Glenn Jones of a2RetroSystems has announced the availability of the Uthernet II cards. The Uthernet II is the only ethernet card available for the Apple II series computers. As of 21 January, there is stock on hand for those who have been waiting for the, The website allows ordering of up to four units and each unit is priced at $70 USD per. For more information or to order the Uthernet II cards, check out the A2RetroSystems website at:http://a2retrosystems.com
Vince Weaver has given us a bit more of his “Talbot Fantasy 7” game, which is as he says, “a sort of RPG” for the Apple II series computer as well as under the Linux operating system. If you haven’t checked it out already, this one is a bit of a fun watch. Be forewarned, this is not the glossy Playstation 5 kind of videos you might be used to in this day and age. It is pure, Retro goodness…
Our friends over at Inaudible Discussion came up with a way of getting Mac OS 9 and older Mac OS X (10.0-10.4) running on the Silicon based M1 Mac’s with QEMU. While this kind of hard core install is not for everyone, with QEMU as the main focus of the install, it just goes to prove that where there is a will, there is a way, when it comes to emulation and retro operating systems on the newer machines. Check…
Technology News and Views Since 1983February 2021 Why is understanding so difficult? The Spy’s opening lectures to both his first year calculus classes, and his third year computing students taking programming language concepts start with much the same words. “To date you have been shown recipes for ways to manipulate your algebras (that’s what a programming notation is) in order to solve a few canonical problems. But now, you are done with rote learning. This course focuses on what may…
Apple released another update to the latest version of Mac OS Big Sur. The MacOS version 11.2 update includes the following: macOS Big Sur 11.2 Update 11.2 — Restart Required macOS Big Sur 11.2 improves Bluetooth reliability and fixes the following issues: External displays may show a black screen when connected to a Mac mini (M1, 2020) using an HDMI to DVI converter Edits to Apple ProRAW photos in the Photos app may not save iCloud Drive could turn off…
Gunnar Kanold has officially announced the start of the 2021 rendition of the BASIC10Liners programming contest. BASIC10Liners is an annual 8-bit programming contest which allows authors to use any 8-bit platform and come up with their best 10 line program. This years event marks the 10th anniversary of the BASIC10Liners programming contest and stands to be one of the best ever. People have been clamoring to get the event started and now it is a full go. The categories for…
The Gryphon project also know as Mini vMac has apparently received a Chinese translation for the Mini vMac user interface. Paul Pratt, the curator of the site, says that until now, displaying Chinese in the Mini vMac was not really feasible and in spite of this, has made both the translation available as well as a Pinyin version of the translation available. Simplified Chinese:https://www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/local/zh_hans.html Pinyin Chinese:https://www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/local/zh_latn.html For more information about this or other Mini vMac related items, check out the…
Huw Williams has once again been at the computer and created a masterpiece map for an Eamon adventure. This week’s target is EAMON Adventure number 206, Curse of Hellsblade. Curse of Hellsblade is an adventure which was originally created for the Knight Quest system , a highly advanced version of EAMON style text adventure system, by the author John Nelson. John Nelson was the founder of the National EAMON Users Club, which produced a newsletter for several years. The newsletters…
Francois Vander Linden has posted a proof of concept for his Excel Spreadsheet Assembler. As it is still in very rough form, Franco obviously has some hopes for it saying, ” I think it might be useful for some rapid 6502 test routines with an emulator for example.” Some of the features included in the assembler are: all the 6502 instructions plus a couple of pseudo-instructions – all addressing modes global and local labels EQUs to declare constants use of…
A.P.P.L.E. Member Tom Porter and Daniel Henderson have announced the latest version of their Oubliette graphical adventure game. Oubliette 2021 is the second game in the Oubliette series games and is a fully keyboard controlled tile based adventure that runs on any Apple II series computer with 128kb of RAM onboard. The game play is very much like the original Oubliette game, where you become the adventurer, running through the maze, hitting switches which opens seemly random doors, all…
The Virtual II Apple II Emulator has been updated. A minor update, version 10.2.1 addresses an in version 10.2 in which the “game paddle input values to make large jumps, skipping intermediate values”. To download the latest version of the Virtual II, go to their website at:http://www.virtualii.com
If you haven’t seen this video yet, this is probably the best history of Epyx ever produced. Written and produced by the Bastich B, the video takes the viewer through the humble beginnings of the company and through the one hundred plus games that the company produced from 1978. Starting with Starfleet Orion, the video takes us all the way to downfall of the company in 1990 and is adorned with the graphics and covers of the games. It also…
Another Apple-1 computer is up for Auction on EBay. The Apple-1, the 79th listed in the official Apple-1 Registry is set for a buy it now of a cool $1.5 Million USD. The Apple-1 computer was built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in their now famed garage and was the stepping stone to making Apple Computer, Inc. what it is today. Owned now by a Krishna B. Blake of Canada, the machine was recently repaired by the famed curator…
Brutal Deluxe Software has announced the release of the latest version of the 1990’s Brainstorm Software package, Hierarchic. Version 1.6.2, which was apparently finished in 1994 and never released according to the posting on their website, has been updated to Merlin32 and is now available from the Brutal Deluxe Software website: https://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/apple2gs/hierarchic/
For those of us who grew up in the early computing world, there were a few magazines which we had to choose from to fill our computer dreams and to learn things that most of our colleagues had no idea about. They were Byte, Kilobaud, Personal Computing, and of course the David Ahl created Creative Computing. David Ahl is well known for his books, BASIC Computer Games and More BASIC Computer Games from the 1970’s as well as dozens of…
Thanks to the efforts of Antoine Vignau and John Morris, the Merlin 32 App is now available as a 64-bit app for both the x86 based and the M1 based Mac computers. The Merlin 32 App is available as a free download from the Brutal Deluxe software website at:http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/crossdevtools/merlin/
In Assembly Lines Podcast episode #121, Chris Torrence takes us inside of disabling the write protect switch in a disk II drive and the newer 5.25″ drive produced by Apple after 1982. He goes into disassembly, functioning of the switch and the disabling of the switch. Check it out here:
The BASIC10Liners organizer extraordinaire, Gunner Kanold, has announced that his organization is preparing for the 2021 rendition of the BASIC10Liners contest. We are preparing for the 10th edition of #Basic10liner . @Indie_RetroNEWS @VintageNewOld @ArnaudDeKlerk @callapple @CPCGAMINGDEMOS @CommodoreBlog @AtariPodcast @IEEESpectrum @digitaltalk64 @Logiker464 pic.twitter.com/q6UxpCVJWE — BASIC10Liners (@Basic10L) January 26, 2021 The BASIC10Liners contest is held each year and 2021 will be the 10th year of the contest, with some amazing work done in each contest. If you are an 8 bit BASIC…
The Apple II Desktop project has announced the release of the latest pre-alpha of the new Apple II Desktop project. The Apple II Desktop or MouseDesk as it is also know is a graphical interface for the Apple II series computers. The Apple II Desktop Project. is led by Joshua Bell, a programmer know for his online interpreter sites and the project is, as he is fond of re-iterating, “not 100% ready for public consumption”. However, the project has come…
A bit of Apple II history from the royalty of the Apple II Realm, our friends love in France reared it’s head today with the posting of “Music Land for the Apple II by Warriors of Destiny and Thieves of Destiny.” The video of Musical Land is one of the demos which shows sound capabilities of the Apple II series computers. Musical Land for #AppleII by Warriors of Destiny and Thieves of Destiny (1990) 🔊 pic.twitter.com/Og2wBpHBqA — Apple II French…
