Category: Vintage

Earlier this month, Matthew Clark posted a long held mystery of Eamon #80 – Search For The Key by Eamon’s creator, Donald Brown.  Apparently, Dr. William Trent had a unique way of winning the game, however, he never disclosed the secret.  In follow up emails with Dr. Trent, he no longer seems to remember what that solution was and thus Matthew Clark has put our a call to the entire Eamon community looking for those who might have a clue…

Alan Garfield has managed to put together another Apple-1 implementation, this one completely in Verilog.   The project sucessfully runs both the Woz Monitor and Integer BASIC.  Font and Color support has also been added to the project. Thus far, there have been two boards which have been tested and successfully work with this implementation of Apple-1 Emulator.  You can see the implementation of one of them in the photo below: If you would like to try this out for yourself,…

Rich Dreher, owner of R&D Automation LLC which produced the CFFA 3000 card has released a new update on the next run of the cards.  According to his website, Rich says: The first 500 boards have arrived back from the assembler! I have just tested 3 boards and they all work. My tentative plan is to open for pre-orders next Saturday (Feb 24) in the afternoon. This date is subject to change. I will email everyone on the waiting list…

Tom Charelsworth has updated the Applewin Apple II Emulator.  Version 1.27.0.0 includes a host of changes and fixes including: Full release that rolls-up all the changes and fixes from the 1.26.2 & 1.26.3 experiment builds. Changes to the system include: [Change #428] Added Config Input option to use PC Joystick 1 Thumbstick 2 for emulated Joystick 2 play Nick Westgate’s updated Robotron using gamepads with two analog thumbsticks, eg. Logitech F310, PS4 DualShock 4, Xbox controller [Change #528] Improved logging…

The CFFA 3000 card Run # 5 is now in progress.  The CFFA 3000 card, produced by R&D Automation LLC is an Apple II series card which allows users to use Compact Flash or USB thumb drives in their machines as a mass storage device.  According to the R&D Automation website, Great news! Today we verified that 4 CFFA3000 “first-article” units off the assembly line function perfectly in two Apple IIgs computers. The assembler is now in the process of…

Chris Vavruska has announced the immediate availability of his Apple II gs tool, Clip Copy Plus.   He made the program available this morning with an announcement on the Apple II gs group. After many years away from the GS I am proud to announce the release of Clip Copy Plus V1.0. Clip Copy Plus is a Finder extension that brings the convenient ability to cut, copy and paste files of modern operating systems to the Apple IIGS. Clip Copy Plus…

Update: In the June 2002 issue of Call-A.P.P.L.E. magazine we apparently fell asleep at the wheel and a program which I wrote for demonstration of a simple task of manipulating images between floppies.  The original program in the magazine is wrong and will not work no matter how hard one tries.  It helps, if we use the correct BASIC command.  And thus here, in the spirit of our old magazine column’s name, we try to Write the Wrongs for our…

David Schmenk has released a second developer preview of PLASMA 1.0.   This release includes a number of minor fixes and optimizations including a bevy of them from Peter Ferrie and John Brooks.   The PLASMA Preview #2 1.0 System disk has been updated and is available for download from the PLASMA website. This release, while not initially intended for release, has its performance increased by 11.2 percent.   It also adds a number of fixes to its clock support. For more information,…

Have you ever wondered what the meaning of that long serial number on your Apple II gs meant? Well now, thanks to Apple II gs enthusiast Jeffery Yeary, you can know instantly what it means by entering your serial number at the Apple II gs Decoder website. The sample serial number from above, which is from one of the cases we have here at A.P.P.L.E., produced the following results: The Apple II gs Decoder site literally can tell you everything…

Rich Dreher, owner and operator of R&D Automation LLC, has posted an update on the next run (RUN 5) of the CFFA 3000 project. According to the R&D Automation website, Finally the remainder of the parts are on their way, via FedEx, to the assember. They will conduct an inventory count, and if the part counts are correct begin assembly of Run#5! This process will take about 4 weeks + a week to ship the boards back to me, if…

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Ricardo Macri’s Drum8 project.   The program which runs on an Apple II computer, is an 8 bit drum machine which allows real time graphics based editing using either single or quad channel DAC configurations. To use Drum8, you will need an Apple II S.A.M card or any Apple II sound/DAC card, which, if you dont have one, can be built using plans from the Drum8 website. The Drum8 software can be downloaded…

      ProDOS 2.4.2 is a minor release with bug fixes and updates. It replaces ProDOS 2.4 and ProDOS 2.4.1.   Bugs fixed:  1. If a directory with more than 255 files was used, and then a different disk was used, a Bad Dir Error $51 was reported.  2. Bitsy Bye was not compatible with the Appletalk Workstation card.  3. Bitsy Bye was not compatible with the  Mac LC Apple IIe card.   Updates:  1. Thunderclock driver is updated for years 2018 – 2023…

The WOZ format, the mainstay of the Applesauce project by John Morris, has been officially released. This new format for reading and writing Apple II floppy disks allows emulators to more accurately reflect the actual data on an Apple II floppy disk and disk image. Version 1.0 of the format document is now available for download to developers via John’s website at: http://evolutioninteractive.com/applesauce/woz_reference.pdf    

David Schmenk has released his long awaited PLASMA programming language for the Apple II series computers.   Under development since 2006, version 1.0 of PLASMA  can be run both from floppy as well as from hard disk.   It includes a bevy of improvements and enhancements with a number of people from the Apple II community taking part in improving this release. According to David’s website, PLASMA officially can support the 65802 as well as the 65816 16 bit features and can…

An original Apple Lisa-1 has sold for $56,100 USD on the auction site, Ebay.   The Lisa-1, a completely functional unit, is owned by Ebay user, professorinschubert in Karlsdorf-Neuthard, Germany.  According to the story behing the machine, it was purchased from a collector who bought it more than 34 years ago when it was released. I got this Lisa from a collector who purchased the computer over 34 years ago and only turned it on a few times after storing it for…

Gerard Putter has updated the Virtual II Apple II emulator for Mac OS X to version 8.1.  The latest release of the Virtual II emulator addresses a host of items addressed by A.P.P.L.E.’s Brian Wiser and others, as well as some items that were causing the app to crash.  According to the Virtual II website, changes include: Added a preference to use the H.264 codec for making a screen movie, even if the HEVC codec is available. Added a preference…

Brutal Deluxe Software, known for its many contributions to the Apple II gs community has announced a proof of concept project.   DOS 4.4 and MUFFIN for DOS 3.3 to 4.4 has been released and is available for free download from their website. According to the posting, DOS 4.4 is A proof of concept project For a DOS upgrade And you can download DOS 3.4 below… DOS 3.4 is like the OS code of DOS 4.4 with the RWTS routines of…

Virtual II, the Apple //e emulator for Mac OS X created by Gerard Putter, has been updated.   Version 8.0 includes a bevy of updated features including: A disk image file can now be double-clicked in the Finder to start a virtual machine with that disk inserted. Added the feature to speak the text on the Apple II screen, using the Mac voice synthesizer. Fixed an issue that could cause a new virtual machine window to appear with a very small…

Tom Charlesworth, the curator and programmer of  the Applewin Apple IIe emulator, has released a new experimental version of the application.   Applewin 1.26.3.6 has a number of changes and fixes included in it including: Changes: [Bug #504] Full-screen: hide mouse pointer after 2 seconds of inactivity (and show again if mouse is moved) [Bug #469] New -no-printscreen-key switch to prevent the PrintScreen key from being registered. [Bug #488] New -fs-height=<best|nnnn> switch to select a better resolution for full-screen mode. best:…

Daniele Liverani has released his latest rendition of the Genius arcade game.  Genius 2 – Into the Toy Caves introduces another 80 levels of the graphical arcade / adventure game, take the player deeper and deeper into the toy caves. The game comes complete with Manual, Disk Image and Diskette Label for those who want to produce their own copy of the the original. You can download Genius 2 — Into The Toy Caves from A.P.P.L.E. at: http://www.callapple.org/soft/ap2/genius/Genius-2.zip The original…