Seattle, Washington — February 10, 2022 — Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange (A.P.P.L.E.) is proud to announce three new “enhanced” books: Peeking at Call-A.P.P.L.E. 1978, 1979, and 1980 – a nostalgic look back at the early years of the Apple computing revolution through the eyes of Call-A.P.P.L.E. magazine and the Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange (A.P.P.L.E.) user group. These books have been out of print for over 40 years. Articles from each respective year of Call-A.P.P.L.E. magazine are organized into…
Kelvin Sherlock has released the fifth release of his itty-bitty-vtty vt-100 emulator for the Apple IIgs. The program emulates the vt100 with a modem port running at 9600 baud and 8N1 which are the same as the MAME emulator defaults. Changes in Release 5 fix issues identified by vttest. aside from things that can’t be supported, it’s pretty good now. control-space generates a control code (0x00) command-Q to quit command-L to toggle local/online mode control panel only available in ROM…
The Applesauce Floppy Disk Controller client software has been updated. Applesauce 1.60 includes a number of new features and new supported formats as well as new disk sizes. Some of the changes and fixes included in this version are as follows: Improvements and Fixes There has been a major under the hood change to how Applesauce stores and manipulates low-level flux data. This change brings better efficiency and accuracy to many parts of the app. Hopefully I didn’t break anything…
Kelvin Sherlock has announced the immediate release of the AMPLE Apple specific front end interface for MAME. This interface runs under Mac OS X version 10.11 and later and provides the user an easy to use interface with all of the Apple I, II and III series computers, Apple II clones, and early Macintosh related emulator interfaces complete with setup screens which allow quick setup and usage of the App. What Changed Changes included in the 0.240 release of AMPLE…
Denis Molony has released an updated version of his Apple II Diskbrowser program. Diskbroser 1.61 includes some updated features and capabilities in the Wizardry browser function of the program. You can download the latest Jar file and the source code for the Apple II Diskbrowser from the Github page at:https://github.com/dmolony/DiskBrowser/
Gerard Putter has released the latest version of the Virtual II Apple II Emulator for Mac OS. The latest version, 10.6.5, includes some cool upgrades for the free version of the program as well as for the base emulator. What’s new in version 10.6.5 Twenty years ago I started the Virtual ][ project! Because of this anniversary, I include a free upgrade for all users with a limited license; from now on this license includes the full matrix printer emulation. If…
A couple of recent purchases are worth a mention here. First up is Apple’s second generation TV+ Siri remote –product A2540 with the aluminum case, now sold with the Apple TV. 4K, but also available for standalone purchase. This is the replacement for earlier iterations of the Siri remote in the black case–a rather poorly designed piece of work in the Spy’s view. Its touch pad was far too sensitive, making cursor control difficult, even haphazard. Moreover, it had no…
The BASIC 10-Liner Programming contest began today. For this year’s contest, the following are the rules laid out for the contest: Legal systems: All 8-bit computer systems Authorized BASIC dialects: All line orientated BASIC dialects are allowed with a restriction in the category “PUR-80” Since the jurors can not have the original hardware of all approved systems available, the system must be emulatable. The authors provide a recommendation for an emulator and briefly describe how to start the game. Additionally,…
Marc Golembeck has announced the latest version of the DOLORES programming library for AppleSoft. DOLORES is a library of Applesoft based double low resolution graphics mode ampersand routines. Version 12.2 of the DOLORES library includes a host of new features including: &STORE NUM,WIDTH,HEIGHT,MASKCOLOR: push sprite NUM (1..16) to language card buffer. Sprite DATA has to be stored (POKEd) in the area $9500-$95FF (256 pixels maximum) line per line in a row. &VAL NUM: set Pixel mask to color NUM (0..15). If NUM = 16 then pixel masking is…
David Kinder has announced the latest release of the Inform 6 Compiler for Interactive Fiction. Inform 6.36 includes a bunch of newly added features and bug fixes including the following: Features added The algorithm used to apply abbreviations for Z-code has been replaced with a more efficient dynamic programming algorithm, based on the paper by R.A. Wagner “Common phrases and minimum-space text storage”, Communications of the ACM, 16 (3) (1973). Inform has been refactored to use dynamic memory allocation rather…
Identify ][, the Hardware identification software by Marc Golembeck has been updated. Version 2.0 and the subsequent 2.02 include a host of new features with version 2.02 being a bug fix release. According to the website, : BugFix: The Saturn Card detection code lead to an unwanted “flying” disk write on Disk II controllers and connected drives to it. Hence booting the tool from floppy disk lead to a destruction of a disk track and leaving the disk partially unreadable and…
MountIt for the Apple IIgs has been updated. MountIt Version 1.5 was released by Brutal Deluxe Software and according to their website: Mount your disk image files files directly under GS/OS, just like another volume. MountIt 1.5 is a new Permanent Init File devoted to handling different disk image files (.DSK, .PO and .2MG) of any size (from 32KB to the maximum RAM available), only ProDOS based. Up to sixteen volumes can be added to the system. MountIt mounts volumes…
The Apple II Desktop Project has been updated. Version 1.2 alpha 41 has been released with a complete separation of individual language version floppy sets. These languages include English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. Some of the changes and fixes included in this update are: GeneralConsistently clear text screen when exiting apps. #621File Pickers:Enable Apple+letter selection for lowercase filenames. #615Allow type-down selection when holding Apple key. #610Don’t require exact match for Apple+letter selection. #609Allow Shift to reverse device order, when detectable. #605Make scrollbar position correctly…
From Kent Dickey, curator of the KEGS Apple IIgs Emulator has announced an update for Mac OS and Linux. KEGS v1.16 has been released with the following changes: – Better cursor focus tracking, less likely to have an invisible cursor when KEGS is no longer the active window.– F5 now toggles the status display at the bottom on/off. This state can be saved in config.kegs.– Added Dynapro image support–mount a host directory as a…
James Savage and John Leake have released the 599th episode of their RetroMacCast podcast. Join them as they talk about their eBay Finds: American Girl desk and Mac, icon trash bag, and Apple Game Team jacket. John gets his RaSCSI working, and news includes 3D printed Apple logo and iMac found on Twitter. To listen to the latest episode or any of their back episodes, check out RetroMacCast at:https://retromaccast.libsyn.com/rmc-episode-599-rascsi
The Applesauce Floppy Disk Controller client software has been updated to version 1.59. New and Improved DIsk Image Format Support Now supports loading KryoFlux Raw image files. While loading it also recognizes 5.25″ double-density disks that were improperly imaged at 360rpm and will automatically time-shift them to 300rpm to correct them. Opening IMD (ImageDisk) files is now supported. Exporting IMD files also has several improvements. Improved support for SCP (SuperCard Pro) disk images. Improved support for DFI (DiscFerret) disk images….
While most people think of the Apple-1 as a novelty of the past, there are people like Claudio Parmigiani who are taking the machine to points never realized when it was in its heyday. Claudio has managed to get his Apple-1 to not only play SID Tunes but also to run a simulated graphics sprite collision screen on a simulated Commodore-64 Screen, all from the venerable Apple-1.
The Lawless Legends development team has released a new playable demo of their game. The game which has been under development for a number of years is currently at a game version 0.95 but has progressed in leaps and bounds over the past year or so. The Lawless Legends development team includes long time Apple II programming legends such as Rebecca Heineman, Martin Haye, Brenden Robert, David Schmenk as well as legendary D&D designer Jennell Jaquays and famed documenter Andrew…
The Applesauce Floppy Disk Controller Client Software has been updated. John Morris has added a number of new items to the latest release, version 1.58, including the following: Fast Imager Improvements The save file name has now been separated into 2 parts. The first is the product name as before, and the second part can optionally be used for a disk number or other identification. What benefit does this have? Well, if you choose to create enclosing folders then the…
Andy McFadden has released an update to the CiderPress Disk Management Utility for Windows. The release addresses a bug which occurred with scaling in the Windows environment. CiderPress is a Windows based program and allows users to create and manage Apple II digital file archives and disk images. This update, CiderPress Version 4.4.1-d1 is designed to run on Widows 7 and newer. You can download the latest release as well as all source code from the CiderPress Github Releases page…
