19/12/2008: Christmas Bonanza!

Happy Holidays everyone!

I've assembled a fairly big update to the hardware section. Thanks to Ewen Wannop, the archive now holds a scan of the Applied Engineering DataLink 2400 internal modem. Thanks also to Henry Courbis of Reactive Micro for scans of the MicroDrive IDE, MicroDrive IDE Turbo and the GS-RAM Ultra. Last but not least, many thanks to Collin Douglas for contributing a scan of the uber rare Future Pad board, for use with the Futureshock 3D game. Never thought I'd live to see the day for that one! As told to Collin by its developer Jeff E Johnson, ‘it uses variable capacitance to sense how high you hold your hand over the pad.' It plugged into the joystick port on the IIGS.

Additionally, I've included downloadable manuals for Applied Engineering's Vulcan, Sonic Blaster, GS-RAM III, PC Transporter and the RAM Keeper along with manuals for the FingerPrint GSi, Sirius RAM, and the ZipGSX accelerator. These wonderful manuals were created by Wayne Stewart, who has made the best with what the PDF format can offer: all the text is searchable and even the chapters on the contents pages are linked to their relevant pages in each manual. To boot, the PDFs actually contain text instead of bitmap scans of each page, resulting in very small file sizes. If anyone can let me know how to reach Wayne and thank him for his efforts, please let me know.

The icing on the cake for my Christmas, Brian Wiser has scanned his available issues of the Apple IIGS Buyer's Guide, filling out most of the gaps in the archive's collection.

And as Michael Stephens has reminded us on comp.sys.apple2, you can spread some Christmas cheer on your IIGS with his Christmas Demo; ready to go in both 2image and ShrinkIt archive!

I'll be travelling to England, France and Italy throughout January, but I hope to check my emails as often as I can, but expect longer response times.

Merry Christmas everyone!

13/12/2008: Making KEGS-OSX Easier to Use...by a Comic Book Hero?

Paul Laroquad recently got in touch and let me know about version 0.4 of his KEGS Slot Droppers for Mac OS X. 'Tha what?!' you're probably thinking. Well, the KEGS Slot Droppers make it easy as dragging and dropping a disk image onto each dropper and then KEGS will start up automatically to boot from whatever has been dropped. This is especially useful for the KEGS-OSX build, as despite that it's more optimised, it still requires you to manually key the location of the disk images(s) you want KEGS to see.

Paul's also created an amazingly illustrated comic, with himself as the 'hero', that's easily appreciated by Apple II fans. Bizarre, but another wonderful example of the Apple II entering into the contemporary art space again.

12/12/2008: 32 Meg ProDOS Partition Updates

05/12/2008: Hover Blade and Subversion Scans

Delving deep into the boxes of my Apple IIGS collection in my parents' attic, I found my original Hover Blade manual and have scanned its cover as a 1-bit TIF, as this is the only image used for its packaging (it originally shipped with a photocopied manual and two disks). I wasn't able to find my old, trusty Hyperstudio digitising card as I was hoping, but perhaps someone else might be able to help out there? ;-)

George Rentovich has found his original copy of Subversion and submitted a scan for its box, which I have included with the Subversion archive.

Also, don't miss my review of the CFFA card. I've included a tonne of goodies to go with it - specifically, 32meg 2images which include every hard drive installable game and educational programs as well as most applications which you can quickly transfer to your compact flash cards for use with your real IIGS hardware, for those that require strict verisimilitude to their nostalgic sessions that emulators can't provide.

05/12/2008: eBay Action...in Australia?

15/11/2008: Everything Old (well, a couple of things) is New Again

Two Apple IIGS classics have recently been re-released for the 21^st century.

Hyper Studio 5 has been released for Mac OS X, jointly developed by Roger Wagner and Software Mac Kiev. The hypermedia authoring application is still a favourite with schools and they've been crying out for a Mac OS X version of the program for years. The update also includes a player for playing legacy Hyperstudio stacks, but that only includes stacks made with Mac Hyperstudio version 3.0 onwards. Software Mac Kiev also maintains other classics that were available for the IIGS - the Print Shop and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing for Mac OS X.

First reported by Touch Arcade, for gamers out for a bit of nostalgia on the go, Crystal Quest, that venerable shoot-em-up released for the IIGS back in 1989 is now available for the iPhone. The wonderfully idiosyncratic sound effects have been retained along with original gameplay in the ‘Classic' mode of the game. But there is also a new ‘Modern' mode with equally zany sound effects and updated graphics.

15/11/2008: InCider, II Alive and A+ Cover Collection Complete!

I'm very happy to announce that all three collections of InCider, II Alive and A+ are now complete in relation to their cover scans.

Thanks to Wayne Bibbens at Wayne's Computer Store, I managed to procure these last remaining issues to plug the holes in my almost complete collection, but only after overcoming email problems, researching best postage methods and working around the sliding value of the Australian dollar to the greenback. Thanks for bearing with me Wayne!

The volumes in question are:

InCider Magazine - December 1986
A+ Magazine - January 1987
II Alive Volume 1, Number 1 March April 1993

I also bought the April 1993 issue of InCider/A+, which reduces the number of cover scans for that collection to 2 only!

Also, to complete the InCider collection, I added the January 1989 issue, which has been in my collection for some time, but posed a bit of a problem in regards to retouching: let's just say it wasn't in mint condition! It's come up pretty nice after applying my Photoshop retouching techniques, don't you think?

Now, this is the part where I ask you to beg, borrow or steal copies of the remaining InCider/A+ (Issues March and May 1993), Apple IIGS Buyer's Guide (Fall and Winter 1987; Spring, Summer and Winter 1988) and GS+ (Issues Volume 1, Issue 1 to Issue 6; Volume 2 Issues 1 and 2) magazines. If you don't have the necessary hardware to scan in these magazines beg, borrow or steal that too!

19/10/2008: Brian Greenstone Interview

John from the Retro Mac Cast let me know of their interview with Brian Greenstone (who basically is Pangea Software) in their 91st episode to talk about the games he's done over the last 21 years, including Xenocide and Senseless Violence (Brian needs to know that many more people appreciate his IIGS efforts than he realises!). Additionally, John has also provided a PDF version of the Xenocide manual, so that's included now with the Xenocide archive. 

15/10/2008: New Game surfaces: Subversion

15/09/2008: Happy Birthday Apple IIGS!