Tag: apple II
Seattle, Washington — February 1, 2019 — Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange (A.P.P.L.E.) and Walland Philip Vrbancic, Jr. are proud to announce his new DOS 4.1 Manual: Disk Operating System for the Apple II. This book is in print for the first time, features a newly-designed cover, and is over 240 pages. DOS 4.1 is a reimagined Disk Operating System for the Apple II computer, released in 2018. Programmed by Walland Philip Vrbancic, Jr., a professional programmer since 1983. It…
Hidden in the wings of the Apple II world has been a gem of an operating system re-build, DOS 4.1. The new DOS is a complete re-work of DOS 3.3 from the perspective of retired Raytheon engineer and former Sierra On-Line developer, Walland Philip Vrbancic. Changes in DOS 4.1 Included in this new version of DOS, is the ability to have full lowercase commands for all commands, a 24 letter volume name, the ability to include DOS Version and Build…
The Apple II DiskBrowser, the popular disk viewing app created by Denis Molony has been updated. DisBrowser Version 1.0.33 includes several new capabilities including the ability to view DOS 4.1 floppy disks as well as CPM/DOS and PASCAL/DOS hybrid disks. The Apple II DiskBrowser is a free download in .JAR format from:https://github.com/dmolony/DiskBrowser
John Brooks and Brian Wiser have completed the full manual for the VidHD, a feature-rich HDMI video card for the Apple II made by Blue Shift Inc. Additionally, John selected A.P.P.L.E. as the official host for the manual and future firmware updates. While a simpler “Installation Manual” shipped with all VidHD orders, this manual describes detailed features, VidHD Control Panel configuration, accelerator and DMA considerations, IIGS display registers, and complete credits for the VidHD product. Visit https://www.callapple.org/vidhd and download the…
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…
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/
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 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…
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…
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…
A couple of months ago I returned to my parents home in Madrid, Spain and was able to find some of the early code I wrote for the Apple II. I wasn’t very confident my 5 1/4” floppy disks could have survived 30 years in storage but I decided to send them to my friends Antoine Vignau (from Brutal Deluxe Software) anyway. Some of the disks were damaged but I had enough backup copies that eventually both Teacher’s Wizard and…
John Morris just announced that the new Applesauce 1.1 software will have a further enhanced disk drive analysis allowing users to not only see the rotation speed but also factors such as: Power Levels Reading Writing Head Tracking Sync Sensor status The Write Protect switch As John says, it will make it much easier to select the best drive for performing disk imaging. These new diagnostic tools should also allow users to evaluate whether the drives need maintenance or if…
The Apple II DiskBrowser, a java based disk image utility for Mac OS X, has been updated. Created by Denis Molony, DiskBrowser Version 1.0.30 was released with features to support A.P.P.L.E.’s hybrid Pascal/DOS and CPM/DOS type floppy disks. You can download the latest version of DiskBrowser from Github at:https://github.com/dmolony/DiskBrowser/
In 1979, Jeff Finn submitted a program to the A.P.P.L.E. users group for inclusion in its Diskpak 2. It was the Holiday Greeting Pak, a program which utilized the low resolution graphics capabilities of the Apple II computer. Included in the Holiday Greeting Pak were 9 different screens covering both the Christian and the Jewish holidays, giving users a variety of screens which could be personalized as well. Originally written in Integer Basic, not only was it formatted for the…
Option8 also known as Charles Mangin has released a new Apple II game, BlockChain. Fresh off his recent success of his new game DropBlock which came in two flavors, single and double player, he now has released a game which gives a new twist to the idea of placing falling blocks. One of the twists on BlockChain is the fact that combines blocks change color making it harder than DropBlock. According to the BlockChain blurb on the Option8 website, Match…
The Epple II Emulator installer has been updated. Epple II is an Apple II and II plus emulator written in C++ and is buildable to either Linux or Windows systems. The Epple II emulator was created and is maintained by Christopher Mosher. Some of the features of Epple II are: Cycle-accurate: emulates all MOS 6502 CPU cycles including “phantom reads” Video display is synchronized with CPU NTSC video signal emulation: all video quirks emulated accurately Revision 0 motherboard (optional) Multiple…
The Apple IIix project, curated by Aaron Culliney of Deadcode.org, has been updated. Apple IIix is an Apple II Emulator for POSIX devices. Currently, the Android Release Candidate for version 2.0 is available on the Apple IIix website. For more infromation or to download the latest version of Apple IIix, go to the github page at: https://github.com/mauiaaron/apple2
Seattle, Washington — November 26, 2018 — Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange (A.P.P.L.E.) and Jon F. Baxley are proud to announce the immediate availability of the book for his classic game Lordlings of Yore: The Game of Knights, Knaves and Necromancers. Lordlings of Yore was originally published in 1983 by Softlore Corporation, a company run by Jon. The newly-designed manual by Brian Wiser includes remastered art for the cover and interior. The cover even showcases more art than the original…
Seattle, Washington — November 24, 2018 — Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange (A.P.P.L.E.) and Alan Bird are proud to announce the immediate availability of the new manual ProBASIC: Professional Modular BASIC Programming. ProBASIC enhances the Applesoft BASIC that is built-in to your Apple II computer. New commands and functions can be added to your programs. Programmers familiar with structured languages such as Pascal and C will quickly see the similarities between a ProBASIC module and a procedure or function….
The AppleCommander Apple II data conversion software has been updated.AppleCommander has long been a go to tool for many users converting data from Apple II disk images to standard files on the Mac and Windows. The program includes support for all standard disk sizes and formats as well as 32mb HDV type hard disk images. AppleCommander version 1.5.0 was released with a number of changes including: New images Updates to AppleSingle support. Also see the asu utility for direct manipulation…
