Oz KFest 2017, the Australian retro computing gathering, is now open for registration. Oz KFest provides a similar experience to the well known and admired Kansasfest Apple II convention. For the first time, Oz KFest will be held at a venue with on-site accomodation to provide the opportunity for close collaboration. Also for the first time, due to popular demand, Oz KFest will run for longer than a weekend. Australian Apple II enthusiasts have a long history of innovation and…
Birthdays engender delays, which is why this tome is a few days late, being written on the third of July. Canada Day number 150 falling on a Saturday this year, meant the national holiday substituting for it fell on the Spy’s own birthday. Nice of the country to celebrate for me, but really… ‘Course, that other fractious country to the south has its birthday tomorrow. In view of recent national and other elections, the questions of course for pundits and…
– One of the simplest cards I’ve ever used, just connect and run! For a long time, the Apple II has enjoyed a plethora of hardware that extends, connects, and enhances it. Among them, speed accelerators have been sought and venerated. The Apple IIe had a few of them: the TransWarp, Titan, Speed Demon, Zip Chip, and Rocket Chip. These products have not been manufactured for 30+ years and hence they are sometimes expensive and hard to obtain, leaving some…
Now you can easily build your own FTP client, or add FTP functionality to your IIgs applications. Just drop the new FTP Tool Set into your System:Tools folder, add a few simple commands to your applications, and it is done… Also being released is a new NDA, SOS.FTP. This utilises the FTP Tool Set, and from the IIgs Desktop, or while running an application, you can now easily send a single file to or from a host server using FTP….
Last year, 8bitdo, a Hong Kong company that specializes in Bluetooth and wireless controllers for retro systems, came out with a special receiver commemorating the Apple II after a successful kickstarter campaign. The key element of this device is the adapter that connects to the joystick port of the Apple II computers and converts it to Bluetooth, allowing the game pad to be used as a joystick on the Apple IIs. Unfortunately the users found out after receiving them that…
June 2017 In a reprise of previous comments on the subject, the Spy has resolved his issues with his Synology 4-bay 1815+ NAS, that he purchased for home use (yes, yes, overkill, but one cannot have too many backups, especially when one of them fails). This unit worked worked well for over a year, but became flakey, started to beep, and when the Spy investigated, he found the volume had crashed. Attempting to turn it off and on again yielded…
This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Michael Packard, author of the upcoming new game Alien Downpour. Michael has gone back to teach himself assembly language and make the kinds of games he wished he had made back in the day. The results are indeed impressive, and his first foray into solo Apple II game production is shaping up great. He’s also been very encouraging to the community, having set up the Facebook group Apple Graphics and Arcade…
Mountain View, CA, 18 May 2017 — Manila Gear today announced the No Slot Clock for the Apple II series of computers. The No Slot Clock lets your Apple II remember the date and time. No Slot Clock – Front Side No Slot Clock – Back Side This brings the amazing functionality of the Dallas Time Chip DS1215 to the Apple ][ and the Apple ][+ computer. No more typing in the date and time every time you boot up! It also…
From the Glyphel Project: 7 May 2017 Today’s Mini vMac 3.5.5 beta has three bug fixes. After emulating an ADD instruction, if the value of the X flag was needed later, but in between there was another instruction that set the other flags not including the X flag, the lazy evaluation of the X flag was incorrect. This broke signing with MacPGP. While fixing this, I put in some debugging code to allow disabling lazy flag evaluation, so one can…
Marco Verpelli has created a volume of the MECC titles on a single hard disk image. The volume which is the complete collection (Well, 158 titles is a mostly complete collection anyways), contains the available Apple II titles from 1980 to 1999 and is on two digital format .2mg floppy disks. For more on this and the process which allowed this volume to be created, check out the What is the Apple II gs website. The image volume is also…
Another original Apple-1 computer has re-surfaced and is going on the auction block through the LiveAuctioneers.com website. Serial number 01-0073 which according to the Mike Willegal Apple-1 Registry database is not rregistered, is apparently the working Apple-1 computer belonging to one “John D.” and was purchased on 30 November 1976 for a grand total of $692.25. For more information or to bid on the machine, check out the LiveAuctioneers.com website for the auction at: https://new.liveauctioneers.com/item/52749252_original-apple-1-computer-1976
By Rick Sutcliffe May 2017 The Spy has become one (a technology driver that is) for as reported in his March column, he and wife Joyce recently purchased their first new car in over two decades–a Subaru Forester–and it is technology rich. Typical of mind-range SUV crossovers, it has a rear camera with dash display for same, multiple information screens, steerable fog lights, smart air bags, blind spot detectors in the mirrors, keyless entry with secure fob, always on all…
Stepehen Heumann has announced the release of AFPBridge for the Apple IIgs. According to the announcement on CSA2, AFPBridge is “a tool that allows an Apple IIgs to connect to file servers using the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) over TCP/IP. It works by using the existing AppleShare FST, but redirecting its network traffic over TCP/IP rather than AppleTalk.” AFPBridge is compatible with Apple IIgs’s with system 6.01 or later and a Network card compatible with Mainetti such as the Uthernet….
Contact: Jon Christopher Co John Valdezco https://www.manilagear.com Henry Courbis http://reactivemicro.com Manila Gear Introduces the 2soniq and Announces New Partnership with ReActiveMicro Mountain View, CA, 7 April 2016 — Manila Gear today announced the 2soniq interface card for the Apple IIGS. The card gives IIGS owners the ability to connect 2 powered speakers so they can enjoy stereophonic sound. This is a simpler version of the 4soniq – the quadraphonic sound card with a monophonic input digitizer that the company…
From the realm of Antoine Vignau: i’m fEDD up goes v2.3 and now supports RamWorks 8M from a2heaven.com: – You can load your 5.25″ floppies in a single pass, that may help create images of sync’ed titles, – We have added more messages for Brian Wiser 😉 Get your copy @ http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/apple2/imfEDDup/ Next step is sync support for AppleSauce!
This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Mark Lemmert, co-founder of 6502 Workshop. Him and his partners (Mike Reimer, Bill Giggie, Robert Padovan, Gordon Mackay, and Galactagog) have been building Nox Archaist, a brand new story-driven tile-based role-playing game in the classical Ultima style. They’re pushing the hardware as far as they can with this new engine, working to break new ground in scope, story, animation, sound, and music. Early builds look great, and we’re really excited to…
My editor Bryan Chaffin says one of the best (and most unique) things about Working Smarter for Mac Users is that I don’t try to convince you there’s only one way to do things, or that my way is the best or only way. Rather, one of the hallmarks of my eBook is that I offer you tips, hints, and techniques that have worked for me, as well as tips, hints, and techniques that may not have worked for me but may…
We’ll begin with a bit of advice on working with and managing windows, including how to quickly hide and show them, the four ways you can view Finder windows, and how to tweak the Toolbar and Sidebar to make them more useful. I work with a dozen or more apps running at any time, and most of them have more than one open window or tab. So, at any moment there are at least a dozen windows on my two…
Here is another skill I recommended in the first chapter of Dr. Macintosh (1989) and still recommend to this day. That skill is reducing your dependence on the mouse. Many of the things you do with your mouse can be done faster and easier with a keyboard shortcut. If you’re not familiar with keyboard shortcuts, look in just about any menu in almost any application and you’ll see some. Take the Finder’s Edit menu, for example: I can’t remember the…
This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Craig Peterson, who got involved with hardware and software development very early in the life of the Apple II. Craig integrated Apple II computers with a numerical control manufacturing system, producing G-code for the cutting machines in a factory. He was a pioneer in using the Apple II for what computers are actually good at- moving data around in an automated fashion and abstracting away sources of human error in a…
