The Virtual II emulator has been updated. The penultimate Apple II emulator for Mac OS X, Virtual II has a number of new features and changes including the following: Disk drives can be configured with a “read only” switch. While the virtual machine runs, just flip the switch to “on” to prevent the disk from being modified. The “Make All Drives Read-Only” entry in the Quick settings menu is a shortcut to protect all mounted disks in one go, essentially…
A bug in Facetime which allowed users to listen in on their contacts without the contact answering a call forced Apple, Inc. into firefighting mode today. Facetime Group Conferencing was taken offline and according to the status website is still offline. (https://www.apple.com/ca/support/systemstatus/) As of 12pm EST 31 January 2019, the Group feature of the app still was down.
Big Mess O’ Wires (BMOW) announced this morning that they were releasing the Yellowstone controller card to the public. The release makes the cards a Creative Commons license open source project. Yellowstone is a Liron compatible disk controller for the Apple II. The original Liron cards were created in 1985 but this card uses FPGA to handle all aspects of the cards control features. You can download the source and design data from the BMOW website at: https://www.bigmessowires.com/2019/01/28/yellowstone-goes-open-source/
Melody Ayers-Griffiths, co-publisher of the Paleotonic computer magazine, has converted the Peter Gunn theme to Chiptune. The conversion of the theme song was performed with a converter program inside of the Apple II emulator created by Paleotronic, the Microm8 Emulator. to listen to the conversion, click on the embedded sound player below or go to the Soundcloud website at:https://soundcloud.com/girlybits/peter-gunn
Homeputerium, sponsors of the 10 liner contest, have announced the 2019 rendition of the contest. The 10 Liner Contest is for 8 bit systems and is focused on 8-Bit systems. The object of the contest is for programmers to develop a complete playable arcade game within 10 lines. Three categories exist in the contest with the 80 character per line 10-liner, the 120 character per line 10 liner and the Extreme category or up to 256 character per line 10…
The MacCast, a podcast produced by Adam Christianson, has released the 690th episode of the podcast. This latest episode goes over a myriad of Macintosh related topics including: AirPower still, still, coming… Snow in the underworld. Target will have Apple Pay. Apple Stagelight not a new video app. Apple updates all the OSes. AirPod 2 rumors. Apple reduces Titan staff. iPhone XR is ‘bestselling’ iPhone. AR app recommendation. Scheduling a Genius Bar appointment. The trouble with trade-ins. Stopping robocalls on…
Brutal Deluxe has announced the addition of over 150mb of new Cortland documents. The documents, from 1985 through 1987 include a hose of items covering topics from Apple Talk to SANE Tools to the addition of the APDAlog France. You can download the documents in a series of individual files or in zipped batches from the Cortland documentation site at: http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/documentation/cortland.html
The Apple II Slice project has been completed. The Apple II Slice, basically is an Apple IIe emulator running on a raspberry Pi inside of a majorly shortened Apple II case. This project was undertaken by its creator, well known Apple fan and co-host of the RetroMacCast, John Leake, in order to utilize a broken Apple IIe case. The case, which was broken beyond repair, was then cannibalized by slicing the useful and needed sections from the original and then…
Brutal deluxe software announced the immediate release of the entirety of their Applesauce Disk image collection. The Brutal deluxe collection created by Antoine Vignau is a 1680+ program collection containing more than 3000 disk sides. The entire collection is now available for download via Bit Torrent through the Archive.org website at:https://archive.org/details/Antoine_Applesauce_Vignau
The dates for the Apple II Festival France 2019 have been set. According to the announcement from Stephane Briancourt, the event will be held August 7, 2019 to August 11, 2019 at the Domain Le Castagne in Auch, France. The Apple II Festival France is an annual gathering of the French Apple II fans with Apple II fans from across Europe and from around the globe attending the event. Displays of the latest hardware and software from the French Apple…
The Apple’s Apprentice book that compiles Roger’s Wagner’s three rare magazine issues is now available in hardback on premium glossy paper. In a world of computer magazines where the target audience leans toward the adult side of life, comes The Apple’s Apprentice – the first computer magazine produced for beginners and kids of all ages, from 8 to 80. Put your feet up on a chair, relax, and learn about Apple II computers in an informative, fun way. All three…
Daniel Loffgren has developed a new Apple-1 emulator that as he says “That Doesn’t Suck”. The Apple-1 emulator uses curses (Cursor Optimization) for output and can be transported cross platform. The Apple-1 TDS also comes with a built in machine debugger allowing users a larger insight into their programs and the machine. The Apple-1 TDS comes in two parts. The first is the main Apple-1 TDS system and the second is the 6502 virtual machine. Both sections will need to…
For those of you with the FloppyEmu Floppy Disk Emulator, you can now run .WOZ files from the Applesauce FDC on your FloppyEmu. Steve Chamberlain, creator of FloppyEmu and John K. Morris, the creator of the Applesauce FDC have been working together to provide the support and insure users will continue to be able to use their hardware. While the support is still in beta, users who own either the Model A or the Model B FloppyEmu, can download the…
The Applewin Apple II Emulator has been updated. Applewin is an Apple II emulator for Windows based systems and should run on just about any of the newer Windows operating systems. Version 1.28.0.0 was released as a major release and has the following changes in the program: [Change #357] Resurrected the AppleWin 1.25 “Color (Standard)” video mode as “Color (RGB Monitor)”. This is equivalent to emulating RGB video, ie. a video mode with sharp text and pixels. NB. Unlike AppleWin…
This morning, I saw a post from Tim Cook which caused me to take pause of what I was doing and reminisce a bit. 35 years ago, I was a young computer lab technician working in the college computer lab, supporting 100 Apple II systems on a Corvus Network. We began receiving new computers in a trickle so that the college could determine which computer they would be purchasing next to replace the aging Apple II and II plus systems….
Kevin Savetz and Carrington Vanston have released the 26th episode of their Infocom podcast, Eaten by a Grue. This episode, the two adventurers delve into the game The Witness. The Witness, originally published in 1983 by Infocom, follows in the footsteps of their earlier Deadline with the user becoming a sleuth and having to solve a murder mystery. The game was designed by Stu Galley and was released for 9 different platforms between May 1983 and September 1984. The game…
Christopher Mosher has released a software package which allows a more precise recovery method of recovering Cassette tapes with data on them. Being as most of the tapes created for computers with cassette interfaces were created in the 1970’s the quality of the tapes and the data recovered from them can be quite problematic. But according to Chris’s Facebook posting, he says, “I’ve tested it on a limited number of images and it has successfully recovered some that wouldn’t load…
For nearly 20 years, Wordperfect 2.21a for the Apple II gs did not support the year 2000 and beyond. That is no longer the case. Thanks to some skillful hacking by Brutal Deluxe’s Antoine Vignau, Wordperfect now has full Y2K compliant date support. For nearly 20 years, Wordperfect 2.21a for the Apple II gs did not support the year 2000 and beyond. That is no longer the case. Thanks to some skillful hacking by Brutal Deluxe’s Antoine Vignau, Wordperfect now…
If you are a fan of the game “Another World”, the Éric Chahi produced game, on the Amiga or Atari ST or “Out of this World” as it is known in the U.S., then you will want to check out the demo of the game for the Apple II that Vince Weaver has created. While he has only mocked up the first two screens of the game, the game demo is still playable. According to Vince, “so far it is…
The Virtual II Apple II emulator has been updated. Version 9 is a major update to the Virtual II emulator . It includes the ability to convert Apple II floppy disks on the fly as well as the ability to index the disks. This update includes a bevy of updates including: Introduction of the “peripherals” side bar, combining the contents of the device and performance drawers. Due to Apple deprecating the drawers feature in macOS 10.14, these drawers have been removed….
