07/09/2008: Utility Updates and Orbizone Goodies

Greetings Programs!

First of all, I need to note that Tony Costa should have been thanked at the time of relaunching the site. He provided innumerable scans of packaging such as the elusive Cryllan Mission, Secrets of Bahras and Kaleidokubes as well as many more scans for apps, books and educational software that made version 3.0 more than just a face lift. 

This weekly update includes, amongst other things, updates to the Apps/Utilities section including packaging scans of The Graphic Exchange, Foundation and Six Pack all courtesy of Andrew Roughan. Additionally, a new archive has been created for GS Font Editor when David Wilson submitted a scan of the box, I realised I hadn't included it on the site!

Another omission I made was to neglect including a disk image archive for Visualizer. I have since added a 2image for version 1.08.

For those with more of a trigger finger, you can now enjoy more scenery as you blast everything in sight. Wade Clarke has submitted his own level graphics for the classic Pangea Asteroids clone Orbizone. I'm delighted to report I have egg on my face when I replied to Wade by saying that not many people took advantage of being able to include your own graphics and levels to Pangea's games, because coincidentally, I have found many more graphics and levels for Orbizone rummaging through mirrors.apple2.org.za.

Also, I have included a little detail to some of the most elusive of unreleased games for the IIGS, with what little knowledge we have about those games.

Last but not least, I've correctly changed the release status of Balance of Power to 'Reclassified Freeware' as the designer, Chris Crawford, has made every version available for free.

18/08/2008: Quick Updates

Just a couple of quick updates: the RAM-GS card by Sequential Systems has been added to hardware and Mark Percival has kindly given permission to include all versions of Micol Advanced BASIC and its accompanying manual from his own site.

11/08/2008: Updates to the Site

The first batch of updates has arrived: Robert Spitz reminded me that I already had scans that he submitted for the CMS SCSI Card, the original Apple SCSI Card and the Apple SCSI Sandwich II Card. The RAM-GS scan is forthcoming Robert, trust me! :-)

Also, David Schmidt has sent in an image of his Applied Engineering RAM Keeper, with accompanying accoutrements.

We've been experiencing some teething problems since version 3.0 of the site launched last week, most notably randomly appearing error messages (we're still looking into that) and problems with download .zip files appearing to be corrupt. The problem seems only to happen to those of you using Internet Explorer 6 and 7 to download your IIGS goodies. A quick and easy solution would be to use Firefox 3 or even Safari for Windows instead. If you'd prefer to continue using Internet Explorer to visit this site, this Microsoft Help article might fix the problem:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308090

In short, try this:

For case 1:

Before you download, make sure that the Confirm open after download option is selected. To verify this:

1. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.

2. Double-click Folder Options.

3. Click the File Types tab.

4. Scroll down to and click the .zip extension.

5. Click Advanced.

6. Verify that Confirm open after download is selected.

For case 2:

1. Click the hyperlink, and then click Save or Save this file to disk in the File Download dialog box that appears.

2. In the Save As dialog box, specify a location to save the file to (for example, Desktop), and then click Save.

3. When the download is finished, open the .zip file, and then extract the files that are contained in it.

11/08/2008: Sweet 16 v2.0 Beta 17 is Released!

Good news everybody!

After first demonstrating the emulator at Kansasfest in July Eric 'Sheppy' Shepherd has now publicly released the latest beta version of Sweet 16 v2.0.

After playing with it for a couple of hours, it's a lot more stable than the previous beta running on my Dual 2.3Ghz G5. I've been throwing FTA demos at it and it's handled them with aplomb, except the Xmas Demo and its border effects. The volume sounds a little too loud, creating a little audible distortion, in a similar way to how Bernie would when you raise the volume slider built into its preferences. But it's a joy having all these demos run without a hiccup in small window as I perform lots of other tasks (such as writing this news entry).

This new version of Sweet 16 is major step forwards! Other features include joystick support (yes!) a new full screen mode and rudimentary TCP/IP support using Marinetti 3.0b1. Congrats to Sheppy!

02/08/2008: Welcome to version 3.0!

This has a been a long process, combining new graphic design, new archives and content, a content management system, a forum (which requires registration, which should reduce that damn spam!) a blog and probably heaps of other things I’ve forgot to mention because there’s so much that’s new. 

I invite everyone to explore the site all over again, because you’re bound to find, for example, many more educational software archives, soundtracks to many games, a hand picked selection of the best freeware and shareware apps and games, a new hardware section AND a new section devoted to IIGS books and magazines.

There are many people to thank for the updated site. Firstly, thanks many times over to Rane Bowen. This guy is responsible for the content management system (Silverstripe, for those interested), finding ways of importing all the data I had accumulated and creating the HTML and CSS templates, based on my Photoshop mock-ups, to visually tie it all together.

Thanks also to Greg Wildman, who continues to support this site by hosting via his web server and also providing great support to ensure the site has the level of convenience it has now.

Also, there are a few people who’ve helped and prodded in the last couple of years since I decided to upgrade the site.

Thanks to Mitch Spector, equally fanatical about IIGS games as myself, for your enthusiasm for the IIGS, the wonderful game soundtrack recordings and expansion card scans.

Thanks also to the Aussie IRC crew, Andrew Roughan, David Wilson and Ewen Wannop (a wolf in sheep’s clothing!) for providing expansion card scans and keeping on the lookout for IIGS related packaging and book material and making scans when available. Robert Spitz has also been very helpful in this area as well. Henry Courbis at Reactive Micro also submitted hardware scans, specifically for the TranswarpGS and Vulcan Gold controller card.

Shaun Olson also deserves a pat on the back, for unwittingly testing the new upload system for the site, before I’d even made it public! Google is just getting too good at listing sites – just how many of you saw version 3.0 of the site before I announced it!? Also Shaun submitted many book cover scans – brilliant!

One last point: If when you load a page and you come across an error message like this:

'Security', 'db/$Action' => 'DatabaseAdmin', '$Controller/$Action/$ID/$

OtherID' => '*', 'images/$Action/$Class/$ID/$Field' => 'Image_Uploader', '' => 'RootURLController', 'sitemap.xml' => 'GoogleSitemap', )); Director::addRules(1, array( '$URLSegment/$Action/$ID/$OtherID' => 'ModelAsController', )); // Load error handlers Debug::loadErrorHandlers(); // Connect to database require_once("core/model/DB.php"); if(isset($_GET['debug_profile'])) Profiler::mark('DB::connect'); DB::connect($databaseConfig); if(isset($_GET['debug_profile'])) Profiler::unmark('DB::connect'); // Get the request URL $baseURL = dirname(dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'])); if(substr($url,0,strlen($baseURL)) == $baseURL) $url = substr($url,strlen($baseURL)); // Direct away - this is the "main" function, that hands control to the appropriate controller if(isset($_GET['debug_profile'])) Profiler::unmark('main.php init'); Director::direct($url); if(isset($_GET['debug_profile'])) { Profiler::unmark('all_execution'); Profiler::show(isset($_GET['profile_trace'])); } ?>'

don't worry about reporting it. We know it exists and we're hoping to fix it soon! In the meantime, simply hit the reload button until the page loads normally.

Enjoy the site!