Sellam Abraham and Daniel Henderson have announced the availability of a new graphical New Years Demo for the Apple II. This is a New Year 2020 Demo programmed for the Apple ][ by me and Dan Henderson. It can run on any 48K Apple ][+ or better. The story and artwork are by Dan, and I wrote the lo-res graphics sprite system, which is a complete package allowing sprite and background creation as well as animating it all using BASIC…
Our reader has enjoyed the appearance of many predictions and forecasts in this space. Many were laughed at. Of those, some (rise of Apple from the ashes, fall of the Berlin Wall) came true, and others (demise of MS) have not (in its case, forestalled by a change of management and direction). Others (various automation forecasts and social changes) are still pending. Punditry is easy and widely practiced, because few people are likely remember the predictions that go wrong, whereas…
Mike Harvey, the founder and publisher of Nibble, has passed away. Born May 25, 1938, Mike was best known for his Apple II publication Nibble Magazine as well as his Macintosh and PC magazines Nibble Mac and PC Hands On. A very successful author, Mike already had a successful career in high technology and computers before the morning when he decided to start Nibble. He had spent five years in sales with IBM and had the top sales record in…
Mojave’s new “Use Stacks” command lets you organize the items on your desktop with a single menu selection (choose View–>Use Stacks) or keyboard shortcut (press Command + Control + 0). They say a picture is worth a thousand words; here’s how it works: It’s that simple. If your Desktop is a mess, burn that keyboard shortcut — Command + Control + 0 — into your muscle memory and start using it to turn your Desktop clutter into neatly organized stacks. One last thing:…
Vince Weaver has released his entry from DemoSplash 2019 entitled “Lo-Res Escape”. The demo tells the story of a woman whose goal is to herself to read books but is being thwarted a a civilization of space traveling beings. The Demo garnered a 3rd place finish in the 2019 rendition of DemoSplash, a demo contest which is held annually at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. You can download the Lo-Res Escape Demo in 140K Disk image format from…
Chris Torrence has released the latest episode of his Assembly Lines videocast. Episode 108 goes through a myriad of items released this year for the Apple II series computers including the VidHD HDMI Card as well as the Total Replay disk image from Mark Pilgrim. If you enjoy Chris’s Assembly Lines videos, be sure to support him through Patreon at : https://www.patreon.com/ChrisTorrence
This short video (under 5 minutes) details why the Mac Clipboard still sucks, and explains how to make it suck a lot less (for free). Enjoy!
Applewin Apple II Emulatorhas been updated. Verion 1.29.7 has been released and fixes a host of bugs. Some of the changes included are as follows: [Change #726] Disk II card: supported in slot 5 via ‘-s5 diskii’ command line. [Change #737] Debugger: Changed ‘cycles’ to show the cycle delta since the step/breakpoint etc. [Bug #740] Debugger: gr/hgr/dgr/dhgr commands will honour the state of the MIXED mode. [Bug #733] Fixed WOZ ‘Wasteland’ and also NIB ‘Wasteland’. [Bug #451] Debugger: fix for BPM[R|W] triggering on control-flow instructions’…
Chuck Peddle, the creator of the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor has passed away at age 82. Peddle, originally on the Motorola team that developed the 6800 series chips, was determined to develop an inexpensive chip which did not cost $300 such as the Motorola 6809 did. Originally developed while Peddle was working at Motorola, the 6502 was a major breakthrough in cost and allowed almost anyone to build a computer. Motorola told Peddle to shut down the project due to…
In spite of its salacious, click-bait title, and apparently being written by fictitious baseball player Sidd Finch*, I read an article called How to Not Write Like an Asshole a while ago. In it, the author proposes that the way to become a great writer is to copy great writers. “When I say you should copy great writers, I mean you should literally copy their best work, word-for-word, and preferably by hand. This process is called copywork and it’s mind-numbingly simple. You…
I read an article on Fortune (dot) com a while back about multitasking and why it may not be good for you). Here’s a brief excerpt (click the headline to read the rest): Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Multitask, According to an MIT Neuroscientist by Earl Miller “Start by blocking out a period of time to focus. Eliminate as many distractions as possible: Put away your phone, turn off extra computer screens, shut down your email if you have to….
Denis Molony has released a new version of the Apple II Diskbrowser. UniDOS support has been added to the latest release of the program, Diskbrowser version 1.42. Apple II Diskbrowser allows users to view the contents of many different Apple II floppy disk image types and runs under Mac OS X as well as Windows and Linux. You can download the latest version of the Apple II Diskbrowser from the Github page at: https://github.com/dmolony/DiskBrowser
The Spy went out on a limb in October concerning the MacBook Pro 16″ model that had been the subject of so many rumours. How did his predictions and preferences do? – He implied it. would be out by the end of October. Missed it by a few weeks. Chinese trade war and Trump tariffs? – Comes with Catalina installed (pretty much certain). Done. no bezel for the screen (likely) There is very little bezel, and the size of the…
David Mutimer has made his Booti Card for the Apple II available once again. According to his posting in the Apple II Enthusiasts group on Facebook, : The pcb’s arrived today. Booti cards are now in stock again and ready to ship. The type A cards are functionally identical to the blue cards from the last batch, however the USB modules have different connections so the cards and modules are not interchangeable. So for those of you that already have…
The crew at RetroMacCast have announced the release of their 507th episode of the RMC Podcast. This episode includes: James and John discussing the latest eBay finds including a NIB Macintosh II video card, lot of Macs, and Picasso Mac dust cover. John also gets into SimCity, and some of the latest news includes a 16″ MBP and a Twiggy Mac that are currently up for auction. RetroMacCast website You can listen to the latest episode of the RetroMacCast by going…
Happy Thanksgiving to all of our US based friends. As we take time with our families during this time, we just wanted to share our thanks for your patronage and support. We will be back in our offices on 2 December 2019.
The Applewin Apple II Emulator for Windows has been updated. Applewin is a highly developed Apple II emulator managed by by Tom Charlesworth along with a host of other developers. Applewin version 1.29.6 is a major bug fix release with the following changes made to the program: [Bug #724] Fixed so that 6502 interrupt is delayed by 1 opcode when interrupt occurs on last cycle of opcode. [Bug #711] Fixed Mockingboard initial “stretched” music playback (regression introduced at 1.28.7.0). [Bug…
In the latest episode of the Assembly Lines podcast, Chris Torrence reviews the new Booti card for the Apple II. Watch now!
Clock Signal Emulator, also known as CLK has been updated. The latest release includes fixes for bugs including: corrects an overflow issue within the graphics pipeline that could cause a crash when using almost any emulated machine, though it was much more likely to do so when using a machine with a user-selectable colour border. Some of the features and stated aims of the Clock Signal CLK emulator include: single-click load of any piece of source media for any supported…
Anti-M v1.6 is out: https://github.com/a2-4am/anti-m/releases/tag/v1.6 Anti-M can boot any 5.25-inch Apple II disk on any Apple II, including – 13-sector disks – SpiraDisc on //c or IIgs – games that require a ][+ or 6502 – booting from drive 2 Version 1.6 of the Anti-M program adds support for Personal Software 13-sector disks.
