Category: Vintage

According to reports, famed Apple programmer Bob Bishop passed away September 29th.   Bob was known for many early Apple II programs which highlighted the capabilities of the Apple II computer and was constantly pushing the boundaries. Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison receiving his PhD.  He went on to work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and his missions included working on Apollo 17, the last mission to the moon. He published a number of titles for…

Apple Computer Inc went through many versions of standards with their brand, products and product presentation over the years.  A recent Acquisition by Apple II Enthusiast Javier Rivera shows the standards which were followed when presenting the Apple brand from the early 1980’s in a much clearer light. This 42 page book is a gold mine of information and shows the purest essence of the Apple II and the beginnings of the company we know today. To download the PDF,…

Ben Heckendorn’s latest video series is now covering the building of an Apple-1 computer from scratch.  The Apple-1 was Steve Wozniak’s first commercially available computer and was sold initially by Steve Jobs through The Byte Shop in Mountain View, California.  Ben Heckendorn is famous for his hacks of vintage and modern gaming and computing platforms.  His videos over the past few years have come to represent the leading edge of hacks for these platforms. The Apple-1 shown by Ben in…

The programming group, French Touch, has released a new 3-Dimensional demo on the Apple II.  The Unlimited Bobs demo was programmed on a Standard 1 MHz Apple //e computer and is shown in the video below: The demo will run in emulation on Applewin, JACE, and ActiveGS. For more information about the French Touch or Unlimited Bobs, check out the French Touch home page at :   http://www.ctrl-pomme-reset.fr/french-touch/ You can also download the disk image in Emulator format from the…

A new Apple II game, Genius, has been released by Daniele Liverani.  The game was primarily written for performance with emulators but has been optimized to run on the original hardware as well. You can try the game out on the Virtual Apple II website at: http://www.virtualapple.org/geniusdisk.html Genius is currently available for free download from: For emulator or Original hardware — https://www.facebook.com/download/852863848091025/GENIUS_Apple_%5D%5B_Ver4B.dsk The source code for the game has also been released and is available in an RTF format document…

REuters is reporting that an Aple-1 computer originally owned by Charles Ricketts is going on the auction block at Christies Auction House.  The Apple-1 is fully functional and comes complete with the cancelled check from the purchase in July 1976.  Estimated to go at about 600,000 USD, this particular Apple-1 has been owned by three people including Bruce Waldack and its current owner Luther Roberts. While other auction houses have had better luck with selling Apple-1 computers, Christies has only…

A working Apple-1 computer recently listed by Bonhams Auction House has sold for a world record 905,000 USD.  This particular Apple-1, originally sold by the Byte Shop in Mountain View, Ca., was one of 50 hand built by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs in the famed Apple garage, is one of only 15 known to actually function.   This Apple-1 will reside at it’s new home, The Henry Ford Museum. For more on the Bonham’s auction, check out the auction website…

The crew at the Retro Computing Roundtable have posted Episode 83rd their podcast.  This weeks panelists include Paul Hagstrom hosting the Roundtable with Michael Mulhern and Mike Whalen.  This week the panel discusses a number of Apple related items including Which Apple II, if you can only have one? Why didn’t 6502 computers get faster? History of Personal Computing podcast Newly discovered Apple I up for auction Chris Osborne on using modems without a land line and his Level 29…

Auction House Bonhams has another Apple-1 in its possession which will be auctioned off on October 22nd.  While there are approximately 60 of the Steve Wozniak created Apple-1 motherboards, only about a dozen or so have been shown to work.  Previous auctions of  similarly functioning machines have fetched anywhere between 385,000 and 650,000 USD. The Apple-1 belonged to John Anderson who was the Founder of the Cincinnati AppleSiders User Group who kept the machine enclosed in a glass case for…

The developer of one of the most popular platform games of the early 1980’s has passed away.  Lode Runner was an overnight success for Douglas E. Smith and had heavy competition from several publishers after he submitted the game for evaluation.   The game originally was developed on the Apple II and became so popular that it has appeared on many of the later gaming platforms. His latest incarnations of the Lode Runner game were being published through Tozai Games.

The Apple2Scans Website has posted a scan of the Apple II book, Assembly Language Programming for the Apple II by Robert Mottola.  The book is a 96 mb PDF and is available for download at: http://www.apple2scans.net/2014/09/01/assembly-language-programming-for-the-apple-ii/

Nishida Radio has released a photo of a prototype HDMI card for the Apple IIe that they have been working on.  Proprietor, Koichi Nishida mentioned in a short conversation yesterday that he will be creating the //c version of the HDMi card first. The popularity of Nishida’s previous cards has meant that stock has been dificult for him to maintain as most of the cards sell as quickly as he is able to assemble them.  The HDMI cards will likely…

Blake Patterson, author of the Byte Cellar blog has given us a look inside the prototypes of FROG Design Inc.  Many of the machines long only rumored to have existed are now available in full living color. Check out more at: http://www.bytecellar.com/2014/09/03/a-rare-glimpse-of-a-memorial-apple-prototype-display-at-frog/

Dagan Brock has announced the creation of a new Apple IIgs focused forum.   According to his facebook posting, ”  In my grand tradition of A) announcing things before they are ready and B) creating things that we don’t need… I am happy to announce that there’s a new forum on the scene over at http://apple2.gs/forum.  I don’t know that we need another forum, but seeing as my intent is to unify the Apple IIgs dev scene a bit, I wanted…

Mike Harvey has announced through his website, the immediate availability of all of the programs from the full run of Nibble Magazine.   Apple II hobbyist Stavros Karatsoidis has spent the better part of 3.5 years typing all of the programs from the magazines into an iPad.  The result is more than 1200 programs on a total of 69 floppy disks.  The complete disk collection is downloadable for free from the Nibble Magazine Disks page at: http://www.nibblemagazine.com/nibble_disks.htm A complete program index…

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…

ADTPro, the vintage apple disk imaging software, has been updated to version 2.0.0.  ADTPro allows users to image floppies from Apple II and Apple III series computers and allows boot strapping of machines directly from a disk image over bare wire.  The software handles a number of emulator image formats and supports many of the newer hardware items produced for the Apple II and Apple II series computers. New features in 2.0.0 included as specified in posting by David Schmidt…

Peter Wong has been working on a proof of concept project for the past several years which would allow the Apple II to utilize wireless communications.  The project has a number of ideas included and even a version of ADTPro, the disk imaging software managed by David Schmidt with the Bluetooth option on the main menu. While there have been several projects which proved the concept would work, this is the first views which show the full integration of the…

Antoine Vignau has announced an update of the Apple II Cassette Collection on Brutal Deluxe.  The update includes the following new items: Apple’s High-resolution graphics (002-0002-01) Apple’s Checkbook-1 (002-0005-01) Hayden’s Songs in the key of Apple The new additions brings the total number of offerings in the collection to 623 tapes.  For more information or to download the items in the collection, see the Brutal Deluxe Apple II Cassette Collection website at: http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/

David Schmidt, curator of the ADTPro project, has announced the release of version 1.3.0.  According to the posting in CSA2, ” Just a quick purge of CVS as I prepare to get going on the new wide protocol in earnest – this should represent the known bugs up to today of the “1-byte protocol” ADT-compatible ADTPro client and server. There’s no new functionality, just a cleanup of earlier problems caused by yours truly.  There will be maintenance as required of…