Category: Vintage

AppleCommander, the java based floppy viewing software has been updated.  Dr. John B. Matthews has put forth version 1.3.5.14 which is intended to address a freezing issue which has been in many early versions.  The issue addressed in the update affected SWT and has long forced users to to FORCE QUIT the application.  The new version has been confirmed to work on all versions of Mac OS X from 10.5.x to 10.9.x. AppleCommander is a floppy disk image viewer which…

The What is the Apple IIgs Website (WITA2GS) has added a host of new educational titles to their website.  The new titles, archived by the website’s curator, Alex Lee, while on a trip to California offer an ever expanding glimpse into the world of Apple II education.  There are over 20 new titles on the website in Alex’s push in completing his collection of Apple IIgs software and Apple II 8-bit software which was issued on 3.5 inch floppy disks….

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…

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…

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…

The Open Apple Podcast, run by Ken Gagne and Mike Maginnis features Bill Martens of A.P.P.L.E. this month.  Discussions about the latest news in the Apple world, Apple II software, preservation and other related topics took place.  Brian Wiser also joined the trio of long time Apple II afficandos to discuss his and Bill’s WOZPAK Special Edition release as well as other forthcoming projects. You can listen to the podcast in its entirety on the Open Apple website at: http://www.open-apple.net/2013/11/02/show-032-martens-history-founders-wozpak/

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:

Brutal Deluxe has announced the addition of a number of new cassettes to the Apple ][ Cassette Collection.  Their press release on CSA2 states that “Thanks to Ron Graff, former publisher of Magnemedia and Innovative Computer computers, please find new complete titles at http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/  Ron kindly accepted to send his applications to me which I have digitized and scanned.  Magnemedia now contains the five different eduware programs, probably among the first eduware titles for the Apple II. The Innovative Computer…

The Virtual ][ Emulator for  Mac OS X has been updated.  Version 7.3 was released with a host of new fixes and updates including: The “No Slot Clock” now reports Monday as weekday no. 1. Previously it reported Sunday as day no. 1, which was incorrect. Added Applescript properties for better control of the connected devices. The application preferences now offer two color schemes for high resolution rendering. The Inspector now retains its window positions when the virtual machine is…

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/

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.

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/

By Hugh Hood (CSA2) AppleIIWorks Envoy is a ‘faceless’ application for Mac OS X (10.4.x Tiger through 10.8.x Mountain Lion) with a two-fold purpose. First, it provides for Mac OS X Finder recognition of Apple II AppleWorks Files, presenting both a custom Mac Finder icon as well as a custom ‘Kind’ description for AppleWorks Word Processor (AWP), Database (ADB) and Spreadsheet (ASP) files. Second, the application implements a Spotlight metadata importer for AppleWorks Word Processor (ProDOS type ‘AWP/$1A’) files that…

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…

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…

The curator of the Aztec C Museum, Bill Buckels, has announce the immediate availability of two new directory builders for Dos 3.3.  The new Directory Builders Dir33 and LS33 are available from the Aztec C Museum as a free download.  Complete source code and documentation is included as part of the download. According to the note on CSA2 posted by Bill, “ The Aztec C65 DIR33 Project for Apple II DOS 3.3 – RWTS revealed with structures and everything… Download…

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…

Let’s take a look at what’s going on with the Apple II:   – Bill Buckels is still hard at work with Aztec C, and he has made a number of shell utilities for this system. – Eric Shepherd updated his Sweet16 emulator for Mac OS X to version 3.0.1. – The Daily Apple blog is working on a mapping program and ZBASIC for an IFComp entry. – Steven Hirsch has saved the ZVX4 8″ disk controller software from extinction. –…