The RetroMacCast crew has released episode 261 of their podcast, entitled “Possible but Not Probable”. This time around, James and John discuss their lastest eBay finds: an Apple Acapulco patch, the TAKKY Color Classic, and a clear prototype Apple IIcx. They also take a look back at March 98 in the Macintosh world through the lens of MacAddict magazine. Some of the news items they discuss include Apple’s filing for the six-color logo return, an Apple 1 restoration, and Steve…
The 2018/04 RetroChallenge is now taking entries for their event. RetroChallenge is an bi-annual event sponsored by John W. Linville in an effort to further the retro computing hobby. Entry rules pretty much sum up the feeling of the event: it is a bit like the opposite of Global Thermonuclear War — the only way to lose is not to play… The contest allows entries which are for any computer system which is older than 10 years and in the…
Ever had a problem with your rev 0 or rev 1 Apple II keyboard? Chris Torrence shows how to diagnose problems and clean sticky keys in the latest Assembly Lines video. Watch now!
The 75 page 40th Anniversary issue of Call-A.P.P.L.E. magazine has been released for A.P.P.L.E. members. We’re celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange (A.P.P.L.E.) User Group, founded February 21, 1978 along with the first issue of Call-A.P.P.L.E. in February 1978. This issue includes a variety of articles covering the history of A.P.P.L.E., the founding of The Apple Programmers and Developers Association (APDA) by A.P.P.L.E., full coverage of VCF Pacific Northwest, as well as detailed programming articles…
ReativeMicro and Briel Computers have agreed to a distribution of the Briel products. Briel Computers has long been a creator of products such as the Replia-1; an Apple-1 replica board, The Micro-Kim, The Altair 8800 Micro and other popular replica machines. Currently, the Replica-1 Plus are now available through ReactiveMicro. Other products that will be in the distribution have not been specified as of yet, but the Replica-1 Plus, the power supply and bus keyboard converters are currently available through…
A new film called “Steve Jobs’ Choices” is on IndieGoGo, produced by 8-Bit Generation who also produced “The Commodore Wars.” The documentary looks intriguing from the posted trailer. They have assembled some impressive interviews with people like John Sculley, Mike Markkula, Steve Wozniak, Andy Hertzfeld, Al Alcorn, Dan Kottke, Larry Tesler, Jay Elliot, Paul Terrel, Chuck Peddle, Alvy Ray Smith, Steven Levy, Alan Cooper, Stan Veit, Michael Swaine, and Paul Freiberg. About a month remains to complete their funding goal…
Bad news for the iPhone X continues to hit the net–both by way of fact and rumour. Apple has severely scaled back its orders for displays from Samsung–indicative of the ongoing disappointing sales of the X. The falldown is extensive. Samsung will now have surplus capacity and can both use those displays itself and sell them to Apple’s competition, who will in turn retail phones challenging the X but at much lower price points. They won’t make as much money,…
Target Stores are now apparently getting into the Realm of the Retro Machine. A new hand held game being sold exclusively at Target emulates the original 1984 version of The Oregon Trail. While most games related to the property in recent years have focused on renewing the property, this one plays squarely on the original. In a form factor that looks a lot like some of the Akalabeth emulators for iPhone, The Oregon Trail hand held has all of the…
The guys over at RetroMacCast have released their 260th episode of the RetroMacCast. This time around, they take a look at Descent as well as some really old Apple-1 Relica stuff. To listen to the RetroMacCast, check out their website at: http://retromaccast.ning.com/
This is the first issue of the rebooted Working Smarter Newsletter, aka version 2.0. My goal is to provide you with useful tips, hints, and techniques you can use to work smarter, along with links to tips, hints, and techniques of others you might find beneficial. First up, a quick tip about the WiFi menu on your Mac: The old Option key trick for your Mac’s Wi-Fi menu I heard this today on one of my favorite podcasts—MacGeekGab—and it reminded…
R&D Automation LLC has put the CFFA 3000 card on sale once again. Run # 5, totaling 1000 units is expected to go fairly quickly judging from the demand for it. The CFFA 3000 Card which allows users to use compact flash and USB drives to emulate hard drives and floppy drives with real Apple II series hardware, is being sold on the R&D automation website for $174.95 for just the bare card and $374.95 for a completely ready to…
The Vintage Computing Federation has announced the dates and the locations of three more of the VCF events. According to the VCF website, Vintage Computer Festival Southeast 6.0 (produced by our friends at the Atlanta Historical Computing Society) is April 21-22 in the Atlanta area (Roswell, Georgia). Vintage Computer Festival East XIII is May 18-20 at the Vintage Computer Federation museum in Wall, New Jersey. Vintage Computer Festival West XIII is August 4-5 at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley…
In the latest episode of Assembly Lines, Chris Torrence tests out ReactiveMicro’s new Mockingboard 2.1 kit. One major bug has been fixed, but one flaw still remains…
The Macintosh Repository recently added Mac OS X for the PPC based Macintosh machines. For those Mac Users who have older iBooks and Power books with the PPC architecture, these disk images are key. The Macintosh Repository has placed Mac OS X version 10.0 through 10.5 into the repository. For more information or to download the older OS versions, check out their website at: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/45-mac-os-x-for-ppc-osx-10-0-10-1-10-2-10-3-10-4-10-5- Also, be sure to check out their wanted list for items missing from the repository…
Today marks the 40th year since just over a dozen intrepid Apple II users held a meeting at the ComputerLand in Federal Way, Washington. A letter distributed by the store manager at the time, allowed Val Golding to get the word out and bring together like-minded computer users who were just becoming familiar with their newly-purchased Apple II computers, to share ideas and software, and to help each another get the most out of the Apple II. …
David Schmenk has updated the PLASMA disk images. For those of you who have been running on the original version 1.0 floppy disk images, you will want to download the new disks. Included in this update are a number of Keyboard related updates for both the Apple II and the Apple III version of the programming environment. To download PLASMA, Check out the GitHub page at: https://github.com/dschmenk/PLASMA
I just sent the email below to literally everyone I know to bring them up to speed on what I’ve been up to, since I haven’t posted here or sent out a newsletter in months. If you’ve ever signed up for one of my mailing lists, or were ever in any of my Contacts databases, you should have received the message (I’m Back!) earlier this morning (February 19, 2018 at 10:39 AM Central as I type), If you’re not…
This month, Felipe Pepe, announced the availability of his long awaited CRPG Book. Felipe, a native of Brazil who resides in Tokyo, has been hard at work in between jobs, putting together reviews of over 400 games and RPG systems from the 1975 to 2015 time frame. The result is an almost 600 page book which not only delves into the realm of the games but also how they affected the overall industry. The project, Which Pepe started in 2014,…
We got the surprise of the week earlier today when we were testing one of the newer Unity-based apps for iOS. We have assumed for a long time that Apple, Inc. was controlling all aspects of the iOS infrastructure. That means all hardware, software, interfaces, advertising, and any other aspect of iOS device life with more than a billion iOS devices. Our assumptions though seemingly hit a major roadblock this week when we discovered that third parties were not only…
MacCast has released their 645th episode of the Adam Christianson produced podcast. Topics this time around include: You CAN remove HomePod cable. Don’t. Apple’s changing OS release policy. Apple moves up in global laptop shipments. Apple developing TV show based on NBA’s Kevin Durant. Apple working on fix for Indian character bug. Another option for remote iOS support. How to reset a HomePod. Apple needs to fix album categorization. When Apple won’t replace your battery. To listen to the latest…
