewer, editor and disassembler. ChewBagger lets you view the raw data of either the data or resource fork of a file, search for target strings within that fork, using either Hex or ASCII data, and optionally allows you to edit the data, and write the changed data back to the file. You can also load an OMF…

Virtual Apple ][ has published a new Apple ][ game.  SHELL*SHOCK is a high paced action tank battle game for the Apple ][ computer.   Originally written in 1985 by Peter Blum, Alan Burkle, and Jonathan Dunaisky, the game has been largely unseen until this month when it was resurrected by the original authors and sent to Virtual Apple ][. SHELL*SHOCK is unique in the Apple ][ gaming realm as it allows users to battle each other in two player mode…

David Schmidt has released an update to the ADTPro program.   According to the posting on CSA2, the update includes: New functionality: * [VDrive] Added the ability to bootstrap into ProDOS with VSDrive active * [Server] Added a command-line invoker for AppleCommander Bug fixes: * [Server] Start the numerical part of batch name at 1, not 0; reset the counter when a batch name changes * [Server] 5-1/4″ disk images with unrecognized filesystems are always written with DOS-ordered physical interleaving You…

“retrogear” on comp.sys.apple2 has posted a screenshot of the Mark Twain ROM 03/04 that was never released, as well as comments made by David Empson from the mid-1990s. retrogear says What follows is a comp.sys.apple2 newsgroup discussion from July 8, 1995 by David Empson about an accidental buggy release of an Apple IIgs ROM 03 and analysis of the changes made before actual production. I have included the sections of the System 601 source code assembled by me which were…

Brutal Deluxe, the French software company known for bringing a host of super enhanced Apple IIgs products to market over the years, has been taking a page from Apple, Inc.’s playbook during their latest product release. Over the past week, Brutal Deluxe Software has released a series of clipped photos including the one from yesterday seen above.  Each photo has shown a bit more of the product cover image but yet no one apparently has figured out what the product…

The ActiveGS Plugin, a combination browser and standalone Apple II gs emulator has been updated.  Version 3.6.1307 was released yesterday in coordination with a server move and upgrade by the Free Tools Association.   You can download the new plugin from the ActiveGS support website at http://activegs.freetoolsassociation.com/ or through the Virtual Apple ][ website at http://www.virtualapple.org

Paris, March 3rd, 2013 – Brutal Deluxe Software is proud to announce Mr Sprite, a command-line tool to manage sprites and to simplify the integration of sprites into Apple IIgs games. Programmers spend a lot of time to prepare Sprites sheets : – You have to ensure the Sprite width is a multiple of 4 pixels (16 bit), – You have to prepare both Even and Odd aligned version of the Sprite, – You have to organize your Sprites into 320×200 pictures to…

WITA2GS has added a bevy of home brew courses for the Apple IIgs Golf Game from Accolade, Mean 18.  According to the posting on the website, “Sorting through many miscelleous archives forwarded on from Antoine as he comes into contact with random collections and images each disk from them, I came across 8 disks worth of golf courses for Mean 18, the excellent golfing sim from Accolade.” For more information check out the WITA2GS website posting at: http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/homebrew-helpings-lots-of-courses-for-mean-1/

I’m a pretty happy camper at the moment. After buying IIGS games like Mean 18, World Games and Winter Games some 25 years ago, I can now finally play them from a hard drive, thanks to some instructions I found on the TABBS CD-ROM. Thanks to Speccie for making TABBS available to all and for some guidance on using Byte Bagger and understanding sector editing! The article by Joe Jaworski can be found here: http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/files/MOVING_DEPROTECTED_SOFTWARE_TO_HARD_DISKS.txt which was originally taken from…

The Latest version of Brendan Robert’s Apple // Game Server  is now available from the Apple // Game Server Sourceforge website.  Of particular note with version 3.1 of Apple // Game Server is the requirement of Java 6 on machines using the Apple // Game Server progam. The Apple // Game Server allows the user to send floppies directly to the Apple II computer over a serial connection, eliminating the need for floppies to play games on an original Apple II series…

A posting in the Apple II enthusiast group on Facebook this evening from Antoine Vignau shows a video of the game play from the long fabled SimCity for the Apple IIgs.  Although originally written in 1994, the game never saw the light of day due to the fact that the Apple IIgs had been discontinued by that time and EA’s reluctance to release it as freeware.  To this day it remains unreleased. If you want to check out the Apple…

This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with Ewen Wannop, British programmer of 16-bit telecommunications programs such as Spectrum, SAM, SNAP, and SAFE. The hosts share feedback galore from the last episode and contemplate how to record a live show. After catching up on some headlines from last month, we plow forward, celebrating the return of an interactive fiction publication and grumbling that even beginner IF can be as obscure as the medium is infamous for. The September 2012…

David Finnigan, curator of MacGui and author of The New Apple II Users Guide has announced a web and email service for Apple II related materials.  The announcement on CSA2 states: Soon, the barrier to entry for starting an Apple II web site will be reduced to the time required to register an account at A2HQ.com, a site coming soon for all Apple II users! Anyone will be able to have a WordPress blog, photo gallery, and enough web space…