Tag: apple II
Chalres Mangin of Option8 and Retroconnector fame has posted a YouTube video outlining the steps for repairing an Apple //e keyboard. In the video he covers basic level keyboard switch replacement as well as a method for replacing the power-on bulb with a modern LED. Some of the points of his video include using a solder sucker over copper mesh, the need for care in not over heating the solder during removal and adding a bit of solder to the…
Brutal Deluxe software has updated the Apple II cassette tape collection with a new addition. Curator and Apple II aficionado, Antoine Vignau announced this week that Creative Computing’s Mission Impossible has been added to the collection bringing the total number of tapes to 634. To view or download the collection, check out the Apple II Cassette Collection website at: http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/
Option8 has announced that the Audio Connectors for the Apple II are now shipping. Introduced by Option8 owner Charles Mangin at Kansasfest 2015, the Audio Connector allows the user to connect headphones or external speakers to the Apple II series computers. For more information, check out the Option8 website on Tindle at: https://www.tindie.com/products/option8/speaker-connector-for-apple-ii/ You can also check out the RetroConnector blog at http://retroconnector.com/
Our friends in Miami and France have come together to provide the Apple II Quark Catalyst scans and disk images. When asked about the project to bring this back out of the realm of the lost software, Javier Rivera said, “This is one package that many users had for their Apple II’s, but no one seemed to have it at this point. When we finally found a copy of it, we made sure to get it into digital format as…
Steve Nickolas has posted a patch which fixes the Apple II game Cubit on the Laser 128 computer. Cubit was a 1980’s clone of the popular Arcade game Q-Bert and was long the bain of those users who purchased the Video Technology produced Laser 128 Computer. A single memory location jump was causing the game to stop mid-stream as explained by Steve below: My experience has been Cu-bit breaks on a Laser due to firmware incompatibilities because it jumps to…
The Apple II Scans website (http://www.apple2scans.net) has posted two new AppleSource Newsletters/ AppleSource was an Apple dealer centric newsletter produced by Apple Computer Inc. The latest additions include the AppleSource 24 and the non-numbered AppleSource issues. You can download all of the available issues from the Apple II Scans AppleSource page at: http://www.apple2scans.net/magazines/applesource/
Apple has released an update to iTunes for both Mac and Windows. Version 12.1 includes a new control widget which allows users to control which song is playing within the notification center. It also includes fixes which are meant to improve the ability of iOS devices to sync with the desktop. The widget allows users to control the song choice, see which song is playing or to buy new songs or albums from the App store. http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1614?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Gerard Putter has updated the Virtual II emulator for the Mac. Version 7.5 has been released with Version 7.5.1 hot on its heels to fix an issue in the 7.5 release. Included in the two releases are the following updates and fixes: 7.5 Support for two Mockingboard cards in one machine, in order to listen to max. 12 channels. Corrected an issue with double low resolution colors. Added an experimental feature: the super serial card emulation can now work with…
A critical Network Time Protocol issue has been patched by Apple, and is available for OS 10.8 through 10.10.1 via the Mac App Store. While most Apple updates are user option installable, this particular update is being pushed out by Apple automatically in order to prevent machines from being hi-jacked by hackers. If you have not seen a notification on your screen, you can install it from the App Store.
Ivan Drucker has once again released a plugin for Applesoft on the Apple II computer. His new Magic Goto allows for labels to be used instead of line numbers. Accrding to his posting: Magic Goto is now available, so you can program in Applesoft without ever having to think about line numbers, yielding better organized and much more readable code. It lets you GOTO, GOSUB, or ONERR GOTO a label in a REM statement. For example, GOSUB “showMainMenu” will find…
David Schmenk has posted an update to his self developed PLASMA SDK. According to the posting on the Apple II Enthusiasts PLASMA for the Holidays (For all you programmer types looking to escape from the relatives this week) Just like last year, here is an update to the PLASMA sandbox (an Apple II IDE to play around with PLASMA). It is (sort of) self-documenting progression through some PLASMA example code. PLASMA has grown up a lot since last year. With…
The Virtual Apple II website has updated their database to version 1.25. The latest version contains dozens of new box blurbs and box covers as well as a number of new games including Daniele Liverani’s new game, Genius – A Rock Game. The Virtual Apple database is used by the ActiveGS App and other Apple II emulator apps to supply all the game information and disks to their apps. To download the latest version of the app, click the update…
Jeremy Rand has released Apple2BuildPipeline to simplify and facilitate making Apple II software on OS X with Xcode. Based on a project by Quinn Dunki, Rand says, “The big change is that I have created an installer which adds a template in Xcode for Apple II projects…So, the next time you are thinking of starting some new project in Xcode, you can think ‘should I build something for iOS, Mac OS X or maybe the Apple II.’ When you select…
The crew at the Retro Computing Roundtable have posted Episode 83rd their podcast. This weeks panelists include Paul Hagstrom hosting the Roundtable with Michael Mulhern and Mike Whalen. This week the panel discusses a number of Apple related items including Which Apple II, if you can only have one? Why didn’t 6502 computers get faster? History of Personal Computing podcast Newly discovered Apple I up for auction Chris Osborne on using modems without a land line and his Level 29…
The developer of one of the most popular platform games of the early 1980’s has passed away. Lode Runner was an overnight success for Douglas E. Smith and had heavy competition from several publishers after he submitted the game for evaluation. The game originally was developed on the Apple II and became so popular that it has appeared on many of the later gaming platforms. His latest incarnations of the Lode Runner game were being published through Tozai Games.
The Apple2Scans Website has posted a scan of the Apple II book, Assembly Language Programming for the Apple II by Robert Mottola. The book is a 96 mb PDF and is available for download at: http://www.apple2scans.net/2014/09/01/assembly-language-programming-for-the-apple-ii/
Nishida Radio has released a photo of a prototype HDMI card for the Apple IIe that they have been working on. Proprietor, Koichi Nishida mentioned in a short conversation yesterday that he will be creating the //c version of the HDMi card first. The popularity of Nishida’s previous cards has meant that stock has been dificult for him to maintain as most of the cards sell as quickly as he is able to assemble them. The HDMI cards will likely…
ADTPro, the vintage apple disk imaging software, has been updated to version 2.0.0. ADTPro allows users to image floppies from Apple II and Apple III series computers and allows boot strapping of machines directly from a disk image over bare wire. The software handles a number of emulator image formats and supports many of the newer hardware items produced for the Apple II and Apple II series computers. New features in 2.0.0 included as specified in posting by David Schmidt…
Peter Wong has been working on a proof of concept project for the past several years which would allow the Apple II to utilize wireless communications. The project has a number of ideas included and even a version of ADTPro, the disk imaging software managed by David Schmidt with the Bluetooth option on the main menu. While there have been several projects which proved the concept would work, this is the first views which show the full integration of the…
Antoine Vignau has announced an update of the Apple II Cassette Collection on Brutal Deluxe. The update includes the following new items: Apple’s High-resolution graphics (002-0002-01) Apple’s Checkbook-1 (002-0005-01) Hayden’s Songs in the key of Apple The new additions brings the total number of offerings in the collection to 623 tapes. For more information or to download the items in the collection, see the Brutal Deluxe Apple II Cassette Collection website at: http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/
