For those of you who have been searching for a methodology of hooking up an Apple II to a TV via HDMI, Alex Lukacz’s latest experiment may be the answer you have been looking for. Using a BBBLack credit card sized computer, he has managed to wire up a reasonable connection allowing for the Apple //c video output to be displayed via HDMI. For more information, check out Alex’s website at: http://lukazi.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/a2-serial-video-to-hdmi-converter.html UPDATE: A video demonstration of the hack has…
Charles Mangin has announced that his 1/3 scale Apple IIgs Raspberry PI case is now available. Available for the price of $100.00 USD, the case is specifically built for the Raspberry PI 2 and the Model-B Plus. Each case has been painted the original platinum color and measures 113x95x38mm. A deluxe version of the case is available with scale model mouse and keyboard, or you can order a custom made case from Charles as well. For more information and…
Jimmy Maher, curator of The Digital Antiquarian has released a very in depth review of Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. His article goes into quite a bit of detail about Ken Williams, Sierra, as well as the back lash that they faced with publishing the program. The article also talks about Al Lowe and Mark Crowe’s involvement in the project and how it was kept under wraps in order to keep investors from dumping the…
Benoit Gilon has announced the immediate release of the Peersoft Applesoft Extensions version 1.5.5. Shown extensively at the recent Apple II Festival France, this extension package allows for user defined functions to be added to Applesoft through both machine language and Applesoft. What’s new? Ability to define up to 10 user defined functions. Such functions could handle up to 2 input arguments instead of just one. Sample functions provided, GCD, LCM, Factorial, Binary operations on 16bits integers, MAX and MIN…
The RetroMacCast Episode 376 has been posted. On this episode, James and John discuss a number of Apple related items including their always entertaining eBay finds: Apple poster, mug collection, NIB numeric keypad, and Mission Impossible poster. John interviews Cory Wiegersma from the 68k MLA, and discusses the Steve Jobs opera, as well as the new Jobs trailer, and its rumored Fall event date. Check out their podcast today at: http://retromaccast.libsyn.com/rmc-episode-376-68k-mla
The source code to Taxman, one of the more popular Apple II games in the early 1980’s has been announced as being released very soon. Hailed as the best Pac-Man clone available, Taxman plays nearly identical to the original Pac-Man. The original game was so accurate in detail, it drew the ire of the lawyers at Atari. The game was a complete remake of Pac-Man right down to the animations which run between every few levels. Brian Fitzgerald wrote the…
Silicium Association have announced a new game for the Apple II at the Apple II Festival France 2015 event. The game, “Nono et La Pomme Arc-En-Cel” or “Nono and the Rainbow Apple” is an adventure game, currently available in French only, but soon to be translated to other languages. As has been the trend lately of the French games, it comes in old school style zip lock baggy. The game is available on 5.25 inch floppy disk. According to Antoine…
On Episode 106 of the RCR Podcast, Earl, Carrington, Paul and Ken discuss the Host’s Topic: “Second Chances:” If we had a time machine – What do you wish you’d done “back in the day” in the computing world, and is there a chance you can catch up and do it now in the retrocomputing hobby? Also on the show the team discusses Kfest, the bounty of IIgs related news that has recently been announced, more Kfest, some Retro Challenge results, some more…
The French Touch has released a new graphics demo for the Apple IIe computer. The demo, entitled “A Question of Frames”, was produced on an Apple IIe with 128K of RAM. It will run on original hardware, the Apple IIgs, as well as the Applewin, Jace 2.0 and ActiveGS emulators. The program disk is now available for all to enjoy at: http://www.ctrl-pomme-reset.fr/french-touch/ You can also watch the demo on video below:
Mike Maginnis has announced the availability of the 49th Episode of the Open Apple Podcast This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Laine Nooney, researcher of early computer and software companies. She has been digging into the history of such greats as Brøderbund and Sierra On-Line. In particular, she has done some awesome research on the infamous Soft Porn Adventure, including behind-the-scenes details on the infamous advertising photo. We talk about broken microfilm projectors, we talk about printer…
After I gave a presentation on Retrobrite at KansasFest, people asked me to write about the process, never wrote about Retrobrite as there are so many articles and videos on the internet but finally found some time to write about it. There are many ways to Retrobrite. I avoid submerging because it’s a waste of peroxide, and maybe toxic for the environment, also don’t wrap in plastic as it allows areas to wrinkle and get more concentrated than others, promoting…
Technology News and Views Since 1983 Modula-2 R10 Blueprints August 2015 In these last three months the Spy has introduced the fully modern dialect of an existing notation he and Telecom engineer Benjamin Kowarsch have developed to address serious software engineering issues of safety, security, reliability, and extensibility. This month he shows how to leverage Blueprints to enforce the rigour involved in planning code before executing it. Modula-2 R10 allows the programmer to develop Abstract Data Type (ADT) libraries that…
From Facebook Apple II Enthusiasts Group: I know people have had trouble recently getting some of the old Byte Works products. I’m looking at a number of options, and wanted to gauge interest. All of our products that were produced at the Byte Works, and thus the ones we have clear copyright to, are on a CD called Opus ][. This includes ORCA/C, ORCA/Pascal, ORCA/M, and all of the support programs and so forth, but not ORCA/Modula 2. There are…
There are a number of the recorded sessions now on YouTube from Kansasfest 2015. For those of you who were unable to attend, this is a chance to catch up on some of the unique sessions and presentations made during the annual pilgrimage to Kansas City. You can find the complete list of available videos at: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Kansasfest+2015 A.P.P.L.E.’s presentation was made by Brian Wiser this year and begins at 2:15 of the video shown below.
An interesting piece of video comes to us this morning from Antoine Vignau of Brutal Deluxe software. It is a project by French Professor Max Tournarie, who decided he could attach a card reader to the Apple II Euro back in the 1980’s. The reader simply sends binary code to the Apple II, either zeros or ones. While most readers of the era were fairly high speed, this one simply processes the cards in a slow but methodical manner. Check…
Since the announcement of the availability of the newly-released Apple IIgs System 6.0.2 a week ago, over 22 years since the last release, the feedback has been positively awesome from all around the world. That is great news for our active and enthusiastic Apple II community. CallApple.org news of the release has been featured on over 50 major blogs and related news sites with the announcement having been viewed over 800,000 times and the disk images downloaded more than 5000…
Jeremy Rand has released his 2015 Hackfest entry, Sudoku for the Apple II. The posting, from the KFest mailing list includes all of the source code for the project as well as the Apple II emulator ready DSK disk image. A video of the program in action has been posted by the Kansasfest comittee to YouTube: Additional features have been added to the program post Kansasfest and the latest disk is available for download now. For more information about the…
Kansasfest 2015 has ended as one of the more successful gatherings in the past 20 years. With 76 attendees, this event continues to prove that the Apple II computer is not dead and that there is a lot more life in those computers. A.P.P.L.E. thanks those who attended our session this past Saturday at the event and for the input provided during the session. We look forward to attending the 2016 rendition with even more product announcements and seeing all…
A.P.P.L.E. is proud to announce a reduction of the price of The WOZPAK Special Edition just in time for Kansasfest 2015. The WOZPAK Special Edition is a complete restoration of the original WOZPAK from A.P.P.L.E. and has additional material not included in the original WOZPAK. The WOZPAK Special Edition is available in Softcover and Hardcover through the Lulu bookstore.
The Mac Gui software repository has added over 700 new files to their library. According to the site’s owner and curator, David Finnigan in CSA2, Of particular note are the files in the CP/M category; these came from a disk collection that I bought last year. If anyone is using Vista drives, I may have some useful files in there for you. Owners of Franklin Ace clones may also find some new disks there of use. This one is pretty…
