Category: Vintage

Jeff Dunham, the comedian and ventriloquist has been exposed as an avid Apple Computer collector.  While his first hobby is collecting vintage automobiles, he also has a very extensive collection of older Macintosh and Apple computers from the 1980’s and 1990’s. His collection is currently numbered at 40 units, including the very first 1984 Macintosh.  You can check out his collection in a photo expose done by USA today at: http://mediagallery.usatoday.com/Comedian+Jeff+Dunham+collects+cars+and+Apple+computers/G3448?csp=ipmpg

Howard Cantin was the man behind the printed circuit boards for many of the early atari machines as well as the Apple01 computer.   Recently, Mike Willegal, creator of the Apple-1 Mimeo, sat down with Howard in a telephone interview to talk about what when into those days and his relationships with the heads of what was then Apple Computer as well as how things went with Nolan Bushnell of Atari As for the proverbial story about how Atari refused the…

Mike Maginnis, the curator of the Apple II scans website has posted 7 of the 9 issues of  8/16: The Journal of Apple II Programming. The Journal was produced by Ross W. Lambert and became 8/16-Central in 1990 when the publication was sold to Tom Weishaar. You can download the currently available scanned issues from the Apple II scans  website at: http://apple2scans.net/2012/03/25/816-the-journal-of-apple-ii-programming/

Brian Picchi has posted a new video review of the Will Harvey produced Apple ][ Game, The Immortal.  The Immortal was a glossy graphical adventure that was produced in 1990 by Electronic Arts.  Brian takes you through an entire level of play in the 12.5 minute video and talks about some of the nifty tricks within the game including resurrecting a dead player.   See the video below or on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mELSlynnKrk You can also play the game online at…

R&D Automation announced in a blog posting last week that they will be producing a new run of the CFFA3000 cards for the Apple ][.  The CFFA3000 is a card which allows the Apple ][ to use Compact Flash Cards and USB Thumb Drives for hard drive storage of disk images.  According to the R&D Automation website, “We are now in the process of getting final quotes on parts for run #2 of the CFFA3000. We hope to be placing…

ResetVector, run by Tony Diaz, has put up a new article outlining the history of the Albert Apple ][ Clone.  The Albert, was created with  all of the drives built into into it’s own box and the machine complete with all of the normal Apple ][ features as well as a number of enhanced features all on board.  While most manufacturers of the time were busy copying the Apple ][ as is, wholesale, cards and all, the Albert was a…

Oliver Schmidt, long known for his work on several projects in the Apple][ community including Contiki and Applewin, has now delved into documenting the internals of  GEOS, the Berkeley Softworks  produced operating system for the Apple ][. In his announcement in the comp.sys.apple2 newsgroup, Oliver says” Although the Apple GEOS filesystem is based on ProDOS 8 the Apple GEOS  files are not standard ProDOS 8 files. I’m not refering to file  content here but to the file structure – meaning…

The Creator of the Apple IIgs program SoundSmith and the Apple IIgs game LaserForce, Huibert Aalbers has added his Apple IIgs based programs to his website.  SoundSmith was one of the premier music programs of the Apple IIgs years and allowed game music to be written quickly and eloquently. inspired by what he had heard on an Amiga system of the time and knowing the capabilities of the Apple IIgs, the non-musician Huibert set out to write a program that…

Brian Fargo has posted some ideas about what he thinks the Kick Starter rewards will look like when he posts the project later this week.  The re-start of the famed Apple ][ based franchise came earlier last month when Bran decided to try and make the project completely funded by a Kick Starter project.  Ideas include statues within the game dedicated to the upper level donors as well as a private party hosted by Brian and Alan Pavlish in honer…

Kelvin Sherlock’s Shrink-Fit X, the application which allows for ShrinkIt files to be manipulated on Mac OS X, is now available in a Universal Binary for Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5.   The binary is downloadable from his new website at: http://osx.ksherlock.com/ Or you can download the file directly at: http://osx.ksherlock.com/Shrink-Fit-X-10.4.zip

David Schmenk has released his new Proto Language ASsembler for Apple or PLASMA for short.   This latest language release is the second for the creator of Java for the Apple ][. According to the introduction on David’s website, “PLASMA is a combination of virtual machine and assembler/compiler matched closely to the 6502 architecture.  It is an attempt to satisfy a few challenges surrounding code size, efficient execution, small runtime and fast just-in-time compilation.  By architecting a unique bytecode that maps…

An 8-bit exhibition is scheduled to be put on by two Universita Degli Studi Di Trento professors from 18 April to 19 May in Trento Italy.  Professor Damiano Cavicchio and Professor Ugo Mase are the curators of the exhibition.  The exhibition will cover the entire history of the 8-bit computer, including the machines, the documentation, the advertisements and other related paraphernalia. The exhibition will be held at the Biblioteca Universitaria del Polo Scientifico “Fabio Ferrari” in Trento and will run…

Egan Ford, the curator of the Apple ][ Game Server and the Apple ][ Disk Server, has come up with a new application which writes games directly to a disk allowing them to be played, without DOS or ProDOS on the Apple ][.  According to his posting on Comp.sys.apple2 usenet group, “I just posted c2d (code to disk) to http://asciiexpress.net/files.  I included the source with OS/X and Windows binaries.  c2d will take a single binary (with or without 4-byte DOS…

Former Apple Employee Karl Grabe has given us a look into what went into the Apple IIgs when it was still known as Cortland.  Karl was the lead engineer of the Rom Diagnostics team assigned to the Cortland / Vegas project.  The project eventually became the Apple IIgs computer.   Some great old photos provide a nice nostalgia trip down Apple IIgs Memory lane. Also included on the website are a number of photos of some vintage goodies which were only…

The Apple ][ Documentation Project which was started by Marc Ressl, author of the Apple][GO emulator for cell phones and Java based systems, has reached a milestone  not thought of in the 1980’s.  With disk sizes measured in kilo bytes and hard disk images in megabytes, the project has been accumulating documentation and software over the past several years and has finally reached the 10gb plateau.  In spite of it’s large size, this is in no way the end of…

The FreeToolsAssociation has released the latest version of the ActiveGS Emulator.  Version 3.5.772 was released to address a keyboard issue and caps lock issue that was introduced in the previous release with Mac based users. ActiveGS is a plugin and stand alone app which is used as the primary emulator at Virtual Apple ][.  You can download the latest version of the App through the browser when playing games at Virtual Apple or by goping to the ActiveGS Support page…

The original Eamon Beginners Cave has been updated to display the users stats on the page at all times.  The original modification was implemented in 1985 and never released. So I went back this week  and fixed the mod and am now releasing the New Beginners Cave for public beta.   While the program is nearly 100% ready to go, there may still a few glitches along the way.  If you find any issues with the program let me know. You…

The A2RetroSystems produced Uthernet card for the Apple ][ series computer has proven to once again be a big hit.  Glenn Jones, the creator of the card has managed to sell all of the 45 units that were initially set for pre-order.  At this time, it is unclear when another run of the cards will be produced, but you can check out the A2Retrosystems page to add your name to a waiting list for the next run or for more…

Glenn Jones of A2RetroSystems has made another limited run of the Apple ][ Uthernet Card and is now selling them on his website.  The Uthernet allows users to connect their Apple ][ series computer to a network via a standard category 5 cable.  The run of cards produced by Glenn was initially 48, however at press time, that number had dropped to 24 units remaining. Now only 12 units remaining. The cards are $89 according to the A2RetroSystems website and…

AppleCommander, the Java based disk image tool by Dr. John B. Matthews has been updated.  Version 1.3.5.10 was released this morning on Dr. Matthews’ webpage.  AppleCommander allows you to open Apple ][ disk images and view their content down to the individual files.  You can also use AppleCommander to import and export files from the disk images, as well as to convert disk images from one type to another. The current release features changes made by David Schmidt.  They include…