For those who downloaded the now famous ActiveGS “Best of the FTA” iPhone Application this week, there is a piece of good news that all will appreciate. Oliver Goguel, the author of ActiveGS has already submitted version 1.21 to the App Store for approval. According to the post on the FTA Group on Facebook, “version 1.21 (build 3.3.298) being submitted to the Appstore : CRT display (as in the desktop version), 60FPS support on iPhone4 & iPad, and runtime option…
Mike Maginnis has brought another great piece of Apple history to the world through his new Apple ][ Scans site. Inside the Apple //e by Gary B. Little is now in PDF format on his site and freely downloadable. You can download the PDF by going to the Inside the Apple //e page at: http://apple2scans.net/apple-ii/inside-the-apple-2e
Apple, Inc. wasted no time in back to back announcements this week. With their MacBook Pro new models barely onto the show rooms, Apple announced their March 2nd event for the unveiling of the iPad2. Many people have speculated on the specs of the iPad2 for some time now and this is the first sign that we have that the iPad is not delayed as many sites were saying but that it will be available soon. The event for…
After 1.5 years of development and numerous rejections by Apple, the Free Tools Association (FTA) has finally broken through and had the Best of the FTA ActiveGS emulator approved by Apple. The emulator is an Apple IIgs emulator with apps produced by the FTA during the 1980’s and 1990’s. Further development of the app is ongoing and the new enhancements should be available soon in the App store. The Best of the FTA App is available for free download at:…
Geoff Weiss posted the following notice this morning concerning the immediate release of his Memory Testing program, MegaMemoryTestor 2.0. MegaMemoryTester 2.0 is a new release of the popular IIgs memory card tester with the following features: * Available as both a GS/OS and ProDOS 8 application. * The test screen interface has been updated. * The start and end banks can be specified. * Memory tests can be stopped midway and restarted. MegaMemoryTester has a new Website and can be…
Dr. John Matthews posted a note this evening about AppleCommander release candidates being available online. AppleCommander allows users to manipulate disk images on the Mac in a Java based environment. For more information, you can check out the AppleCommander website at: http://sites.google.com/site/drjohnbmatthews/applecommander
Payton Byrd of the A2Command Development team released the following post on CSA2 about the release of A2Command 1.0 earlier today: Release Notes Introduction This is the full release version of A2Command 1.0, dated February 21, 2011. These notes supersede any prior version’s notes. All prior releases may be found on the project’s website at http://a2command.codeplex.com/releases/ where you can read the release notes for older versions as well as download them. This version of A2Command is intended to replace any…
The Ancestor Works site is now back online after a number of years of being down. You can find the new site at: http://anw.applearchives.com Thanks to Bud Simrin, the Ancestor works site is now officially blessed and you can reach Bud through the registration form on the website. If you install the Ancestor Works program, please be sure to take the time to let Bud know.
A.P.P.L.E. Founding Member Dave Lingwood passed away this week. Dave was well known for his insightful columns in Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine over the years and was one of the first 15 members of the group. According to the announcement: Dave Lingwood was a beloved family member and friend who shared his numerous talents with the world. He passed away on Thursday, February 17, 2011. Please join us for a memorial and short graveside service on Friday, February 25th, 2011 at 12:30…
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….
