Mike Maginnis posted a note today on CSA2 about the COmputist Project being dead. In reality, the project has been combined with a number of other projects run by Mike Maginnis to create a new website. Mike’s note is contained below: First, the Computist Project is dead… It’s been static since 2006 and the website had been slowly falling into disrepair, so to speak. So now it’s been re-christened the Computist Archive, and has a new home at: http://apple2scans.net/computistarchive Second,…
If you have a spare Apple ][ sitting around and always wanted the Apple-1, now you can have your cake and eat it too. Mike Willegal has developed a new “Brain Board” which is essentially an Apple-1 computer on an Apple ][. The card itself slides into an Apple ][ slot and performs just like an Apple-1 when the Apple ][ is turned on. The Brain Board uses the Apple ][ cassette interface for all program loading and saving. In…
Ken Gagne posted a note today on CSA2 about a new podcast being hosted by Mike Maginnis and Ken Gagne. The announcement was as follows: Mike Maginnis and Ken Gagne, two long-time Apple II users, are proud to announce the Apple II community’s first co-hosted podcast. “Open Apple”, a monthly show dedicated to Steve Wozniak’s most famous personal computer, begins broadcasting today at http://www.open-apple.net/ with a new episode to come every month. “When we got home from KansasFest 2010, we…
Robert Justice has produced a new Compact Flash card for the Apple //c computer which connects to the smartport interface of the external disk drive connector. The card is still in the initial stages so it is not exactly a completed product but it is certainly showing promise. You can read more about the card at: http://www.users.on.net/~rjustice/SmartportCFA/SmartportCFA.htm
Brendan Robert and Nick Westgate released a new Java based Apple ][ emulator which has a number of features not found in other emulators. The new emulator also runs on a number of OS platforms that are normally not supported by emulator writers. The full release from Brendan is below: Jace (Java Apple Computer Emulator) has finally been poked and prodded enough to be a usable emulator. It’s not AppleWin, nor will it ever try to be. But it is…
There was an article in Wired Magazine Yesterday about Apple ][ software pioneer Bill Budge and his being awarded the 2nd annual Pioneer Award which is presented by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. You can check out the article in Wired at: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/01/bill-budge-pioneer/ Bill Budge is scheduled to present the 2011 KFest Keynote speech.
Just in time for the 40th anniversary of the creation of the Oregon Trail Game, Jessica Lussenhop has written what is likely the most thorough history of the game and the three men who created it. While the game started out as just a lowly text type mainframe based game, it became an icon of American Education over the past 30 or so years of its history once the graphical version was produced by MECC in 1985. You can read…
By Mike Pfaiffer My topic for thought this time is something in Canada which has even made its way to some American media. Our ISPs have been given permission to implement Usage Based Billing (UBB). The way our ISPs currently bill their customers is based on speed. In Winnipeg the two major ISPs are Shaw (cable) and MTS (DSL). Through out Canada we have three more large ISPs. All charge based on speed. Certain ISPs like MTS have set things…
Oliver Schmidth posted a note about Contiki 2.5.rc1 being made available for download this morning. The suite allows complete connectivity for vintage computer platforms via ethernet to the Internet. The full release follows: Contiki 2.5.rc1 binary release for Retrocomputing’ has just been made available on http://contiki.cbm8bit.com/ and http://a2retrosystems.com/contiki.html It’s a straight compile of the unmodified Contiki 2.5.rc1 sources avialable on http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/contiki/Contiki/Contiki%202…. using cc65 2.13.2 The major changes are: – Support of the Atari 8-bit machines with the cart described on…
By Mark Phosis Philip Lord was looking for a basic listing of Tetris in a recent post on Comp.Sys.Apple2 and this was the program listing by Mark Phosis. The program was written in 1992 and could definitely be optimized to run faster. The drawing primitives are at lines 200 and 225. It looks like the subroutine at line 800 does collision detection. ============ 10 GOSUB 1000 100 W = W + 1: IF W > LV THEN W = 0:…
by Wade Clarke This is my ‘new’ (IE previously unreleased anyplace) version of Super Star Trek for the Apple II Time to share another old game of mine with folks in the internet age 🙂 You can download the disk image here: http://home.iprimus.com.au/bloomer/STARTREK.zip In 1995 I put together this version of ye olde ‘Super Star Trek’ game, using pseudo-animated mousetext graphics and some nice sound effects. The interface is also friendly, you just tap a key to do most things….
by A.P.P.L.E. Staff The Apple II software imaging software, ADTPro has once again been updated. The current version handles Apple II’s and Apple ///’s and works over either Cassette port audio cables, Ethernet or Serial connection. The new version includes the following features: New functionality: * [Client] Implemented native assembly ProDOS selector/ launcher eliminating the need for Applesoft; results in 30% faster booting and executing from floppy * [Client] Laser 128 machines can now use their native modem port at…
By Jeff Fink After almost two years without a release, I’m happy to announceSilvern Castle version 9.4. This is a very minor update to the program. Changes in version 9.4 include: Bugs Fixed in v9.4:* In some cases the encumbrance display at camp incorrectly displayed the penalty. Stuffed Changed in v9.4:* The B)urden display at camp now shows the exact amount of cn needed to remove any encumbrance penalty.* Moved the Market C)amp command from the Blue Knight Tavern to…
DigiSoft Innovations Releases Apple IIgs Music Collection By A.P.P.L.E. Staff The Apple IIgs Music collection is now available for download from the DigiSoft Innovations website. Version 1.0 of the collection covers 5 disks of music from various applications of the early 1990’s. The current version of the music collection is recorded at 96K and is ready for your iPod or for background music on your website. The five CD’s included in the collection are as follows: Apple IIGS Classics –…
Title: Oregon Trail Publisher: Gameloft Cost: $1.99 Platform: iPhone Back when I was in junior high school, we had a very rudimentary version of the game Oregon Trail on our DEC PDP 11/40. Playing the game was as simple as making the right choices and typing BANG for the hunting scenes in the game. While very entertaining at the time, it was rather simplistic compared to the 1984 version of the MECC game Oregon Trail. The 1984 Version was a…
By A.P.P.L.E. Staff This month, the gang over at MacHeist has had two events. The first was ta short event to give away the software package Squeeze by LateNiteSoft. While this particular package would appeal to those who are lacking in hard drive space, we feel that squeezing data is not necessarily the best idea. However, now the folks at MacHeist have come out with the nanoBundle 2 and have included some really cool packages. The packages included in the…
This issue I’d like to whine and complain about proprietary versus open standards. In the past I’ve generally come out against proprietary software and standards. I will do so again today. The motivation behind my current rant is the admittedly cheap MP3 player I bought last month. It is a 2 GB Sylvania SMPK2083 made in China by Curtis International. My primary purpose was to use it as a voice recorder for my notes. It does so remarkably well. The…
by Bill Martens Product: Icy Escort Version: 1.10 Size: 4.4mb Requires: iPhone OS 3.0 Languages: English Website: http://www.donutgames.com/ This past week, I began to look at games for my iPhone 3Gs and of course, there are plenty out there. However, the distance between the good, the bad, and the downright ugly is tremendous. One diamond in the rough was a game I ran across from Swedish Game Development AB, also known as Donut Games. Icy Escort is a puzzle style…
This month, I finally joined the rest of the world in the mad dash for the iPhone which everyone else partook in last year. This lateness to the party was no fault of my own other than the fact that I was stuck in a phone contract that was two years long. My contract began three weeks before the iPhone came out and actually ran through June of this year. While this type of contract is not unusual, it has…
by Rick Sutcliffe Just as there are 10 kinds of people in the world– those who understand binary notation, and those who do not–so there are two kinds of people in the world, those who build, and those who tear down. The Spy prefers to be one of the former, and on the occasions when he becomes a critic, tries to be constructive about it, even when this is not easy. (There are two kinds of critics, the constructive, and…
