Last Monththe Spy recounted his adventures with changing his Linux server to a bigger badder machine running a much more recent OS. This month, he bit yet another migration bullet, moving into a new laptop. Why an issue? Software. The longtime reader may recall the iconoclast Spy has continued to use good old reliable Eudora for his mail client, lo these many years. Well, cannot do that even with Lion, much less Mountain Lion. BTW, the new machine is a…
Java Apple II emulator author Brendan Robert was quite understandably pleased to announce that his JACE emulator has reached a new milestone. Said Mr. Robert: This is the first major release, bringing this emulator within a hair of my original vision for what I wanted it to be: it is a complete recreation of the computer I had growing up. (yaaaaaay!) There are a few bugs left to fix, but the only people in this world that claim software is…
Here is the situation… My father was asked to take some pictures for a club he attends every week. He generally prints them out when ever someone asks for a copy. He also prints out a series of thumbnail pictures on a single page. I gather this is called a contact sheet. This time around the Windows program he used decided not to recognise the network printer. This was very odd because all the other programs on his machine saw…
The popular Apple II emulator for the Windows PC is now better than before with this latest version that incorporates the following improvements: Changes: [Feature #4399] Allow Z80 SoftCard to be inserted into slot 4 or 5. (Allows CP/M v3 to work) Reworked Configuration (property sheets) to allow multiple hardware changes. Updated Help .chm with info on No-Slot clock. Fixes: Floating bus not returned for empty slot $Cnxx addresses. Fixes: – A2VGA.DSK: Apple][VGA card detection. – [Bug #018643] Mabel’s Mansion….
The infamous “top-secret” document-leaking web site WikiLeaks recovered just Monday from what appeared to be a massive, week-long DDoS attack from thousands of distinct IP addresses. The group took assistance from security and performance firm Cloudfare in order to handle the extra capacity needed to withstand the attack– over 10 gigabits per second. A posting on the site states: “The bandwidth used is so huge it is impossible to filter without specialized hardware, however… the DDoS is not simple bulk…
A few weeks ago, Ewen Wannop, author of the premier telecommunications program for the Apple IIgs, Spectrum, announced that he had transitioned the program to freeware status. He has now released revised and redesigned manuals for his program, including the main program and scripting manuals. Says Wannop, I have updated the various Spectrum manuals to my new PDF format, and combined the original v1.0 and v2.5.3 manuals into single manuals. I have also added the reference manuals for the various…
Under another hat, the Spy runs WebNameHost which is a small hosting company in business for a decade now, and offering professional hosting in a safe environment for Christian, authors, small businesses, and personal sites. This is less than a living business, but much more than a hobby, as his teaching demands that he be able to discourse with students on all manner of computing technology without seeming too much a fool or irrelevant. It also needs to break even….
It is possible that an iPhone 5 prototype has made its way out of the unknown labs at Apple. According to a Gizmodo article, it appears that a Chinese manufacturer of iPhone cases is showing an iPhone 5 in one of their cases, complete with the miniaturized dock connector. The question now: is it really a prototype, or is it just a simple mockup? If we look to history, we know that prototypes from Apple have made it out into the wild,…
The Java Apple Computer Emulator also known as JACE has been updated. According to Brendon Robert, the creator of the JACE Emulator, “This new version adds a new MetaCheat (free cheat) feature. 140kb 2MG floppy support has been improved to support prodos/dos ordering detection as well as volume numbers.” You can download the new MetaCheat feature as well see it documented in full on the JACE homepage at: https://sites.google.com/site/brendanrobert/projects/jace
The latest version of Apple Disk Transfer (ADTPro) has been released. According to the press release from David Schmidt, “This release understands ShrinkIt-shrunk disk images, and treats them like any other disk image. To be clear, ADTPro won’t create new SDKs – but it’ll unpack existing ones and write them to a real disk of appropriate size. Going the other way – from real disk to image – ADTPro will always create normal DOS-ordered (for 5.25″ disks) or ProDOS ordered…
David Schmidt, author of the popular Apple Disk Transfer (ADT) program for the Apple II, announced that the latest version, available now, has the ability to transfer ShrinkIt disk archives to Apple II computers. This functionality means that it is no longer required to use an emulator or another means to convert the .sdk file into a .dsk image. Therefore, much time is saved. This new version of ADTPro also fixes a few other bugs. Download ADTPro 1.2.2 at SourceForge.
Just the other day, Marc S. Ressl released the latest version of his Apple II emulator for Mac OS X. OpenEmulator, written by Marc S. Ressl, is the most exciting new Apple II emulator around. Designed to replicate down to the littlest details the experience of using real Apple II hardware, this free, open-source emulator succeeds in providing the full effect! The latest version, 1.0.3, adds emulation of the Apple II Plus and J-Plus computers, as well as the Disk…
The Apple store went down at 12:00pm ET today. No known reason for the outage is available, however, the message on the website circulates through multiple languages pointing to the possibility that it is a global outage for a possible website update or change. The apple store is located at: http://store.apple.com
Marc Ressl has released the latest version of his OpenEmulator. The OpenEmulator emulates a number of machines and will eventually include the entire Apple II series in its emulator core. At the moment, version 1.0.3 includes the following features: Added the 1979 Apple II plus and Apple II j-plus Added the 1979 Disk II drives and interface card (13 and 16 sector), with support for DSK, DO, D13, PO, CPM, NIB, 2IMG, FDI, DiskCopy 4.2, V2D disk images Added the…
Apple IIgs programmer Ewen Wannop announced yesterday that he has decided to change the status of his commercial software to freeware. Said Wannop: As my contribution to KFest ’12, I am reclassifying all my commercial software. From now on, all my commercial titles that have been sold by Syndicomm are now Freeware, and can be downloaded either from Syndicomm at no cost, or from my own web site: http://www.wannop.info/speccie The titles include: Spectrum 2.5.3 Deluxe disk image Spectrum 2.5.3 floppy…
Frank Black has released his latest rendition of Eamon Deluxe interactive fiction system. Version 5.0 which runs on all flavors of Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, allows the users to experience the joys of playing the original Eamon adventures all in one place. While the Eamon adventures were primarily developed for the Apple II series computers, this marks the first time that the system is available on all of the major current platforms. You can download the Eamon Deluxe…
Brutal Deluxe Software has added more cassettes to their Apple ][ Cassette archives. The project, run by Antoine Vignau has set out to archive every cassette ever produced for the Apple ][ computer and as of this posting has a total of 566 tapes in its collection. The new additions to the archives include: The Micromint, Inc.: Applesoft Sweet Talker Program Softape: Saucer invasion / Rocket pilot, Solitaire poker According to a posting in the comp.sys.apple2 newsgroup, there are 17…
Angry Birds Seasons HD for the iPad by Rovio Entertainment Ltd., is currently free in the iTunes App Store. The App was recently updated to version 2.4.1 and now has more than 290 levels within the game. This is not the shareware version of the program but instead is the full app. You can download the app from the Apple iTunes store at: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/angry-birds-seasons-hd/id398329664?mt=8
This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken speak with Rich Dreher, developer of the CompactFlash For Apple (CFFA) card. The first batch of CFFA3000 cards sold out in 2011, and the second batch is now shipping with similar sales numbers. Rich takes us behind the scenes of the product’s success before dishing on other II hardware developers Vince Briel and Mike Willegal. We look at the astronomical numbers rare Apple-1 computers are fetching on eBay and at Sotheby’s and celebrate…
Skype version 5.8 has been updated to 5.8.0.945. The latest updates includes a host of general updates and stability bug fixes. You can download the latest version of the Skype software from their website at: http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-macosx
