Category: Vintage

Mike Maginnis has posted a nice collection of Apple /// Dealer docs online in PDF Format.  The collection, which he recently acquired, contains a number of interesting items including the original announcement of ListServe /// as well as a letter from David Fradlin talking about the Apple ///.  Mike has posted them because as he says, “I am unlikely to successfully auction them for $1.6 million (or even the original estimate of $25,000 to $50,000)”. You can download the entire…

Brenden Robert has updated his JACE Emulator (Java Apple Computer Emulator) Source code to revision 150 and has said that a new build is coming soon.  The delay in the update was attributed to  several bugs which were preventing a build from being submitted.  According to Brenden’s post on CSA2, “I still have some issues with getting the code to run really well when full-screen, but that’s a video generation/scaling problem and I need to profile the code further to…

The latest version of the Soviet era Agat computer emulator has been released.  The Agat is an Apple ][ compatible computer which was developed in the Soviet Union and runs a good number of Apple ][ titles. Improvements in Version 1.22 are as follows: Implemented floppy drive controller for Acorn Atom system. Added support for extension ROMs for Acorn Atom. The Agat Emulator is made for Win32 based systems and can be found here: http://www.emucr.com/2012/01/agat-emulator-v122.html

Brutal Deluxe Software has published the first three videos in a their Apple II Cracking Senses series.  The video series is designed to teach the current generation of Apple ][ fans what it takes to crack old software from the 1980’s game by game.   While much of this software is long abandoned through either non-existence of the company that made it or through the loss of the original code by the author, it is an interesting insight into what these…

State Shirt, a musician also know as Ethan Tufts has released a full length video featuring the recently released Digital Music Synthesizer for the Apple //c.  The song, aptly named IIc Video Song, is available to watch on the State Shirt website or on YouTube.  The IIc Video Song is a high paced multiple layer percussion, piano and vocal mesh which is deftly assembled into a glossy, high quality video that is very modern, appealing to those with a taste…

Brutal Deluxe has added two more new titles to their Apple ][ Software Cassette collection.  The collection which spans the years 1977 to 1982, contains 563 titles as of 3 January 2012.   The new titles included in this update are Powersoft’s Financial wizard 3 and Memory dump. They have also updated Ciderpress and and their disk archives in addition to the new titles.  To browse the collection, go to the Brutal Deluxe Apple Cassette page at: http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/index.html

Egan Ford has now taken his Apple ][ Game Server a step further and created an Apple ][ Disk Server.   The concept of the server is that it allows you to reconstitute an entire floppy disk through the cassette input/output port of the Apple ][ computer.   This is accomplished using old 1970’s style data sound playing through the cassette Port directly to the computer.  The Apple ][ then writes the data to the disk one the disk writer is initiated…

Thirty years have passed yet we get constant reminders of what the Apple computing world was like.  One such reminder is the saga of the Data East published game Burgertime.   Over the years since it’s release in 1982, there have been several renditions of the game on many different platforms and even numerous more cracks of the game, particularly on the Apple ][ computer. Recently, Rich Martin (A.K.A. Datawiz) wrote of his exploration of the winding trail of the cracks…

The latest version of the Mini vMac emulator has been released.   The Paul Pratt managed project is now in version 3.2.3 of the emulator.  The Mini vMac emulator emulates a 128K Macintosh and runs on a variety of platforms including Mac OS X.   One requirement is that you have a 128K Macintosh ROM in file form.  The operating system on the other hand is little problem as Apple, Inc. has released all Apple OSes through 7.5.5 as freeware. The Latest…

The Open Emulator is an Apple emulator for multiple platforms, written by Marc Ressl.  He announced yesterday in the CSA2 that his version 1.0.2 of the emulator was available for immediate download from the Open Emulator Website. Included in this latest version is the emulation of the True 1977 Apple ][ computer as well as the Apple-1 platform.   He has included the following features in the emulator: Emulates the 1977 Apple II Joystick/mouse support with programmable axis and button mapping,…

The Free Tools Association has updated their ActiveGS plugin Apple IIgs Emulation system to version 3.5.750.  The latest version is primarily to bring the plugin into line with the latest version of Firefox Browser and also to fix a a few issues with other browsers. The ActiveGS plugin is the primary emulator for Virtual Apple ][ (http://www.virtualapple.org), which is now run by the Gamezyte group (http://www.gamezyte.com).  To load the latest version of the plugin, go to the Virtual Apple ][…

Egan Ford has once again updated the Apple ][ Game Server in what he describes as “hopefully the last update”. This particular updates adds a 3rd download option to the server -TRACK. The TRACK files are CD compatible WAV files (44.1kHz/16bit) with a modified loader for 11025Hz/7350Hz zeros and ones (8820 bps). Egan also has posted a video of usage of the Track files during the loading of a game utilizing an inexpensive CD player. To view the video, check…

Silver Platter is a NDA HTTP Server for the Apple IIgs computer and is the only one available for the IIgs . The program has been reclassified as freeware by the original author, Kelvin W Sherlock, as of 1 October 2011 and is freely available for download from his website. The current version of Silver Platter supports HTTP versions .9 through 1.1. This product was formerly a commercial product, and is still available from Syndicomm as of press time. Kelvin…

Brutal Deluxe has posted 27 more Apple ][ cassettes to their server, bringing the entire collection to 590 total. These cassettes were recovered from a donated collection and are now available for download from the Brutal Deluxe server at: http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/other/

Egan Ford and Michael Mahon did a good bit of collaboration this week to effect the upgrading of the Apple ][ Game Server. The Apple ][ Game Server allows users to load games straight from the Internet onto their real Apple ][ computers via the cassette port and the audio port of their PC. The HIFI files have been sped up from 12kHz/6kHz 8000 bps to 12kHz/8kHz 9600 bps. LOFI continues to operate at the cassette interface default of 2kHz/1kHz…

More than 10 million Apple IIs were sold during the computer’s lifetime, but even with such a large user base spread around the world, some Apple II software fell off the radar after its heyday and has yet to be rediscovered in our archive-minded 21st century. Many users’ floppy disk collections were forgotten, given away, left in the attic or thrown in the garbage. Amongst the disappeared software until very recently was Dragon Fire, a 1981 dungeon maze RPG by…

In the waning days of the Apple ][, cassettes were used quite prevalently.  This continued into the realm of the Apple ][ plus for a short time.  Now thanks to purchases made of some of these collections by Apple ][ fans, many of the cassettes are being archived. One such fan who has archived materials from a good number of vintage computers is a New Zealand man living in Tokyo, Philip Lord.  His tape collection ha reached levels  unrivaled by…

Brutal Deluxe software has added four more cassettes to the Apple ][ Cassette website.   The new cassettes, scanned and added by Antoine Vignau, brings the number of cassettes in the collection to  563 tapes. The Cassette was the main storage type for the initial Apple ][ Computers from the advent of the Apple ][ in 1977 until the first floppy disk drives were commercially available to consumers in 1979.  They also continued to be used well beyond that time due…

In the 1979-1981 time-frame, floppy disks were quite expensive, yet cassette tapes were a dime a dozen.   Dann McCreary had the idea of putting an entire disk on tape.  Thus Tape-O-Disk was born.  However, after the prices of floppy disks came down to a level where everyone could afford them, the program all but disappeared until re-discovered by Apple ][ collector Antoine Vignau.  When Antoine replied to an correspondence inquqiry by Dann, he received back one of the most insightful…

Mike Willegal of Mimeo fame has created an online registry of all known Apple-1 computers. While Apple Computer Inc produced 175 of the units in 1976, very few of the machines have survived the years and the tradein program Apple had when they introduced the Apple ][ computer. To date, Mike has catalogued 39 units complete with information about owners, auctions, auction / sale prices and current state of the machine. The original Apple-1 computer sold for $666.66 USD in…