In what's probably the coolest custom-built machine I've seen in ages, computer enthusiast Michael J. Mahon has built a parallel computer made out of 17 Apple IIe motherboards.

As you can see the "AppleCrate II" looks like a big crate of motherboards stacked on top of each other -- and that's pretty much what it is, along with some very clever networking and custom boot code.

This is actually his second computer built using old Apple motherboards. The first we covered five years ago; it also used spare Apple IIe boards, although those were a slightly different version.

I'll let the image of Mahon's latest creation speak for itself, but if you've got some extra motherboards and some free time, Mahon details how he built his latest wonder over on his website.

What's it good for? Well, in addition to blinking its status lights like a Cylon, it can play Beatles songs in 16-part polyphony -- so that's something.

[via BoingBoing]

AppleCrate II parallel computer made from Apple IIe motherboards originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 04 May 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Did you have one? Or are you nostalgic for the good ‘ol days of the 1980s? Personally, I had an Apple IIe, but the Commodore was the hot gadget to have back in the day. Well Commodore 64, in all its boxy glory, has had an update and is ready for a new day. The new Commodore looks exactly the same as the old one, even down to the keyboard. But the inside has had an update.


Commodore USA, a Florida company, has re-created the old-style PC and put it on sale on Tuesday. The computers sold out in the first 24 hours, but the company won’t say how many units that was. The company had licensed the rights to the Commodore trademark last September.

“It looks just like the original Commodore 64, with even the old-style keyboard,” said Barry Altman, Commodore USA’s chief executive. “In fact, that keyboard was the biggest accomplishment of all, so far. The keys look like a piece of clay that you pushed a marble into — so it fits your fingertip.”

The price is exactly the same as the 1982 price: $595.

The original Commodore 64 had a whopping 64KB of memory. The new one has 4GB, which isn’t huge by today’s standards. I mean, you can get more than that on a tiny little SD card. But it isn’t as if this would be anyone’s primary computer.

Other specs:

• Ubuntu 10.04 LTS operating system on disk ready to install (is it a floppy disk??)
• Commodore OS 1.0, along with emulation functionality and classic game package, will be mailed to purchasers when available.

And more from Barry: “We expected our audience to be the nostalgia crowd, and that’s true, a lot of people buying them owned an original Commodore 64 back in the ’80s,” Altman said. “But we’re also finding that there are young kids who are geek geniuses who have iPhones and iPads and things like that and they’re looking at this thing and they’re into it. They’ve actually been a big part of our customer base so far too. It’s been a surprise.”

Here are some of the original commercials for your viewing pleasure. There was a PC/Apple rivalry back then, too:

And this one is complete with girls on waterslides, super cool music, and even hand motions:

So what do you think? Do you want one? Are you keeping up with the Commodore?

[via LA Times]

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Relevant Entries on SlashGear

• Commodore lands exclusive worldwide rights to market Commodore AIO keyboard computers
• The Commodore is back
• Commodore to re-enter the gaming market
• Commodore Netbook is a Commodore in name only
• Re-live the days of the Commodore

Did you have one? Or are you nostalgic for the good ‘ol days of the 1980s? Personally, I had an Apple IIe, but the Commodore was the hot gadget to have back in the day. Well Commodore 64, in all its boxy glory, has had an update and is ready for a new day. The [...]

Need a nostalgic handmade gift for the aging nerd in your life, someone who may have logged a lot of hours on his/her Apple IIe way back in the early 80s? Here's an easy little project you can knock out quicker than you can say 'xyzzy.' I got everything I needed for this project at Michaels: ...
By: HenryBasenji

Continue Reading »

According to Kotaku, gaming guru Graeme Devine has left Apple. Devine got his start in development in the late 70's on the TRS-80 before being hired at the age of 16 to work at Atari, helping to bring Pole Position to various home computers including the Commodore 64 and Apple IIe. From there, he went [...]

TechMan was poking around the basement the other day, where old computers go to die and old books go to yellow and turn brittle. After thinking for the hundredth time that he ought to fire up the old Apple IIe, his attention was drawn to a copy of Leo Laporte's 2003 "Technology Almanac." Now this was hardly the molderiest book in the collection, but technology time is like dog years.

Gamers in Georgia and Massachusetts are preparing to launch a pair of videogame-based charity drives to benefit Child’s Play.

Pittsfield, Massachusetts-based Geeks With Issues will take to a vintage Apple IIe and “endure” a 24-hour play session of Oregon Trail in order to raise funds for both Child’s Play and the Hillcrest Educational Centers. The event kicks off at noon on November 27 and can be viewed on the Geeks website and on Pittsfield Community Television’s Channel 18, which makes sense as the team consists of cast and crew from a local television show bearing the Geeks With Issues name.

Dubbed The Battle Against Dysentery III: Wagon Train of Destiny, the event raised $612 in its 2009 incarnation. This year’s goal is $5,000.
Read More

read more

Gamers in Georgia and Massachusetts are preparing to launch a pair of videogame-based charity drives to benefit Child’s Play.

Pittsfield, Massachusetts-based Geeks With Issues will take to a vintage Apple IIe and “endure” a 24-hour play session of Oregon Trail in order to raise funds for both Child’s Play and the Hillcrest Educational Centers. The event kicks off at noon on November 27 and can be viewed on the Geeks website and on Pittsfield Community Television’s Channel 18, which makes sense as the team consists of cast and crew from a local television show bearing the Geeks With Issues name.

Dubbed The Battle Against Dysentery III: Wagon Train of Destiny, the event raised $612 in its 2009 incarnation. This year’s goal is $5,000.
Read More

read more

Last year in this space I admitted to my not-so-terrible not-so-secret: I’m a left-hander. One thing that I didn’t mention in the post – although it got mentioned plenty in the comments — is my computer mouse. The mouse has always been a non-issue for me. Barring the one attached to my dad’s Apple IIe (and [...]

photo © 2005 Jared Klett | more info(via: Wylio)
About 10 years ago, I was one of the new hire trainers in my technical support department. It wasn't a full time job, I still spent most of my time answering the phone, but I was incredibly grateful for those 2-3 days each month I didn't have to wear a headset. The two years I spent training new hires saw our department go through an interesting transition regarding the skillset that incoming technicians possessed. During the first year, most of the new hires had a good understanding of how to use the command line in an operating system, while those who were hired in the second year had mostly never seen anything but a graphical user interface.

This was the late 90's and early 00's, so graphical user interfaces had been the norm for some time. I had started using a PC when DOS was used more than Windows but even before that, I had used an Apple IIe which was almost completely text based (except for a few games). I knew how to use a command line, yet suddenly my trainees did not. A significant portion of our troubleshooting tools required knowledge of DOS and command line tools, so I was tasked with making sure the new hires had this knowledge by the time they left my course.

The problem though is that more and more computer users do not have the underlying knowledge that most programs and operating systems assume them to have. This leads to an innumerable amount of problems for those of us that seek to, or are begrudgingly drug, into supporting these users.

I used to love mucking around in the command line or hacking my computer's registry, but as I've spent more and more years on projects developing software, I have come to realize that most users should never need to do either of those things. If applications are designed and developed correctly, user configuration should be near zero. Its this conclusion that makes articles such as this one at The Brooks Review hit so close to home for me:

The article continues by saying that by simplifying the applications we build, we also require less of their time to educate themselves about how the application works. Yes, a program like Adobe Photoshop will always be complex, but if Adobe spent time to make it less difficult to use instead of just adding more functionality with each release, they could improve their user's productivity.

This is a lesson that all of us who work on projects with a software development aspect need to understand. Corporate applications seem to be, at least from what I have seen, significantly more difficult to use than most consumer applications. The next time you use your company's expense reporting application, hold up your iPhone next to it and consider if filing an expense report is more difficult than it should be. Now hold that iPhone up next to the last application you helped gather requirements for, created a project plan for or developed code for and ask yourself, "What would I do differently to simplify this for my users?"

Your inner cranky grandparent will likely be awakened as you read this report by Michael Neibauer. Friendship Tech Prep Academy, a newish charter school which currently serves 240 students in sixth and seventh grades, not only boasts a wireless campus, but now, every single student enrolled at Friendship Tech will receive a free iPad. The D.C. Office of the State Superintendent, backed by the federal government, issued a $410,000 grant to the school to buy 240 of the fancy internet doohickeys. We're excited that these particular D.C. students are learning how to utilize advanced technology -- but are also insanely jealous that they get to tote around a free iPad. Whatever, dying of dysentery was way more fun when it was done on a bulky box.

In every era in recent times there has been one profession that for a short while you could enter without formal training. Autodidacts in the 19th century could read the law without recourse to formal education (see Abe Lincoln). In the early 20th century it was aviation.  For a short while in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was computing, thanks to the release of the Apple IIe, the IBM PC and the Mac.

Dice are such a funny thing. We talk about dice being hot or cold. We assign personalities to them. We have certain dice we use in certain situations. We have dice in our favorite color. We tend to have many sets of dice. Hell, some of even collect them. But what are they really?

If you are expecting this to be about getting rid of dice on your game, I'm sorry to disappoint. I personally feel that dice are a necessary evil in gaming. It provides a sense of randomness or fate into the game. Are there other ways to accomplish that? Sure there are, but most people I played with seem to get a thrill of excitement with some sort of randomization. Hell, I think some people think they can mentally will their dice to roll certain numbers.

So what am I talking about today? Today, I'd like to talk about how we view electronic dice. That's right electronic dice. What I'm talking about here is the various dice rolling programs that have been around likely since the dawn of the computer. Why am I talking about this? Well to be honest, I was playing around with the Android App Inventor and I wrote a very simple dice rolling program and after all what programmer that is also a gamer hasn't written at a least some sort of dice roller.

I think the first electronic dice roller that I have ever seen was something called the Dragonbone Dice Wand (at least that's what I think it was called). It appeared in the pages of Dragon Magazine in my youth. While I never got to see one in person, I have been told that they never really worked well when you tried to use it in a game. I think it had something to do with how slow they were. It also was a lot more expensive than a simple set of dice and you had keep replacing the batteries.

Then of course there was various dice roller programs that you could use on your PC,Mac, Apple IIe, or TRS-80 (yes, I went there). Most of these earlier programs suffered from the fact that computers where still not something that you normally used at the game time because they were just too big. Some programs just generated a list of numbers and printed it out and you could use those in play. Still not an ideal solution.

Flash forward to today, I think at least half the cell phone using population has a smartphone of some sort. We are talking iPhones, Blackberries, Androids, and several other less known phone types. They are more prevalent than Palm PDA was back in the day. And all of them have some sort of dice roller available to them, even if you have to write it yourself. So what don't we all use them?

To be honest, I think a large part of it is just plain feel. Many of just plain like the feel of dice in our hand and rolling them across the table. Even if that means some of get CDS (Crazy Dice Syndrome, or spastic rolling of dice off the table) every once in a while. We feel that we have a personal connection to the dice. We feel that we can influence the dice in some way. Hell, we even talk to our dice to influence them or the Deity to roll the way we want them to. I just don't think we have that kind of connection to our dice. Of course, real dice don't use electricity. Which means you don't break the mood when you are playing your Call of Cthulhu by candle light (yes, a few groups I've been in have done that).

Until next time, my closing questions to you are simple. Have you ever used some sort of electronic dice? If so, do you use them normally in your gaming sessions? If not, why not and when do you use them?

Check out these really awesome geeky clocks from the really awesome geeky folks at Geekware. The top one is from the circuit board of a vintage 1983 model Apple IIe computer. The rainbow ribbon is just fanboytastic. It would have been cool to make that into a grandfather style clock with the rainbow ribbon moving [...]

Vintage Apple Computer Circuit Board Clocks

It’s been a long time since my journalism days at UH, but it’s fair to say this won’t be the last school to shuffle around its communication curriculum. I spent my early days with Pagemaker and an Apple IIe, so I’ve seen my share of the changing landscape.But everything pales in comparison when we introduce 2010’s participatory web into the journalism mix. Not only are journalists competing with their neighbors, or citizen ...

From the Apple IIe User's Guide (http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Manuals/desktops/AppleIIeUG.PDF): ---Quote--- The name Apple...

Eva Kaplan-Leiserson first fell in love with technology playing Oregon Trail on an Apple IIE in the 1980s (a passion for all things Apple remains). Her early participation in social networking included BBSes and online ...

Section: Gadgets / Other, Features, Originals

We here at Gadgetell are starting a new series showing off our own personal gadgets-the ones we love and use everyday. To kick things off I proudly present mine:

Toshiba Satellite L305: It’s going on two years old but this guy is a true workhorse. It’s my primary computer and I use it everyday. It runs Vista and has a Intel Pentium Dual CPU T3200 with 2GB of RAM. It’s not the newest kid on the block but it performs admirably and has never given me any trouble, not even after its power cord got tangled up around the leg of my desk chair and sent it tumbling to the floor. I was shocked. I love Toshiba and will never buy another brand.

Toshiba Satellite T115-DS1125: This little guy is my travel and surf on the couch buddy. I call it my netbook, but with an 11.5’’ HD screen, 2GB of RAM and dual core processor it’s actually considered an ultraportable. I love it. It runs Windows 7 64-bit and is upgradable to 4GB (something I plan to do soon.) The HD died just three weeks after I got it but Toshiba’s excellent customer service took care of it quickly. Have I mentioned I love Toshiba? I’ve had many different brands of computers starting with an Apple IIe way back when, then a Packard Bell, a Compaq, an EMachines, 3 Dells, an HP, an Asus, and and Acer and Toshiba has by far been the best ever. Their computers are built to last and their customer service and tech support is top notch.

Amazon Kindle: I love this thing. It goes everywhere with me. I read books, blogs and several newspapers and magazines on it. So much nicer to travel with and no more piles of books, magazines and newspapers all over my house! The content available is great-I read two Canadian and one UK newspaper on it along with my New York Times, Boston Globe and Washington Post. The text to speech function is great too. I put a skin from DecalGirl.com on it to protected it from scratches. I had the first generation Kindle as well, and it’s now my husband’s. He loves it. Still not sure when/if I’ll upgrade to the new Kindle!

BlackBerry Tour: I admit it, I’m addicted. My Tour keeps me connected to everything when I’m away from my desk. I check sports scores, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ebay, and my email (5 different accounts!), text up a storm, read the news, play BeJeweled, take pics (the camera is excellent!), listen to Sirius/XM Radio, stay in touch with my best friend in Texas with BlackBerry Messenger, and oh yeah, make a phone call now and then. They ain’t kidding when they call it a CrackBerry!

iPod Touch: I keep all my music and videos on here. I also use iBooks, Pandora, the Amazon Kindle App, and tons more. It’s a great pocket sized entertainment center! Apple did not deem it fit to receive all the bells and whistles of OS4 (It’s a 2nd Generation model) but it’s a keeper!

Overdrive 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot: This thing has saved my bacon more than a few times when I had to get something done and my cable broadband went out. It allows me to connect up to 5 devices to it at once and lets them all connect to the net through Sprint’s mobile network. It’s fast and it’s a valuable tool for me. I never have to worry about finding a hotspot when I travel and can still get online when the cable goes out.

My final favorite gadget is one you can’t see because I used it to take the pic. My digital camera. I used my old Kodak Easyshare 6 MP but tomorrow my new Fujifilm FinePix S1800 12.2 MP camera should arrive. It’s an SLR style camera with 18x optical zoom, a wide angle lens, and true 720p video. Can’t wait to try it out!

These are my favorite gadgets-what are yours?

Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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In every era in recent times there has been one profession that for a short while you could enter without formal training. Autodidacts in the 19th century could read the law without recourse to formal education (see Abe Lincoln). In the early 20th century it was aviation.  For a short while in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was computing, thanks to the release of the Apple IIe, the IBM PC and the Mac.

Last week, we shared a news segment evaluating the laserdisc format, compared to VHS. Coincidentally, this week we bring you a video from a laserdisc, showing off the nifty features and add-ons of the Apple IIe. Of special interest/amusement will be the size of the external hard drive. We won't ruin the surprise, except to say they excitedly mention you can store up to 2400 text pages on it! Get out those rainbow-colored logos kids, we're going to the 80's!

Such memories looking at these Apple computers over the years. What have I owned? Let’s see if I remember… Apple IIe Mac SE Mac IIsi (though I coveted the IIci) Power Mac 8500 (then upgraded with a G3 daughterboard processor) Power Mac G4 Power Mac G5 iMac Core 2 Extreme and throw in a Newton [...]

Back in the old days, one of my mates got a brand spanking new Apple IIe computer. I’d never even see a computer before then. We used to play cool games like Lode Runner and Hyper Olympics on it, on the green screen. 20 years later...<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/digg/topic/apple/upcoming/~4/0T_ula5mwiI" height="1" width="1" />

Sourced from: "Digg / Apple / digg"

[quote user="PLP"]

Forward:

perp:
the ipad is a dickturd unless you are someone who uses it as a controller.

I'm 99% sure nobody at apple even remotely considered it's use as a music making tool when they were developing it either. Irony.

I remember back in sixth grade which was '85 for me we had the Apple IIe computer and there was this digital recording of Baba O'Riley being passed around amongst the hacker groups/pirates. It was crazy because no one had heard a digital replication of audio like this before. It was all grainy and super lo bit rate and it wasn't the whole song, just a one minute snippet. Remembering this just now made me want to do a search for it and this is what I found... an archive of the old Compute magazine (which was the shizzle back then I used to cream over this mag) COMPUTE! ISSUE 88 / SEPTEMBER 1987 / PAGE 86

How does digital recording work on an Apple II? The sound source—a cassette player, for example—is connected to the cassette input port of your computer. A machine language program continuously monitors memory location 49248. The seventh bit of this memory location varies between 0 and 1 as the signal level at the cassette input port changes. The changing status of this bit is recorded in memory. Once the sound data is in memory, it can be manipulated or saved to disk. Later, the recorded sound is played back by toggling the bit in memory location 49200 that controls the speaker. http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue88/Audio_Recorder_For _Apple_II.php

an interesting read on the Apple II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_series[/quote] i had one of those cassette deck deals for a tandy 2000. i just found the cable for it not that long ago. it looks like a midi cable that gets split into 3 1/8th inch jacks. i remember playing oregon trail on those macs. my roommate found one of those old macs and we played that game again and it was liberating. favorite old timey computer game: the black cauldron.

[quote user="Forward"]

perp:
the ipad is a dickturd unless you are someone who uses it as a controller.

I'm 99% sure nobody at apple even remotely considered it's use as a music making tool when they were developing it either. Irony. [/quote] I remember back in sixth grade which was '85 for me we had the Apple IIe computer and there was this digital recording of Baba O'Riley being passed around amongst the hacker groups/pirates. It was crazy because no one had heard a digital replication of audio like this before. It was all grainy and super lo bit rate and it wasn't the whole song, just a one minute snippet. Remembering this just now made me want to do a search for it and this is what I found... an archive of the old Compute magazine (which was the shizzle back then I used to cream over this mag) COMPUTE! ISSUE 88 / SEPTEMBER 1987 / PAGE 86 How does digital recording work on an Apple II? The sound source—a cassette player, for example—is connected to the cassette input port of your computer. A machine language program continuously monitors memory location 49248. The seventh bit of this memory location varies between 0 and 1 as the signal level at the cassette input port changes. The changing status of this bit is recorded in memory. Once the sound data is in memory, it can be manipulated or saved to disk. Later, the recorded sound is played back by toggling the bit in memory location 49200 that controls the speaker. http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue88/Audio_Recorder_For_Apple_II.php an interesting read on the Apple II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_series

When Innosight speaks about jobs-to-be-done we frequently focus on finding important and unsatisfied jobs that represent market opportunities for a company savvy enough to spot them and develop compelling value propositions and business models to capitalize on them. But a thorough understanding of the jobs-to-be-done of your target consumers can also help companies identify competitive threats that may emerge from far outside their traditional market landscape.

In this article posted today at Forbes.com we see how apparel retailers are no longer fighting each other for the shrinking back-to-school budget, but find themselves competing on a much broader front against big box electronics stores and specialty producers like Apple. Traditionally, research methods in the fashion industry have consisted of trend analysis, looking at the leading edge epicenters of trend makers and fashionistas in Paris, NYC, and Los Angeles, and trying to predict which of these avant garde styles would catch on with the mainstream consumers. This works if you are focused on solving the job of “have a relevant wardrobe” but in the schema of a teen's life, wardrobe is but one dimension of projecting who they are. A higher-order job for them might be “be seen as current,” with sub-jobs under that of “know current events/movies/bands/catchphrases” and “use latest technology” and “have a relevant wardrobe”.

Over time, the importance of each of these sub-jobs has shifted. Peer pressure determines which will spike most for a teen in terms of contribution to the higher-order job and thereby claim the lion’s share of the back-to- school budget. In the hyper-consumptive 80s, fashion was seen as the way to project currency, with Madonna and Don Johnson-like celebrities leading multiple fashion movements through the decade (neon leg warmers anyone?), while those sporting an Apple IIe in their living room were seen as odd at best. In the 90s, with the explosion of the neo-punk/grunge scene and new online tools enabling global awareness of diverse forms of music and entertainment, fashion took a turn towards flannel and in terms of making a statement, took a back seat to Nirvana, anime, and grassroots music festivals. This past decade has finally seen the rise of machines, where the belt wasn’t nearly as important as what was clipped to it. Smartphones, MP3/media players and handheld video game consoles have become the symbols of “connectedness” and with them, the means to project how current you are, with the Motorola RAZR and the iPhone being icons.

As technology performance becomes more homogenous (who doesn’t have a 3G/4G web-browsing, texting, 5mp video camera-enabled phone that works globally?) and every possible taste in entertainment becomes available on demand, are we once again poised for a resurgence of fashion as the means to project currency? Designers and retailers who recognize this potential will put their marketing dollars into promoting the wardrobe and their brand in particular as the only true way to be current. Without this shift in job importance among teens, an updated line of brighter colors and patterns simply can’t compete with today’s rechargeable bling.

I’ve been using an Apple before they ever became mainstream. My first computer was an Apple IIe and I’ve always thought Apple only had two founders – Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. So when I read this article in the Mercury about another co-founder named Ron Wayne, I was quite surprised. ...

Here's something that ought to pique the interest of Apple enthusiasts - the iPad has been used to load various kinds of software onto the ancient Apple IIe, which more or less bridges the gap between the old and new generation of hardware from Cupertino. They've certainly come a long way, and it is nice to see such level of backwards compatibility which transcends time and hardware. Of course, it will take a pretty deep level of knowledge to get both devices talking to one another, but you now know that it is possible, eh?

Permalink: iPad loads software onto Apple IIe from Ubergizmo | Hot: Macbook Pro Review, iPad Review

Engadget: iPad used to replace Apple IIe data cassette, feels seriously underutilized (video) http://bit.ly/df4zq0

(By @engadget - Blog Feed - Engadget, Technology)

Continue reading iPad used to replace Apple IIe data cassette, feels seriously underutilized (video)

iPad used to replace Apple IIe data cassette, feels seriously underutilized (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 May 2010 09:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Los hackers de equipo de Panic fueron capaces de conectar un iPad con un Apple IIe para enviarle datos; hay una separación temporal de 28 años entre ambos equipos, lo cual tiene mérito.

If the Internet is any indication, Steve Jobs responds to more of his e-mail than I do of mine, and yet I have to imagine that I'm far less busy than he is. You might say he's better than me, but I prefer to think of it as just another piece of evidence supporting the Robo Jobs hypothesis.

Filed under: Apple, iPad

Stick with us here -- this is complicated but cool. So, Stewart Smith happened to see online that the Panic Software guys had an old Apple IIe (sorry, //e) sitting around their office, and he emailed to ask them if they could possibly use it to run an old text animation that he'd created for a song a while back. Being the considerate guys that they are, they agreed. There was a problem, though: Stewart's code was meant to be played on the old cassette deck source, and they didn't have one. "What did we have?" they ask, and the answer is, "an iPad."

You can see the results in video over on their site, and they are magical. There are a couple of amazing things here: one, that the old source code can be "read" just as easily coming out of the iPad's audio port as it was when coming out of cassette tapes back in the day, and two, that the //e runs it so well. Let's also remember that we're watching it happen across the Internet in full audio and video quality, possibly even on an iPad itself. For all of the new and shiny that Apple has brought us recently, you almost forget how much history is building here, and it's somewhat surprising that a connection can be made between then and now so easily and elegantly.

TUAWApple //e running source code loaded from an iPad originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 13 May 2010 23:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If the Internet is any indication, Steve Jobs responds to more of his e-mail than I do of mine, and yet I have to imagine that I'm far less busy than he is. You...

Steve Jobs is still answering e-mails, TV networks are taking different tacks with HTML5, and the iPad and Apple IIe are on their way to starring in a buddy action movie.

Gambler's Lady, one of my first Cait Logan books began as a Berkley Second Chance at Love and then was reprinted by Berkley, with a new cover in their Diamond line.

I am very up front about reissuing books and with the copyright in my name, changed Cait Logan to Cait London. I am so hoping that new readers will enjoy these early books.

This cover is my design and graphic work, as the publisher's print format and covers do not belong to the author.

BTW, I lead the Diamond Line as the romance lead with Tame the Fury, a 1900 Washington state romance, set in my home "land", amid new orchards and the Mighty Columbia River.

These early books, later 80s, originally produced on Apple IIE (some of us remember them fondly) and an early PC, are not in file form now and have to be scanned, no easy task. The cleanup of a scan is massive, so I can see why straight to epub writers, straight into format without scanning/cleaning, now have an easier job. In some cases, when these books are uploaded, you find errors you missed the 2-3 go 'round of editing. Amazing.

But for me, getting these books up again is a Labor of Love. I loved them then and now, and the basic stories hold true. Dwight Swain, top of the mark writers and teachers (The Techniques of the Selling Writer) had one of books and sent a really nice postcard. He said I wrote a romance the way it should be written. I've got to dig out that postcard and frame it.

As another well-published writer, reproducing her early books and updating them as I am, said it well: "The learning curve on this is really, really hard. But once you get the processes down, easy enough."



But back to Gambler's Lady, uplifted just today to Smashwords.com and to Amazon.com. The latter requires copyright proof and we're doing that handshaking now. All reformatted books, published first by a traditional publisher, must be handled with absolute copyright assurance. This is doing-the-dance as westerners sometimes say, in that the author and/or representative request rights back, specs as designated in the original contract and/or amendments. Some publishers give them back readily, others are "warehousing" these rights as no one really knows where this epublishing stuff will take us.

One place it is taking us is into piracy. I urge anyone connected with publisher--writers, agents, press, URLs offering free books to note that while an individual may purchase a book, that does not give them the right to copy it and lift it up to the Internet as a free download.

Millions of dollars are lost by this illegal activity, and somehow there is a gap between the professional branch of book publishing, authors included, and the copyright legalities unaware reader-person who wants to share with their friends for kudos.

These illegally copy and uploaded books constitute thievery from author's pockets/income.

The other day, I spotted 12 of my books, zipped and uploaded to be downloaded for free. Not happy.

Publishers issue cease and desist orders, but these free downloads pop up again.

I am hoping that writer's groups bring more awareness to this illegal activity, and that the URLs hosting these copies issue stern warnings to any participant, uploader or downloader, about copyright notices. We really need to close this gap between knowledge of copyright and Internet usage.

Like I said, uploading these early books is a Labor of Love. It's amazing, but while time passes on finishing my new stories, I'm still in love with these early books. Looking back, I put my heart into every book, which is what I believe every author should do.

El mejor soporte para iPad jamás visto.

Uma coisa que eu aprendi trabalhando com outros desenvolvedores de aplicativos é que, independentemente de mostrarem muito ou pouco serviço, eles sempre cedem espaço para dar realidade a uma ideia maluca. Mas a Panic (popular ...

We like this clip a lot. It shows an iPad loading a fresh batch of software on an age-old Apple IIe that’s based in the Panic Software office.

The code was used to make an animated promo clip for a band called Grandaddy (that video is after the jump). In order to get the code into the computer they had to save it as an MP3 and play it into the old Mac from the iPad.

Panic's Cabel Sasser tells it like it was, "It’s an obvious solution in retrospect, but there is something very unreal and amazing about tapping a button on a multi-touch screen and watching an Apple IIe fill up with data."

Jed’s Other Poem (Beautiful Ground) from Stewdio on Vimeo.

We like this clip a lot. It shows an iPad loading a fresh batch of software on an age-old Apple IIe that’s based in the Panic Software office.

The code was used to make an animated promo clip for a band called Grandaddy (that video is after the jump). In order to get the code into the computer they had to save it as an MP3 and play it into the old Mac from the iPad.

Panic's Cabel Sasser tells it like it was, "It’s an obvious solution in retrospect, but there is something very unreal and amazing about tapping a button on a multi-touch screen and watching an Apple IIe fill up with data."

Jed’s Other Poem (Beautiful Ground) from Stewdio on Vimeo.

It seems clear to me, as someone who was on the back-end of the first generation technonerd wave (Commodore PET!  TR/S-80!; Apple IIe! etc.) that not only are the nerds in charge of product development, but we’ve even taken over marketing to a certain degree.  Early proof of this was one of the first “ooh, cool!” cell phones, the Motorola StarTAC, which both looked like a Star Trek:TOS communicator, and also was named as close as you can get to “Star Trek” without getting sued into oblivion by Paramount. But hey, that was almost 15 years ago; now there’s an entire [...]

Apple II's/Mac's and unusual accessories. Collectors or those in the know: Recycle or internet gold?

A relative is thinking about simply recycling the items below. Is there anything in here that is either worth ebaying off or otherwise diverting from the recycle heap? Almost everything includes a manual.

Apple II plus, 64k memory
2 disk IIs

Apple color composite monitor IIe
Videx videoterm (w/ manual)
1 installed in computer
2nd one

Apple graphics tablet (w/ manual)
Apple ROM card (2xs) (w/ manual)
Andromeda 16k RAM expansion card (w/ manual)
Microsoft RAM card (w/ manual)
Apple II super serial card (w/ manual)
Replay card for Apple II by TRASH systems (w/ manual)
w/ software
Apple IIe enhancement kit (w/ manual)
Mockingboard soundcard (w/ manual)
Apple language card (w/ manual)
Mountain Computer Music System (complete)
Apple II trackball
RAMworks card (Applied Engineering)
Apple I/O controller card
Apple II mouse card
3rd Millennium Engineering Time II card
Apple green phospher monitor
various controllers

Apple II reference manual
Apple DOS manual
Apple II basic programming book
Applesoft basic tutorial book
Applesoft language system book

Software originals for Apple II (most with manuals)
Visicalc
Gauntlet
Music Construction Set
Sherlock Holmes
Cyber Strike
Apple Adventure
Castle Wolfenstein
Kaves of Karkhan
Cut & Paste
Zork
Odyssey: Compleat App Adventure
Dungeon Campaign & Wilderness Campaign
Doom Cavern
A2FSI Flight Simulator
Robotwar
Zaxxon
Ultima
Operation Apocalypse
Torpedo Fire
Shattered Alliance
President Elect
Cartels & Cutthroats

-----

Mac Plus
Mac SE (x2)
Mac Classic
Mac

new Apple PC 5.25 drive (for mac)
Dayna File 3.5 drive
Dayna File 360k floppy & 1.2 mg floppy (2 drives in one housing)
Bernoulli / Iomega portable drive w/ 2 interface kits (for 44 mb cartridges)
Techmar QT Mac 40 tape backup (no cartridges)

Generations from now, our grandchildren will look back at 2010 and pinpoint this moment as one of the "ah ha!" moments of the 21st century. It'll be live the day the first television was shipped, or the first e-mail was sent. Maybe it will even be compared to the day that Bill Gates founded Microsoft or Apple shipped the Apple IIe. It's probably right up there with the invention of the mouse, the fax machine or even the cellular telephone. Yes, a new "Video Game" merit pin is up there with all of those milestones

Hablando de que los Premios de Diseño de Apple de este año sólo se conceden a aplicaciones para iPhone y ...

This project has all the hallmarks of a classic hack: obsolete hardware, a somewhat frivolous functi

Engadget: Apple IIe hacked into Twitter station, still looks better than most digiframes http://bit.ly/aho7Mx

(By @engadget - Blog Feed - Engadget, Technology)

Apple II, II+, IIe emulator.

Emulates the Apple II, Apple II+, and Apple IIe computers.

Continue reading Apple IIe hacked into Twitter station, still looks better than most digiframes

Apple IIe hacked into Twitter station, still looks better than most digiframes originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Found Footage

Here's a great video from technabob that shows an Apple IIe displaying archived Tweets from a 5.25-inch floppy disk, complete with lo-res graphics.

Here's how it works. Modder Yergacheffe uses a PC for interacting with Twitter. He hacked together a PC-to-Apple IIe interface for moving data to the Apple from the PC's USB port. Next, he wrote some custom 6502-assembler code that displays Tweets on the Apple IIe and also converts users' Twitter avatars into those gorgeous, chunky lo-res graphics.

Finally, tweets are saved to the floppy for later playback. Too busy to attend to Twitter? Capture the action and play it back later, retro-style. We love it.

TUAWFound Footage: Twitter on an Apple IIe (kind of) originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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