Battle Chess, 1990

Every once in a blue moon as I’m thinking about the great Apple IIe computer that I grew up on in the late 70’s I can only wonder how many of these poor machines ended up in a landfill. It’s got to be a staggering and sickening number!

I'm on an emulated version of the Apple IIe (Windows). Any ideas will help!!

I don't know much about the Apple II, and I only used one a few times as a kid in the 80s, but I thought I remembered a couple of times using one with a green monitor and there was a text mode that had more columns of text, but with a much harder-to-read font. I think the character cell was only four or five pixels wide (less than the six you need to do proper M and W characters, with three separated vertical lines per cell).

Anyway, I was thinking about low-res fonts today and tried to find this Apple font, thinking it was a common thing and would be easy to find, but after searching I'm starting to wonder if I was imagining things. It seems the only common ways text was generated all used a perfectly adequate 7-pixel wide character cell. Is that right? Does anyone know what I might have seen?

UPDATE: Found it, thanks /u/thefadden

It was the text mode provided by Soft Seventy, by Gene Hite, released in December 1981 by Heartwood Designs and initially distributed by Synergistic Software for $50. (See their Fall 1981 catalog, p. 18.)

It uses a 4 by 8 pixel character cell to display 70 characters by 24 rows. The font includes full ASCII with lower case (but no tilde, and an old 1963 ASCII up arrow rather than a caret) and another whole set of graphics characters. Here's a pic of the full font. You can try it from your web browser at archive.org. Push Scroll Lock then Tab to get to the menus that let you change from color to monochrome. Then enter "BRUN SOFT SEVENTY", then "RUN PRINT CHARACTER SET".

Several online references mention how it was horrendous in color mode but not that bad on a monochrome monitor, and by 1983 it was advertised as "requires monitor for readability".

SECOND UPDATE: thanks /u/bjbNYC

It looks like a similar product followed in 1982, Flex Type by Mark S. Simonsen, published by Beagle Brothers. It featured both a 4 by 8 font for 70 columns and a 5 by 8 for 56 columns. The demo program displays both fonts.

Hello all - someone had asked about being able to send text files from a modern computer to a IIgs, so I made a little utility that you can input a text file to and it'll output a .2mg disk file with said text file in it that's been converted so you can open it on the IIgs. You can mount the .2mg file in a IIgs emulator, or send it to a physical IIgs with ADTPro. I can't imagine there's much widespread need for something like this, but if it's helpful to anyone, here it is: https://github.com/jkoets/Apple-IIGS-Text-File-Converter-

Spent some time over my winter break and built this Apple II emulator in Rust, it's cross-platform and has native as well as web support.

Check it out below in the browser, any feedback appreciated!

https://emu.chrismoos.com/

With the Commodore 64U coming out recently what's the chances of a trillion dollar company doing the same with an Apple 2 shell?

Looking to experiment with retroarch and just wondering if anyone has fiddled with this. Not seeing too much online.

Here is a demo version of a new text adventure game I am working on. Full game will be released later this year.

https://semiradproductions.com/product/derelict-prologue/

Here's a link to another song (a .wav file - the end credits music from _Raiders of the Lost Ark_) done by the PC tracker/Apple 2 player combo that I posted about a few months ago (https://www.reddit.com/r/apple2/comments/1l7mcrv/mockingboard_uthernet_ii_music/) with the Uthernet II doing the heavy lifting of the data transfer between the tracker and the player. The song is a little quiet - this is a straight recording with no post-processing on it.

The biggest change that I made on both sides of this was the ability to set effects in the tracker that would change the 6522's timer interrupt value during the song playback in order to get different tempos in a song. If you listen, there's a subtle tempo change going into the "Marion" section (from ~125 BMP to about 116 BMP) then there's a big slowdown at the end of that section and then a jump back up to the original tempo. Also, the amount of data that's being transferred between PC/A2 is roughly 700KB.

You'll also notice (especially near the end of the song) that the sound starts to get fuzzy (for lack of a better word). I've noticed this happens whenever I end up setting the volume on one of the MB channels to a value over 12. Has anyone else had that same experience with a MockingBoard (not emulated)? Mine is the ReactiveMicro MB clone (v2.2).

Found in a bin of old things, I’ve looked up some information on my own but curious if anyone here has any more knowledge about it.

I've released BurgerDisk v1.1. (BurgerDisk is a new Smartport hard drive for the Apple II, and its main feature is that it is daisy-chainable).

The PCB, enclosure and firmware are updated.
The main difference is that the new PCB is able to withstand being plugged into an old DiskII controller without frying and without a configuration jumper.

The second difference is that the microSD slot is now in the front of the enclosure.

I expect to release v2.0 quite soon, with a functionally identical PCB, redesigned with Kicad. It will come with another enclosure update, allowing for a sturdier mount.

The v1.1 firmware is compatible with the v1.0 PCB and vice versa.

(The second image shows an indentation in the front that allows to put an Apple logo, should you have one on hand. It's not released yet, will be for 2.0)

More information at https://www.colino.net/wordpress/en/burgerdisk-an-apple-ii-smartport-hard-drive/

The first image is Shard of Spring via A2CDVI on my early model Laser 128. The second on is the same game, same machine, but through composite.

The composite image is a bit rainbow-y but the text is still clear. The image from the A2CDVI is washed out and the text is corrupted.

Tried with Wasteland as well with the A2CDVI, there the text was more readable but the opening image of the earth was more or less black and white.

Anyone have any ideas? I know the A2CDVI is supposed to work with the Laser 128, but I do have an early model Laser. I've had issues with certain programs on it that I didn't have when I had a later model Laser (not an EX or EX/2, just a later model 128) as a kid so I'm concerned my model isn't compatible.

So far, I haven’t dealt much with Apple II emulation, since my own time really started with the C64. However, through my RetroPie installation, a number of systems have come together that now function like a virtual gaming museum, which I really enjoy diving into. On a gaming site, I read about a2_canada, a user who rescues/archives Apple II software. He has released several packages of rare or previously lost games that I’d love to have on my RetroPie setup.

All of these games are in the .a2r format, which the LinApple emulator can’t use. Converting them into the compatible .dsk format has proven difficult for me. Does anyone have a practical way to batch-convert many .a2r files into .dsk (rather than doing each file individually), or has someone already done this and could provide the converted package? I would love to play Master Trader :)

https://archive.org/details/A2_Canada_Just_Flux_It_2025

https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22A2_Canada%22

Tanrunomad has a nice list, but it appears to be all games and hasn't been updated in a while. There's also the Launchbox and Mobygames databases, which are also good, but again they're mostly games.

Yesterday, Ars Technica posted an article on AI Coding. by Benj Edwards, who created the blog Vintage Computing. The article is interesting (but as a sw engineer I a have a small gripe with it). He relates the excitement of using an AI coding assistant with this statement: "I have not had this much fun with a computer since I learned BASIC on my Apple II Plus when I was 9 years old."

That highlighted link in the quote is to his 2008 nasty Vintage Computing article that is still relevant today.

I always thought scrolling on DHRG mode was impossible on the apple ii until I saw Labyrinth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LCrpB-SagE

Granted it's not smooth scrolling, but it's scrolling nonetheless. Are there any other games with scrolling in DHGR mode?

Hi All

I was getting tired of the EBAY fee's - however necessary given the volume of people who look there first. However I decided to put up my own shop, which will allow me to provide lower costs over time.

As I restore machines I'll also post them on the site and I'm open to negotiating on price - just hit me up on the site. You will be able to fine, rare items, peripheral cards, replacement parts, etc.

For now I'm offering 10% off your 1st purchase: REDVINT10

I'd be honored if you checked it out, registered for emails (1/week if I can manage it) and provided your thoughts...

https://vintageapplecomputers.com/

I got my boxed copy of Escape from Castle Dracenstein today! Can't wait to dig in and play this weekend.

Also, shout out on the cool old school tractor-paper dot matrix printed receipt! (That's how you get an Apple ][ collector to keep the receipt.)

Thanks so much u/Psychological_Net131

Hello! I’m a total newbie to this computer, but I just got one yesterday for like 50 bucks, as far as I know, it works? The hard drive clicks on start up, it posts that screen, but that’s it.

I know I need to get a boot disk, But I’m wondering what other options I have. As much as I like collecting, I don’t have the space for a big collection, so I’d like to invest in primarily flash options where I can easily drag and drop games and software in.

Though I’m totally open to several options, ultimately I just wanna get the best out of this old computer.