David Schmenk has released a second developer preview of PLASMA 1.0. This release includes a number of minor fixes and optimizations including a bevy of them from Peter Ferrie and John Brooks. The PLASMA Preview #2 1.0 System disk has been updated and is available for download from the PLASMA website. This release, while not initially intended for release, has its performance increased by 11.2 percent. It also adds a number of fixes to its clock support. For more information,…
The Mini vMac emulator version 3.5.8, although not officially announced, is available for download from the Gryphel project website. Mini vMac emulates a Mac Plus on multiple platforms and can run up to Mac OS 7.5.5. The Gryphel project, run by Paul Pratt, also now has a variations service which will compile the latest version of Mini vMac for your machine. For more information about the Gryphel Project, check out their website at: http://www.gryphel.com To download the latest version of…
The Eaten by a Grue Podcast, produced by Carrington Vanston and Kevin Savetz has released their 15th episode of the podcast. This episode covers the Infocom game, Pludered Hearts. You can listed to the podcast in its entirety on the Eaten by a Grue website at: http://monsterfeet.com/grue/notes/15
Have you ever wondered what the meaning of that long serial number on your Apple II gs meant? Well now, thanks to Apple II gs enthusiast Jeffery Yeary, you can know instantly what it means by entering your serial number at the Apple II gs Decoder website. The sample serial number from above, which is from one of the cases we have here at A.P.P.L.E., produced the following results: The Apple II gs Decoder site literally can tell you everything…
Rich Dreher, owner and operator of R&D Automation LLC, has posted an update on the next run (RUN 5) of the CFFA 3000 project. According to the R&D Automation website, Finally the remainder of the parts are on their way, via FedEx, to the assember. They will conduct an inventory count, and if the part counts are correct begin assembly of Run#5! This process will take about 4 weeks + a week to ship the boards back to me, if…
If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Ricardo Macri’s Drum8 project. The program which runs on an Apple II computer, is an 8 bit drum machine which allows real time graphics based editing using either single or quad channel DAC configurations. To use Drum8, you will need an Apple II S.A.M card or any Apple II sound/DAC card, which, if you dont have one, can be built using plans from the Drum8 website. The Drum8 software can be downloaded…
ProDOS 2.4.2 is a minor release with bug fixes and updates. It replaces ProDOS 2.4 and ProDOS 2.4.1. Bugs fixed: 1. If a directory with more than 255 files was used, and then a different disk was used, a Bad Dir Error $51 was reported. 2. Bitsy Bye was not compatible with the Appletalk Workstation card. 3. Bitsy Bye was not compatible with the Mac LC Apple IIe card. Updates: 1. Thunderclock driver is updated for years 2018 – 2023…
Chris Torrence shows us what happens when you try to mock your Apple IIc. You end up with amazing sound! Check this video out to see how Ian Kim’s Mockingboard 4c can enhance your Apple IIc with only a couple quick modifications. Also check out Chris Torrence’s Patreon for more Apple II goodness!
Chris Torrence takes a look at the UltraWarp Accelerator Card from ReActive Micro. The card speeds up your Apple II, II+, //e, or clone to 13 MHz. See how to assemble the kit, and how it performs!
The WOZ format, the mainstay of the Applesauce project by John Morris, has been officially released. This new format for reading and writing Apple II floppy disks allows emulators to more accurately reflect the actual data on an Apple II floppy disk and disk image. Version 1.0 of the format document is now available for download to developers via John’s website at: http://evolutioninteractive.com/applesauce/woz_reference.pdf
SoftRAID, the venerable RAID software solution, has been updated to 5.6.4 and is now fully compatible with macOS 10.13 High Sierra and also back to OS X 10.6.8. While fully compatible with High Sierra, it does not support APFS volumes – that level of support is slated for the upcoming SoftRAID 6.0. Besides supporting RAID 0, 1, 4, 5 and 1+0, one of the best features is the Certify feature. Certify can run multiple passes to verify that every sector…
For those of you who write adventure games or interactive fiction, there is another contest out there. The Spring Thing was announced and run by Aaron Reed and the entry deadline is 1 March 2018. Initially held in 2002, The Spring Thing is intended to be an event which brings interactive fiction writers together. This Main Festival Games need to comply with the following forms: New: your game should be unreleased at the time the festival opens. Finished: the game…
UPDATE: ALL COPIES HAVE SOLD John Blankenship, the author of Blankenship BASIC, RobotBASIC and a number of books has made a limited number of original copies (NEW) of his book, The Apple House, available. Originally published in 1984 by Prentice-Hall, this book explains how to make your house completely computerized with the Apple II computer. Imagine the convenience of having your “house” keep track of how many people are in each room and to turn off all the unnecessary lights….
David Schmenk has released his long awaited PLASMA programming language for the Apple II series computers. Under development since 2006, version 1.0 of PLASMA can be run both from floppy as well as from hard disk. It includes a bevy of improvements and enhancements with a number of people from the Apple II community taking part in improving this release. According to David’s website, PLASMA officially can support the 65802 as well as the 65816 16 bit features and can…
Super Mario Run produced by Nintendo has been iupdated. Version 3.0.7 includes primarily fixes to the popular app for the iOS platforms, including: ・ An issue where data sometimes had to be re-downloaded when launching the game has been resolved. ・ An issue where players could not get a Perfect result on some Remix 10 courses has been resolved. ・ Various other issues have been resolved. The Super Mario Run App is available as a free download from the Apple…
Adam Christianson has released the latest episode of his MacCast podcast. With everything going on this past week with CES in full swing and other news, this episode is packed with a lot of Apple goodness including: What you need to know about Spectre and Meltdown. Apple investors want more parental control. Apple clarifies store roof “flaw”. Even more Apple “shows” lined up. Iovine leaving Apple? Nope. Rumors of iPhone SE 2. No major Macbook Pro update this year? Apple…
An original Apple Lisa-1 has sold for $56,100 USD on the auction site, Ebay. The Lisa-1, a completely functional unit, is owned by Ebay user, professorinschubert in Karlsdorf-Neuthard, Germany. According to the story behing the machine, it was purchased from a collector who bought it more than 34 years ago when it was released. I got this Lisa from a collector who purchased the computer over 34 years ago and only turned it on a few times after storing it for…
espple is a new Apple-1 Emulator which runs on the ESP8266 NodeMCU LUA CP2102 ESP-12E Wi-Fi module from HiLetgo. The creation of Hrvoje Cavrak, espple is perhaps the cheapest physical hardware which emulates the Apple-1 computer to date and the only one to run completely wirelessly. The chip which costs less than 10$ per unit can be used to transmit the display signal via a short length of wire as a 60MHz signal to either a PAL or NTSC analog…
John Morris, creator of the Applesauce project, has released a preliminary version of the document outlining the new WOZ format for Apple II disk imaging. The format which was created specifically for the Applesauce project, allows emulators to more read the disk images which are produced by Applesauce as well as to write disks in a manner that is more accurate. Applesauce, which was highlighted in Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine V.27 N 02 , is a hardware solution which reads and writes…
Gerard Putter has updated the Virtual II Apple II emulator for Mac OS X to version 8.1. The latest release of the Virtual II emulator addresses a host of items addressed by A.P.P.L.E.’s Brian Wiser and others, as well as some items that were causing the app to crash. According to the Virtual II website, changes include: Added a preference to use the H.264 codec for making a screen movie, even if the HEVC codec is available. Added a preference…
