What is the Apple IIGS - Newsfeed

Sweet 16 Makes Progress

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0200

Eric Shepherd has been making very good progress on updating Sweet 16 for MacOS X - finally perhaps paving the way for user friendly IIGS emulation on a contemporary operating system.

However, it hasn't got the approval of Bernie ][ the Rescue's original authors, Henrik Gudat and André Horstmann, who are both MIA, and Sweet 16 cannot be released without their consent. Sweet 16 is based on the core of Bernie and couldn't exist without it. If you know how to reach Henrik or André, please let them know of the efforts Eric has made with Sweet 16 and his very generous offer of letting any potential proceeds of Sweet 16 go back to the original authors. Alternatively, you can also politely support Eric's work on Bernie's own forum.

The Lone Entry of 2005

Fri, 07 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0200

Another year ticks over! Just a quick message to say that I'm still alive and kicking, although work on this archive isn't - but that's mainly because nobody has contributed anything in the last year!

Some worthwhile news: The Apple IIGS gets a write up in the UK mag Retro Gamer although the editor completely removed the interview with me and writer of the article Jason Walsh (note too that since originally writing this article, Retro Gamer is no longer published by Live Publishing). On the plus side, however, the magazine also includes features on games the Last Ninja and Dungeon Master and both articles make mention of the IIGS versions of each of these games - and include either screen shots or box imagery from the Fairway! Hopefully this will be a trend in future issues and the IIGS versions of games will appear alongside the more popular European systems.

Two New Archives

Wed, 24 Mar 2004 00:00:00 +0200

Hello again! That's right, the Fairway's back, bigger and better than ever before, now on a brand new server together with two new Apple IIGS archives!

French speaking IIGS users rejoice! I have included French language versions of the following games: The Bard's Tale, Defender of the Crown, Life & Death, Monte Carlo and Rocket Ranger.

I have also included some new memorabilia - promos for Destroyer, World Games and PBI's games.

You can continue to help out the Fairway with game box or archive submissions by uploading files via FTP:

whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za
username: apple2gs
password: apple2gs

(Please use the new submission system)

For convenience, I have also separated all previous News into their respective years.

Minor Updates

Mon, 23 Jul 2001 00:00:00 +0200

Some minor updates: I've added a pop up menu on the home page so you can quickly jump to your favourite Apple IIGS games! External links now open a new browser window and I've added a few things to the FAQ.

Old School Updates

Sun, 10 Jun 2001 00:00:00 +0200

Some updates! Dan Chisarick has sent in heaps of game box scans: California Games, Deja Vu 1 and 2, Hacker II, Omega, Test Drive 2 California Challenge and Supercars. Big thanks to Dan for all of these!

Olivier Goguel, ex-lead programmer for the Free Tools Association, has created a page dedicated to the memory of the FTA. The page is still under construction, but includes music from the Nucleus Demo of 1989, in MP3 or RealAudio format.

Incidentally, and I forgot to mention this with my last update all those months ago, Ninja Force's webpage features reviews and downloads of IIGS 'scene' demos, including demos created by Ninja Force themselves, the FTA, the GSA, the East Coast Connection and others.

The Fairway Version 2.0

Sun, 25 Feb 2001 00:00:00 +0200

Welcome to the Fairway v2.0! New in this update is a new user interface, large sized game box images, a pre-installed version of System 6 on a 4 meg 2image volume, character disks included with Bard's Tale 1 & 2, no broken links, re-proofed text, more promotional images and the inclusion of Easter Eggs for a few games.

Bernie ][ the Rescue v3.0 preview was released around Christmas. A nice present indeed, as its primary improvements have been made with games in mind - a new full screen mode and incredible improvements to sound.

In other news, Cinemaware has well and truely began work on their next generation of games. They're currently working on Wings for the Gameboy Advance, but their biggest game in development is Robin Hood: Defender of the Crown. I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing, in that this request isn't relevant to the IIGS, but if Mac users who would be interested in that game becoming available for the Mac, please visit Cinemaware's site and let them know it's not just PC, Playstation 2 and Xbox gamers that want Robin Hood: DOTC.

Minor Updates

Sat, 22 Jul 2000 00:00:00 +0200

New thumbnails for Manhunter New York, GBA Basketball, Impossible Mission 2, Superstar Ice Hockey (thanks David Graton) Life & Death and Aaargh! (thanks Gary Boettcher). There is an updated list of box scans I'm still after below. Also added is a newer version of Dungeon Master, thanks to Brendan Bellina, that includes a patched version which allows the user to save on the same disk as the application as well as letting you to play from System 6!

Ultima I Archive Removed

Wed, 29 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0200

I have been asked to remove Ultima I from the Fairway as it is currently being prepared for re-release by Shareware Solutions II. I have done so.

Sorry for the lack of updates, but my academic commitments have priority over the Fairway. Just a nice little tidbit for you all: Mitch Spector sent me word that Cinemaware has been reborn! They aren't detailing plans for new games yet, but their rationale is the creation of games as equally enjoyable to what they had been creating since Defender of the Crown. Thanks for the news Mitch, although I'm over a month late in sharing it, it was certainly great to check out when I first got your email regarding Cinemaware's return!

Bernie v2.6 Released

Sun, 23 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0200

Bernie ][ the Rescue 2.6 has been released. Apart from even cooler integration between the Mac OS and GS/OS, mouse support has been improved, now allowing Teenage Queen to be played properly.

I was mailed by a couple of people mentioning that Le Manoir de Mortvielle is not a finished game, and therefore can't be played properly. I fixed a few links to different emulators on the Welcome page. Alessandro Bonzi has sent in a scan for the Immortal, a thumbnail of it now replacing the existing hack I made.

New Year Goodies

Sun, 02 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0200

Lots of little goodies for the new year. Brutal Deluxe programmer, Antoine Vignau, has written a crack for Gold Rush, so playing the game no longer requires the manual! Antoine has also sent in two unreleased games: Passengers on the Wind and Le Manoir de Mortvielle.

Nicolas Bergeret has sent in a scan for Full Metal Planete, which I believe is from the IIGS version, which was actually released in France. Nick should know, because he did the graphics for the IIGS version!

Chris Klimas has typed up the manual for Final Assault, the mountaineering game that's had me stumped on how to play it for years.

Lastly, KEGS, the Apple IIGS emulator for Unix, Linux and OS/2 has been updated to version 0.57.

3427 Unique Visitors!

Mon, 29 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0200

Hard Code, owner of Inwards, has informed me that the Fairway has received 3427 unique visitors, which I'm very glad to say has surpassed my expectation of just how popular the Fairway is. Having said that however, I'm disappointed there haven't been over 3000 offers to submit scans of the remaining game boxes that are still on the wanted list ;-)

Some fun links for you all: Ninjaforce has opened their funky new page at, oddly enough, www.ninjaforce.com. Nice domain! Check out the latest screenshots of their up and coming IIGS game Kaboom!

Also, check out Aaron R. Willis' page devoted to the IIGS game War in Middle Earth.

ShrinkIt Archive Additions and other Udpdates

Wed, 03 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0200

The ShrinkIt! archive is now online! Owners of real Apple IIGS machines are now able to download each archive to use on their real equipment. It is recommended that when downloading the ShrinkIt! archives, that you force your browser to download to a file, by either selecting the command by the contextual menu that appears when the mouse button is held down or using the right mouse button. Alternatively, hold down the option key on the Mac and click on the link and for the PC, I believe it's shift.

There's a whole new bunch of updated thumbnail images: 4th & Inches, Jack Nicklaus Golf, Shanghai, Hunt for Red October, Tower of Myraglen (thanks Lachlan Arnott), Roadwar 2000, Mini Putt, Space Quest 1, Paperboy (thanks Michael Bradley), Monte Carlo (thanks Frank Bannon) and Qix (thanks to myself on that one).

Full Metal Planete Addition

Tue, 28 Sep 1999 00:00:00 +0200

Added the virtually unheard of game, Full Metal Planete. Added better thumbnail images for Arkanoid II, Bubble Ghost, Dark Castle, Defender of the Crown, Final Assault, Jigsaw and Shadowgate. Thanks goes to John Balestrieri for all of these new scans. Subsequently, the wanted game box scan list has been updated. Keep em coming guys!

Bernie ][ the Rescue v2.5 and iGS Released

Wed, 22 Sep 1999 00:00:00 +0200

Bernie ][ the Rescue 2.5 has been released! The new version supports better integration between GS/OS and the Mac OS, i.e. you can now simply drag and drop files between the Mac and IIGS desktops. More importantly for gamers however, is that sound has been improved - no more low volume problems. Testing the new version myself, I have to report that it's absolute aural bliss now. There don't appear to be any incompatibility fixes for games however, apart from the exception that Mean 18 now takes key input every fourth second or so, but the sound improvement has been worth waiting for.

On the same day that the new version of Bernie has been released, Mac users were doubly blessed. A new version of XGS, for PowerPC and 68k Macs has been released. The new version is now called iGS, the 'i' standing for 'improved'. The program is a lot easier to use now, not to mention that it's useable at all; previous versions of XGS failed to run with MacOS 8.5 or higher. Get it from Michael Bytnar's XGS page.

Still no joy for Windows users wanting to emulate the IIGS. I haven't heard of XGS development becoming anyone's priority, nor do I know what happened to reports of a promising emulator called dApple. If anyone has information regarding IIGS emulators for Windows, contact me so the word can be spread to relieve the suffering of Windows users everywhere. In the meantime, they could always install BeOS and checkout Sweet 16!

The Fairway's New Home

Mon, 13 Sep 1999 00:00:00 +0200

As you may have noticed for the past two weeks, the Fairway has moved to its new home at Inwards. Thanks bigtime to Hard Code for hosting the archive on Inwards. Thanks also for helping sort out the early teething problems.

Server Issues and Updates

Wed, 25 Aug 1999 00:00:00 +0200

Sorry about the archive not being enabled over the weekend. Server problems beyond my control I'm afraid. Anyway, to compensate, I'm going to keep download access enabled from now until the archive moves to its new home in two to three weeks. Thanks to all those who offered alternatives for the Fairway relocation! In the meantime, enjoy the new archive additions: The Lost Tribe and Revolution 76. I've also included a new thumbnail graphic to John Elway's Quarterback (thanks to Steve McCartt) as well as updated its documentation. I've also updated the docs for WindWalker.

Archive Temporarily Disabled

Fri, 06 Aug 1999 00:00:00 +0200

Bad news I'm afraid. The archive has had to be temporarily disabled, with demand outweighing expectation, as downloads have exceeded a point where the connection for succeeding downloads must be paid extra for. Since I haven't paid for the connection thus far, the Fairway has been lucky up until this point. You can still view the web pages, but none of the links to archives are functioning.

I will sort something as soon as I can, but don't hold your breath for anything soon. I do apologise.

Minor Updates and...Crash Bandicoot?!?

Sat, 31 Jul 1999 00:00:00 +0200

Added better thumbnail game boxes for Black Cauldron (thanks Paul Lunga), Man Hunter: New York (thanks Tyler Van Tighem), Roadwar 2000 and Battle Chess (thanks Willie Yeo). Finally got round to adding more of a plot description for Dungeon Master (thanks Nicholas Marx). Keep those best quality JPG, 300dpi, 1:1 scans of gameboxes coming in. I've updated the list below of what still remains to complete the archive.

Sorry for the recent lack of updates, I've been bogged down with Uni again since semester started three weeks ago, and I've also been addicted to Crash Bandicoot Warped, played under emulation on my G3. I haven't had so much fun with a new game in ages :-) For those that don't know, Crash Bandicoot is the brainchild of Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin, former IIGS developers who created Dream Zone and Keef the Thief. Interestingly, I've found five secret levels, one of which is called Ski Crazed, which was their first ever game on the Apple II. They haven't forgotten their roots, and it's also evident at their site www.naughtydog.com.

Anyone willing and able to write a SoundSmith/MegaTracker plug-in for SoundJam? :-)

Minor Updates

Mon, 19 Jul 1999 00:00:00 +0200

Added better thumbnail game box images for Dungeon Master, Neuromancer, Balance of Power, Questron 2 and Transylvania 3 thanks to Mary Sauer. Also added better thumbnails for Spirit of Excalibur and Gold of the Americas (from the Mac versions). Thanks goes to Willie Yeo for these, and I'd also just like to thank Willie for scans he has provided in the past. Finally, I've also added a better thumbnail for Serve and Volley, which was included with a mint condition ROM01 Apple IIGS - much thanks to Barbara Brook, for allowing me to clean out your cupboard!

Minor Updates

Sun, 11 Jul 1999 00:00:00 +0200

Added ChessMaster 2100, Shanghai II, The Secrets of Bahras and the rare, unreleased game Project Neptune. Thanks to Ton for ChessMaster and Bahras and thanks goes to someone who now wishes to remain anonymous for Shanghai II and Project Neptune.

Minor Updates

Thu, 24 Jun 1999 00:00:00 +0200

Added Mixed Up Mother Goose and Gold of the Americas. I've updated all links to external pages so that they won't appear in the right hand frame for the Fairway (I hate frames as much as everyone else. Really :-) Email me if the problem persists.

Minor Updates

Mon, 21 Jun 1999 00:00:00 +0200

Added the difficult to find Spirit of Excalibur. I also added Future Shock 3D, which I believe is also an unreleased game. And for the hordes of IIGS emulating Bridge players, I've also included Artworx's Bridge 6.0. Much thanks goes to Dr Tom for Spirit of Excalibur, as well as a lot of other recent additions to the Fairway archive. Thanks also goes to Ton for Bridge 6.0. I've been recently receiving the same missing games from both Dr Tom and Ton only hours apart from each other. Thanks guys.

The very excellent guys at F.E. Systems (formerly Bright Software) have made their intense side scrolling shoot-em-up Space Fox available FREE for registered users of Bernie ][ the Rescue.

Minor Updates

Sat, 19 Jun 1999 00:00:00 +0200

Added Ancient Glory to the archive. Also added a good, totally working copy of Dream Zone on 2image! Much thanks goes to Ton for that. I've noticed different people have sent me copies of Roadwar 2000, or asked if I would like it and couldn't figure out why. To my embarassment, I've since checked if it was even listed in Role Playing Games, and it isn't! It's now fixed.

I've had a couple of requests to make links to sites where you can purchase remaining stock of Apple IIGS games. So, I've included relevant links to Wayne's Computer Store and Applied Engineering from the Fairway's game pages which have specific games in stock. It would probably be best for prospective buyers to contact each retailer before buying to find out about the condition of the packaging and inclusion of documentation of the games you might want to buy.

Minor Updates

Sat, 12 Jun 1999 00:00:00 +0200

I've updated the link for the Bernie compatibility list (thanks Henrik) and the links to Huibert Aalbars IIGS homepage from the pages Laser Force and Jigsaw, which are devoted to his games. I've also replaced the Transylvania III game box with the real one.

Sarien URL

Fri, 11 Jun 1999 00:00:00 +0200

Oops. Forgot to include the URL for the Sarien AGI Interpreter. I've also cleaned up some layout problems, which were effecting both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer separately. I've also included a date last updated at the welcome page, so you'll all know when to read the news.

Time for some News

Thu, 10 Jun 1999 00:00:00 +0200

It's time for some news. Thanks to everyone for the compliments since the page's public announcement during Easter. It's really made the site worthwhile. Just remember, I'm open to game, game box and game documentation submissions. Any IIGS commercial game you don't see here - I'll want!

Recent additions to the archive include Out of this World, Beyond Zork, Pick n Pile, Vegas Craps, World Tour Golf and Magic Johnson's Basketball.

The ShrinkIt version of the archive should be online in the near future. I'll keep you all informed.

I've been informed about a universal Sierra AGI Adventure gaming platform interpreter. IIGS users should swell with pride - the project is wanting to use the files from the IIGS versions of Sierra's AGI Adventure games because of their advanced sound and music, which none of the other versions had. For those that don't know, AGI was the platform with which Sierra created King's Quest 1 to 3 (and 4 on the IIGS) Space Quest 1 & 2, Leisure Suit Larry, Manhunter New York and San Francisco, Police Quest, Black Cauldron and Mixed Up Mother Goose. Because of this universal AGI interpreter project, the IIGS version of Manhunter San Francisco would be doubly appreciated, as it is currently not included in the archive.

The Site Officially Opens!

Thu, 11 Feb 1999 00:00:00 +0200

The site opens! Please both enjoy and contribute to the Apple IIGS Gaming Memory Fairway to help make it one of the most comprehensive gaming archives available.

Welcome to version 3.0!

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

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!

Sweet 16 v2.0 Beta 17 is Released!

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

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!

Quick Updates

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

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.

Updates to the Site

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

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.

Utility Updates and Orbizone Goodies

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0200

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.

Happy Birthday Apple IIGS!

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0200

On this day in 1986, the Apple IIGS was first released. But good luck trying to get one: supply of the machines dribbled slowly into the market and most of the Apple faithful had to wait months to procure a IIGS for their very own.

22 hardly being a milestone year, there are only very modest updates to include: Thanks to Andrew Roughan and David Wilson, who both provided scans, the Programmer's Reference for System 6.0 has been added to the Publications/Books section. And more rummaging through mirrors.apple2.org.za revealed that GSNumerics has been reclassified as freeware, so I have made it so on the site.

Also, if any of you tried the RSS feeds for both News and the Blog and had trouble, well, the RSS feeds are now working properly.

New Game surfaces: Subversion

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0200

George Rentovich has let me know a couple of times via email that 'What is the Apple IIGS?' has always been missing the game 'Subversion', a title I had never heard of. However George has been unable to find his bought copy of the game, but my own personal scouring of the Apple II mirrors has actually revealed a working, cracked version of Subversion! The game itself is a turned based submarine strategy game wrapped in a very System 6 friendly application and written by former IIGS stalwart Jason Harper. To dish out death from below from the comfort of your mouse, go to the Subversion archive.

Brian Greenstone Interview

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0200

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.

Everything Old (well, a couple of things) is New Again

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0200

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.

InCider, II Alive and A+ Cover Collection Complete!

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0200

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!

Subversion and Hoverblade Scans

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0200

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.

eBay Action...in Australia?

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Newsworthy for this site at least, eBay Australia was a flurry of activity this past week. An Apple IIGS with 1.25meg of RAM, an Apple High Speed SCSI card, SCSI hard drive and two 3.5" floppy drives sold for $901.00 (Aus) to the highest bidder. This is a high price indeed and just goes to show how these vintage Apples are actually going up in value.

Then another Apple IIGS appeared a couple of days later, also from a seller living in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. This particular IIGS included little other than its total RAM of 512k and two 3.5" floppy drives, but it was a Woz model which was cosmetically in good shape. Better still, it included all the original packaging that was also in good shape.

What the hell, I'll take a plunge, take advantage of being able to pick up without paying postage and bid with what I successfully bid on a IIGS loaded with a ZipGSX, 4 meg of RAM and a Vulcan hard drive back in 2003.

Proving again that the value of the IIGS is actually on the increase, I was outdone for my bid of $256. But only by $5!

Congratulations to the recipients of these IIGS. I hope you'll be able to make full use of this site to fully explore the potential of this unique vintage Apple machine.

32 Meg ProDOS Partition Updates

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Hi all! I've done a little housekeeping with the 32 meg ProDOS partitions:

I added a few useful conversion utilities to SoundSmith, as well as its full documentation. I also added the wonderful Audio Zap v2.0 for all your audio editing needs. Both updates can be found on the Audio and Utilities 2image.

I've also been marking folders red for the programs that are refusing to run from System 6.0.1. Keep that feedback coming in and I will continue to maintain a clearer picture of which programs are working from the hard drive.

I have removed all ampersand characters from the 2image filenames and have re-zipped each partition using Stuffit with maximum compression setting used in the hope this may correct some of the issues some people were experiencing. I still recommend you use Firefox or Safari to download any of the 2images on this site.

If you're still having problems using the 32 meg partitions with emulators or getting them onto a compact flash card via CiderPress, please add your experiences to the comments on the CFFA Review. I know that converting those 2images to Raw format has enabled their correct use with KEGS v0.91.

Additionally, I've collated a list of all the games that currently can't be run from a hard drive:

Aaargh!

King of Chicago

Impossible Mission II

Rocket Ranger

Dream Zone

Destroyer

Grand Prix Circuit

Hostage

Hunt for Red October

Pirates!

Silent Service

Test Drive II

Tomahawk

Blackjack Academy

Bridge

4th and Inches

GBA Basketball

Hardball

Serve and Volley

Skate or Die

Street Sports Soccer

Superstar Ice Hockey

Winter Games

World Games

If you can remember having a hard drive installable version for any of these games (and there are detailed cracks listed here and there, but my sector editing skills are not up to the task) look it up and submit it so it can be included on these 32 meg volumes.

Making KEGS-OSX Easier to Use...by a Comic Book Hero?

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0200

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.

Christmas Bonanza!

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0200

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!

Big Content Additions!

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0200

I'm VERY happy with the many contributions that arrived during my holiday! It seems I was after most of these since I started the archive 10 years ago - much thanks to all concerned.

First of all, George Rentovich has sent along his combined archives by CD so I could poke around and see what this archive didn't have. George's stuff included most of the educational archives I had been after for a long time and they are now available for all as 2image archives:

Cartooners Space Art (now included with the existing Cartooners archive. Some really great and amusing new animations and characters, scenes, sound effects for your own productions)

Color n Canvas (a paint program for kids. Does anyone know if this came with a data disk with sample images?)

Electric Crayon (OK, so technically not a IIGS program, although this unofficial bundle of three Electric Crayon releases requires a IIGS to run)

Land of the Unicorn (a very challenging game for all ages testing your word vocabulary. I think I expanded my own just play testing it!)

Learning Spoken English (an unusual, possibly unreleased piece of software, that looks developed as part of a course to learn English. At its heart is the speech and graphics technology that powers all the First Byte educational programs.

Milliken Story Teller (although it's been part of the archive a while now, there are now three new stories for kids to enjoy: Aladdin & the Magic Lamp, Jack & the Bean Stalk, Peter Rabbit)

Once Upon a Time III (Annoyingly buggy story creator for kids and forces you only to ever use two disks at a time and unfortunately, can't be installed to hard drives)

Snoopy's Reading Machine (although the graphics have obviously been converted from a C64, Schultz's characters are nicely represented and should provide fun for kids and adults alike.)

Stars & Planets (an educational program that's hard to define for which genre it belongs to, it includes learning about the planets, but also how to improve memory and counting).

From George's archive, there are also several new application archives as well:

DeskPak (there are some terrific desk accessories here, that give the IIGS most of the functionality of Classic Mac OS desk accessories)

Show Off World Events (more artwork to include with Show Off presentations)

Color+ (yet another paint program, but bizarrely written in Bashir Kassir's Spectra Grafix 256 BASIC environment)

I'm also grateful for the combined effort of Jim Casselbury for scanning the boxes of Cavern Cobra (I never thought I'd ever see it!) and Strategic Conquest (which I've added to the archive, even though technically, it's not a native IIGS game. But the box says 'Apple IIGS Version') which were sold to Jim and lovingly stored away by its previous owner, Don. Also thanks to the sharp eyes of Andrew Roughan for pointing out Cavern Cobra and Strategic Conquest were seen on eBay!

Andy Molloy has sent in a scan for the Finder alternative/program launcher Wings and to cap it off Collin Douglas has provided a scan of Star Saga One, surely one of the rarest IIGS games ever.

Also, thanks to the eternal vigilance of Willie Yeo, Flash Boot has been added to the archive, which was previously missing.

Dave Touvell of www.apple2info.net has given his blessing to including manuals he's scanned for his own site to appear here, including documentation for the Apple HS SCSI Card, GS Juice Plus, RAMFast C & D manuals. I've also added another of Wayne Stewart's brilliant PDF manuals, this time for Prosel.

In other news, if you think 'What is the Apple IIGS?' for a comprehensive repository of commercial IIGS software and information then think the same for 'Golden Grail' in regards to shareware and free software for the IIGS. Jim Maricondo and Bill Martens have completed their arduous work in compiling the Golden Orchid CD-ROM collection into 32meg 2images, just right for emulation. The archives are very nicely organised and contain original documentation where available as well as the latest versions of many useful and interesting freely distributable software, not to mention an extensive sound, graphics and music library.

Last but not least, a public service announcement: if you were wondering where the News had disappeared to, it actually hadn't. When the clock ticked over into 2009, that meant all 2008 news is only accessible via the '2008 News Archive' button in the right hand column of the News page.

IIGS Programming Alumni News

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0200

I was delighted that Dr Ken Franklin, author of the brilliant One Armed Battle, Plunder! and Milestones 2000 added to the comments to the blog entry regarding the upcoming coffee table book. Ken sent me the latest versions of his games (v1.51) which used better compression for the sound effects, also adding a couple of little options here and there. The 2image archives for the three games have been updated online, as has the hard drive image containing all the shareware games along with a complete install of System 6.0.1.

I had to ask Ken: was there another equally addictive game he was working on back in the early 90s? The answer is yes, but it didn't get past the preliminary stage. The game was to be called 'Monster Mash' and be a cross between Cootie and Memory Match. It sounds just as fun as the other games, but unfortunately we'll never know.

But not all is lost. Ken's hoping to develop iPhone/iPod Touch versions of his classic IIGS games in the next year or so. I can't think of a better platform for modern takes on these games!

Speaking of former IIGS developers and the iPhone, some big news in the past week is that Brian Greenstone, head of Pangea Software and mastermind behind IIGS games Xenocide, Senseless Violence, Cosmocade and his 24 hour shareware games, has announced that after working almost exclusively on the Mac for nearly the last 15 years, he's decided to put all his efforts into future projects for release on the iPhone only.

Inside Mac Game's Article

The Unofficial Apple Blog Article

It's been interesting to see the response to this move. At worst, some feel betrayed that they have supported Pangea all these years in the hope continued support would always ensure new Mac games. It's not unlike the feelings that arose when developers started abandoning ship for the Apple II by the late 80s and early 90s. But I can't blame Brian for his decision; to develop games exclusively for the Mac is certainly an exercise in swimming up stream and when most of the hard work put into Pangea's games was translatable to iPhone games, which then netted Brian more rewards in the space of 9 months than the previous 14 years...you'd have to be a fool not to move on and continue to use the successful model of Apple's App Store to distribute your programs. Good luck to him!

Last but certainly not least, the A2Unplugged podcast featured an interview with Burger Becky Heineman, programmer behind countless IIGS classics such as Tass Times in Tonetown, Bard's Tale I and II, Crystal Quest, Dragon Wars and Out of this World, back in their December broadcast.

IIGS Tune Treasure!

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Jim Maricondo has done the Apple II community a wonderful service. Apart from being the brains behind the wonderful Twilight II screen saver and together with Bill Martens, the Golden Grail archive, he's also recorded a lot of high quality IIGS music from games, demos, SoundSmith and Noisetracker. Five hours worth in fact! And the music now resides with each relevant archive on this site, the link to which you can find under the 2image download link.

Firstly, there's the haunting opening music to Alien Mind. Perfect as a ringtone? Or perhaps you prefer Miami Software's remix on the Space Cluster title screen? Then there's also the unique title music to Neuromancer, written by none other than geek gods Devo! The perfect music to drive into the sunset to, the theme from Test Drive II, is also part of the collection. Or how about the thumping first two tracks of Space Fox? The theme from Skate or Die? The first three levels' music of Marble Madness? The title music of Columns GS by James Brookes? Two tracks from Sensei? And to finish off the games, there's the music from the first level of GATE and its very different sounding GATE playable demo.

Did you spend far too many hours marvelling at the compositions created with SoundSmith? Well now you can relive those days without a IIGS being on hand! I've also created an archive for NoiseTracker, because there's a few recorded tracks for that as well! There's also five Diversi-Tune tracks that you can now sing along to the MP3s of. And last but not least, I had originally forgotten to include Mitch Spector's recordings of three Music Construction Set tracks.

Speaking of which, Mitch's recordings have been on the site since the re-launch and if you missed them, here they are:

The themes from King's Quest I, II, III and IV as well as Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest and Space Quest I and II, Tass Times in Tonetown, Paperboy, Roadwar 2000, and Tomahawk.

Samples tracks from Thexder, Winter Games and World Games.

Full sound tracks to Defender of the Crown, The Immortal, King of Chicago, Rocket Ranger, Sinbad, The Three Stooges and Zany Golf.

Even I've had a crack at recording music, and have the complete soundtrack to the Bard's Tale II, including all the songs from the original Bard's Tale as played by the Bard in the sequel.

If you're keen to record your favourite IIGS music and want to add to the collection here, equip your IIGS with a stereo card and see how you can help.

New Content Additions

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0200

I'm very pleased to say that, thanks to Brian Wiser, the InCider/A+ magazine cover collection is now complete with the additions of the March, May and July 1993 issues.

Also, in the same vein as publications, Marco Tronci has submitted scans for the books Exploring GS/OS and ProDOS 8 and Exploring the Apple IIGS, both by Garry Little, and Using Appleworks GS, by Douglas L. Brown. Not to be confused with Using Appleworks GS by Katherine Murray for Que Pub publishing, for which the archive still requires a scan.

Also, thanks to Bill Martens and the WTB Collection for the Twilight II manual scan.

Lastly, thanks to some purchases of my own, the archive now includes both a working disk image and cover scan to Geographic Jigsaw by Micro Eclat and also Symbolix (also known as GSymbolix and Eureka Symbolix) by Henrik Gudat of Bright Software.

Splat! Found and Adventure Alive M.I.A.

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Following a request from Michael Stephens for the Splat! source level debugger on comp.sys.apple2, Andrew Roughan sprang into action and found his copy, which had been reclassified as freeware by its author Mike Hackett back in 2005. Just goes to show some more recent software and reclassifications can get lost so quickly.

Speaking of which, who's got a working archive of Adventure Alive 1 & 2? The links from A2Central no longer point to working SHK files.

Many New Hardware Inclusions

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Welcome to the next round of content additions to 'What is the Apple IIGS?'!

The disc controllers hardware category now includes scans of each of those expansion cards, plus some new ones. Thanks to Clay Cummins the archive now includes the CMS SCSI card, the Applied Ingenuity Inner Drive controller card and the Inner Drive itself and the CV Technologies GS Memory card. I've had some other scans for quite a while that I just plain lost track of but, but David Wilson and Ewen Wannop provided scans for the InSyder and Cirtech SCSI cards, along with the Cirtech 4 meg RAM card.

All roads seemed to converge on Computer Eyes GS in the last month or two; I received scans from two different people, Clay Cummins and Matthew Machnee (who also sent a box and manual cover scan), after a couple more individuals let me know they could provide a scan real soon. One of which was Andrew T. Foster, who sent a complete PDF of the Computer Eyes' manual on ahead of a scan of the card itself.

David Wilson's also contributed a cover scan for the IIGS ProDOS 16 Reference book.

I've made some further eBay based purchases, and have bought Iconix, Sonix (two programs to allow BASIC to access the better graphics and sound capabilities of the IIGS from its earlier Apple II siblings) and Disc Commander (a disc utility program). All three were made by So What Software back in the day, which has seen a revamp with the launch of their newly updated site. Be sure to keep an eye out on eBay as those items regularly re-appear after auctions finish. Looks like they've got a few left in stock.

Last, but not least, ProTerm v3.1, the venerable 8-bit based comms software, has been reclassified freeware by the newly reformed Apple II Lost Classics project. As per the agreement of the freeware version, I have only included a link to that site and not included the archive here on 'What is the Apple IIGS?'.

A Little Bit of This and a Little Bit of That

Sun, 10 May 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Just a couple of new inclusions:

Peter Wong sent in a scan for TML BASIC, beating Paul Zaleski by a week. Sorry Paul! :-)

Also, in my quest to obtain scans of the covers of everything Apple IIGS related I've been pursuing every avenue I can, including libraries Using the Libraries Australia site, which keeps a database on what each Australian library contains, I've found that La Trobe University has a few items relating to the IIGS. I visited there today, dusted down some IIGS related books and brought my lightweight CanoScan 1240U, but found only one publication the archive was missing - 1001 Things to Do With Your Apple IIGS. I'm making further enquiries as to what software La Trobe has in storage.

Are there similar repositories in the United States? Is anyone able and willing to visit these libraries and scan the covers of the titles listed on the 'You Can Help!' page?

In other news, I caught wind that Rich Dreher, hardware designer extraordinaire, is working on a new version of the Compact Flash Card Reader for the Apple II. He's planning on making the next revision include a virtual disk drive feature, meaning that disk images for 3.5" and 5.25" disk drives, at 800k and 140k respectively, can be used instead of using real physical media. This is FANTASTIC news, because it potentially means you'll never need to rely on floppy disks ever again, as disk images can be loaded from a compact flash card, including games (like Alien Mind or GATE) and demos (like those by the FTA) which are not possible to run from a hard drive. Hopefully some software wizardry will be included that will allow users to swap virtual disks mid-game by way of a classic desk accessory, or something similar. To encourage Rich and let him know you'd buy one as soon as they're available, drop him a line via his website.

Last but not least, the manual included within this archive for the CMS SCSI card was scanned by Andrew Roughn.

The Diary of an Apple II Genius

Sun, 24 May 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Wade Clarke wrote in to let me know about the blog of Jordan Mechner, creator of two of the most seminal Apple II gaming classics: Karateka and Prince of Persia. Mechner kept a diary during developement of Prince of Persia and it reveals all aspects of its production - video filming used as reference and for rotoscoping for the character animation, programming, a construction set program to build the levels, all the usual corporate bullshit that took place at Broderbund, a title screen created on the IIGS, choosing packaging designs, shipping the actual product and tracking its monthly sales with the hope they'll pick up (despite the fact Broderbund knew at that time the Apple II market was slowing down).

It's a terrific insight into Mechner's dual passions for film and computer games and his successful marriage of the two. Having finished development of Prince of Perisa nearly 20 years ago, it's wonderful to see that his joy of programming the Apple II and the subsequent success of the Prince of Persia franchise has come full circle and given him enough influence to allow him to write the screenplay (he was writing screenplays at the same time as producing Apple II games) and be executive producer on the upcoming blockbuster film of 'Prince of Persia', released by Disney no less, an inspiration to Mechner in the realm of animation. Jordan Mechner, we salute you!

In other more site releted news, I've added archives for Your Money Matters, Quick Click Morph, PMP FAX and FAXination, Vince Cooper has granted permission to make Complete Pascal v2.0 available again as long as it's not-for-profit and I've added a list of screen grabs required to complete that collection of visual material to include in the coffee table book. If any of these are your favourite games, please revisit them and take as many screen grabs as you can along the way.

Welcome to 'What is the Apple IIGS?' v3.1!

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

You might notice some improvements around here:

The content management system has been updated to Silverstripe v2.3 and with it, a new search feature, so you can quickly find that game/app/educational software/hardware/publication as well as filtering specific search results based on different criteria like year, publisher, etc.

Also, you'll also notice we're tapping into eBay - each individual archive will now check if it's available on eBay, as well as displaying the next few IIGS related auctions to go. Collectors shouldn't miss a thing! But that's not all: you can now rate each and every archive on the site, the results of which can be collated for everyone's benefit (especially for newcomers to the IIGS) when finding out what makes up the best of the IIGS.

Last but not least, you'll find some nice aesthetic enhancements as well: apart from substituting that distracting animated starburst in the top right hand corner of the layout with a much nicer banner, the site will now suggest to users of Internet Explorer 6 that, well, it's time to enter the 21st century by way of using newer and better alternatives like Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome. This will ensure you're browsing the site the way it was intended, not to mention rendering the pages a lot quicker as well. All of these new features are available now, so why not take a dip into IIGS nostalgia once again?

Once again, a huge round of applause to Rane Bowen for implementing these new features!

KansasFest 2009 Finishing Up - Sweet 16 v2.1 announced

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

KansasFest, the regular, annual Apple II get together is coming to a close in Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.A.

Eric Shepherd has announced that Sweet 16, the Apple IIGS emulator for Intel and PPC Macs running Mac OS X 10.4 and up, has been updated to version 2.1. Get all the details from the Sweet 16 v2.1.

I would have loved to have attended the Mt Keira Fest, the Australian equivalent held at the same time as KansasFest, but my work priorities prevented me from travelling interstate this year. Next year, hopefully!

News Roundup

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Apologies for the lack updates, life has been very busy. I picked a bad time to not have time, because there's been lots of news:

Pre-KansasFest, the web browser based online Apple IIGS emulator Active X (based on KEGS) was updated by Olivier Goguel to support Intel based Macs! To compliment it, Bill Martens has implemented this new ability into Virtual Apple ][ so Intel based Mac users can relive the Apple II (and IIGS) via Safari or Firefox.

Already mentioned was that Sweet 16 v2.1 was released at KansasFest for PowerPC and Intel based Macs running Mac OS X 10.4.11 and higher, but now Sweet 16 v2.1.1 has superseded it, fixing many bugs and improving performance dramatically. Sheppy's created an online Sweet 16 Survey through which users can let him know what they'd like to see improved.

During Mt KeiraFest, Mike Stephenson released v1.0 of Colouring for the IIGS. I love this program: when it first came out in beta, the years seemed to go into reverse, back when the Apple II still reigned supreme for children's software. Great stuff and another reason why any IIGS should be kept so kids can explore our favourite computer too.

More recently, Brutal Deluxe have been working more of their magic to improving GS/OS. Not content with their accomplishments to add improved DOS 3.3, DOS 3.2 and rDOS File System Translators (FSTs) they've now made it possible to mount disk image archives on the System 6.0.1 desktop and behave like RAM disks.

Rich Dreher's deep in development for his CFFA3000 project, an expansion card that will add a virtual floppy drive to your original Apple II hardware and allow you to boot from disk images typically used by emulators. If you haven't already, pass on a message to Rich to show your interest...and why wouldn't you be interested when this single expansion card can replace all of your physical floppy disks and drives!

I love a good icon for Mac OS X and Pixel Press Icons has released some retro goodness in the form of their most recent creations covering vintage Apple hardware.

Last but not least, we've got some new content for the site: the 'Using Appleworks GS' book cover has been submitted to us by Thomas McLaren from DigitalDinos, which incidentally, has a good range of Apple II items on sale at prices cheaper than what you'll see on eBay. Clay Cummins has also pitched in and submitted a scan of the Digicard 4 meg RAM card.

Sweet 16 v2.1.3

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Sheppy continues to update Sweet 16 and fix those lingering bugs. Version 2.1.3 fixes speed control and further improves emulation performance for PowerPC based Macs. The recent disks menu has been cleaned up as well, making it easier to find the recent disk you're looking for from the list.

Another bug that's been reported and the cause found is a 'key repeat' issue, whereby you may encounter Sweet 16 randomly repeating keys, usually occurring after you make multiple key strokes yourself. The cause has been traced to the 'EasyAccess' system setup init, and disabling it will completely fix the problem. I've disabled the extension on both the System 6.0.1 hard drive image and the image with Taifun Boot that allows you to boot into multiple different versions of GS/OS from the one ProDOS partition, to help prevent the bug appearing again.

Big thanks to Eric Shepherd for continuing to update Sweet 16, a project that yields him no monetary rewards due to the program being freeware.

Thanksgiving Updates

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Why not give an American holiday a spin for providing some much needed updates to ‘What is the Apple IIGS?'. Happy Thanksgiving!

Firstly, thanks to Arnaud Brossard at www.apple-iigs.info, we have two new software inclusions to the archive. Storybook Weaver, an educational program I've been after forever, has been included and a worthy edition it is; it takes terrific advantage of the IIGS by way of following Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, is System 6 compatible, hard drive installable and uses great graphics. The IIGS's resident cracker, Antoine Vignau, very kindly removed the copy-protection scheme for Storybook Weaver. Incidentally, there is another Storybook Weaver program for the IIGS called ‘Storybook Weaver: World of Make Believe' which was reviewed in GS+ back in their Sept/Oct 1992 issue. If anyone has any information on that title, it would be greatly appreciated.

The other new inclusion is Drive Cleaner. Released by Seven Hills Software in 1992 it came with not only IIGS specific software but a blank (and I mean really blank with no magnetic media inside) disk with which you used the included cleaning pads, placing them in the disk shell and applying cleaning fluid to the exposed area of the pad. The software would specify a certain amount of read rotations of the drive and in the process, cleaning it. The software is provided as is and you may be able to use it with other brands of 3.5" disk cleaning products, but ‘What is the Apple IIGS?' won't be held responsible if it screws up your 3.5" disk drive!

Expect to see a larger collaboration between www.apple-iigs.info and ‘What is the Apple IIGS?' by year's end.

In other exciting news, Ken Franklin, creator of perennially fun classics One Arm Battle, Plunder and Milestones 2000, has released One Arm Battle for the iPhone! Buy it now and enjoy turn based multiple player delight on the go.

Making the news yet again, Antoine Vignau of Brutal Deluxe has been up to all sorts of shenanigans. Firstly, he's been disassembling the Sword of Sodan demo and revealing all sorts of interesting clues as to the fabled, never released full game and secondly, he's been busy disassembling the IIGS from top to bottom. Hopefully more news will be revealed soon.

And now for something completely different: an awesome tribute to the demo scene - in Lego!

Christmas Presents!

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0200

This year, thanks chiefly to the efforts of Arnaud Brossard, we have some Christmas cheer to spread around the Apple II community. Never wanted to dip your toes into the waters of some of the IIGS' more involved games? Well fear no longer, as we've got a hell of a lot of complete documentation for games and even a few applications as well:

We've got docs for 4th & Inches, Aaargh!, Alien Mind, Arkanoid II, Art & Film Director, Balance of Power, Battle Chess, Bubble Ghost, California Games, Copy II Plus v9, Dark Castle, Defender of the Crown, Déjà vu, Déjà vu II, Deluxe Paint II, Designasaurus, Destroyer, Dream Zone, Final Assault, Gold Rush, Great Western Shootout, Hacker II, Halls of Montezuma, Hyperstudio, Jigsaw, Keef the Thief, King's Quest, King's Quest IV, Manhunter: New York, Marble Madness, Mixed up Mother Goose, Monte Carlo, Neuromancer, Paperboy, Pirates, Questron II, Revolution 76, Rocket Ranger, Shadowgate, Shanghai II, Silent Service, Silpheed, Space Ace, Space Quest, Sub Battle Simulator, Task Force, Test Drive II, The Bard's Tale (with official hint book!), the Bard's Tale II (also with official hint book!), the Hunt for Red October, The Immortal, The Last Ninja, The Secret of Bahras, The Three Stooges, Thexder, Tomahawk, Tower of Myraglen, Volcanoes, Warlock, Winter Games, World Games and Zany Golf.

Dan Chisarick has also pitched in with a complete scan to the manual for Omega; now you should be able to program the A.I. of your killer tank. I've also scanned the docs to Fast Break, which should help you to master this complex basketball game.

Arnaud must have spent many, MANY hours scanning in each of the manuals. To compliment his hard work, I've retouched, optimised and OCR'ed every one of them thanks to Acrobat 9 Pro's terrific handling of converting documents to searchable text. That's right folks, each of these PDFs is completely searchable - find that small bite of information super quick.

I hope everyone has a very merry Christmas and that you can put all personal differences aside and cherish the times you can spend with your family.

Joe Kohn

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0200

It is with equal sadness and shock that I write that Joe Kohn passed away on the 6th of January 2010 after battling lung cancer. Joe was a prolific writer for the Apple II, working for The Apple IIGS Buyers Guide and InCider, after-which creating his own publication Shareware Solutions II to keep coverage of our favourite computer going after the major publishers quit the Apple II. During that time, he published many IIGS programs and collaborated with 'Burger' Becky Heineman and Brutal Deluxe. He will be sorely missed.

Major Hardware Update

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0200

Thanks to Tony Diaz of 16 Sector, the archive has experienced the largest single hardware contribution yet...and given that it leaves little left to desire, there probably won't be another large hardware haul like this ever again! But Tony might keep us guessing. After all, by the description of his house, a labyrinthine maze where one's path is blocked at every turn by walls of retro gear reaching the ceiling...anything might turn up next!

Sink your teeth into these little beauties:

Apple 1 meg RAM (curiously labelled Vegas), The Apple II Ethernet card (yes, the one that never got released!), the Applied Engineering GS-RAM 2 Meg Expander, AST Vision Plus (the precursor to the Visionary GS), Chinook 4 Meg RAM, Cirtech Plus RAM 8, Cirtech ROMDisk GS, Doctor Design Sound Card, Epic 2400 Classic Rev C, Applied Visions Inc. FutureSound, Applied Ingenuity GStereo, a generic RAM card that can hold either 512k or 2meg, Applied Ingenuity GS Juice Plus and regular GS Juice, GS Super Expander, Hayes Smart Modem 1200A, Hyperstudio Sound Card, Pacemark IIGS Super RAM II, LANce GS, MDIdeas Digitizer Pro, MDIdeas OctoRAM, Mexel DynaRAM 1meg, Parallax TopRAM, SoundMeister (in Alltech red livery), the Uther Ethernet Card (the current darling of enabling Ethernet on a IIGS or IIe), the Zip Drive (nope, not the one from Iomega, rather an alternative to the Focus Drive), the Mark Twain Daughter Board (yep, something from the unreleased ROM04) and the Cortland ROM Card.

Additionally, Tony has provided some factual tidbits to most of these new additions.

Last, but certainly not least, Andy Molloy has provided a great scan of the cover to the ‘System 6 Book' by Jerry Kindall. This brings the archive for book covers precariously close to being finished - check out the books section and see if you've got one of the missing covers, then scan and submit it.

Manual Mania!

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0200

A lot of people seem to think 2010 is the year of the tablet...think again! It's the year of the manual! That's right, 'What is the Apple IIGS?' now has even more documentation on IIGS games and applications! Arnaud Brossard's manual scans of last year have inspired me to scan all of my own manuals and as luck would have it, Antoine Vignau of Brutal Deluxe (the man who doesn't sleep) was also doing the same with his original documentation. As even further luck would have it, there was little crossover between us, so all our efforts have combined with Arnaud's contributions have gone on to produce a very comprehensive library of documentation. Again, each of these PDFs is completely searchable as all text has been OCRed.

Antoine's contributions to games have been:

Cogito and the Tinies (both of which Antoine and Olivier Zardini ported to the IIGS back in the 90s), Impossible Mission II, Reach for the Stars, Shadowgate, Shanghai, Sword of Sodan (yep, it wasn't released for the IIGS, but here's the documentation from the Amiga version), Transylvania III, Ultima I.

Antoine's also covered a lot of apps:

Pegasoft DrawTools v3.1 (for which I've created a new archive), Instant Music, Pyware Instrument Designer, Pyware Music Writer, Inwords, List Plus, Master Tracks Junior, Micol Advanced BASIC v5.0, Music Construction Set, Signature GS, discQuest v1.2 (for which I've created an entry for in the Hypermedia category), Graphic Writer v2.0, Softwood GSFile, NoiseTracker.

as well as some educational software:

Fractal Explorer, Kid's Time II.

My own gaming contributions are as follows, and this should now allow for many of the more complex games to be played much more easily with background story, rules, objectives, hints & tips:

Ancient Land of Ys, Arkanoid, Beyond Zork, Block Out, Captain Blood, Cribbage & Gin King, Cryllan Mission 2088, Downhill Challenge, Dragon Wars, Dungeon Master, Gauntlet, Hardball!, Hover Blade, Keef the Thief, Laser Force, Life & Death, Mancala, Mean 18, Panzer Battles, Pipe Dream, Qix, Rastan, Sinbad & the Throne of the Falcon, Skate or Die, Sea Strike, Serve & Volley, Strip Poker II, Tass Times in Tonetown, The Lost Tribe, The Third Courier, Triango, Tunnels of Armageddon, Uninvited, Vegas Craps, Vegas Gambler, WindWalker, World Games.

For additional good measure, I also scanned the solutions to Questron II and Tower of Myraglen from Quest for Clues Book II. With all this added documentation for RPGs and sim games, if anyone would like to take screen shots while playing these games, it would be greatly appreciated.

And then there are my scans for application software:

DeskWorks (Beagle Brothers Desk Accessories), Dream Grafix, Fantavision, Graphics Studio, Harmonie, Paintworks Gold, Paintworks Plus, Shoebox, The Desktop Manger, The Manager, The Music Studio v2.0, The Print Shop, The Print Shop Companion, TopDraw.

Educational software:

GSymbolix (Eureka Symbolix)

Hardware:

ThunderScan

Because we've come so far with documentation so relatively quickly, I ask other IIGS fans to look through their own collection to see if they can scan in the following in the hope we can one day have complete documentation:

Airball
Ancient Glory
Bouncing Bluster II
Cavern Cobra
Firepower
Futureshock 3D
GATE
King of Chicago
Mazer II
Space Fox
Space Shark

Lost Treasures of Infocom
Questmaster I

Bridge 6.0
Chess Master 2100
Club Backgammon
Full Metal Planete
Gold of the Americas
Kaleidokubes
Mad Match
Pick n Pile
Solitaire & Cribbage
Solitaire Royale
Tetris

Cryllan Mission 2088: The Second Scenario
Mighty Marvel Vs the Forces of E.V.I.L.
Roadwar 2000
Spirit of Excalibur
Star Saga One
Star Saga Two

Grand Prix Circuit
Hostage
Subversion
GBA Championship Basketball
Gnarly Golf
Jack Nicklaus Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf
John Elway's Quarterback
Mini Putt
Street Sports Soccer
Superstar Ice Hockey
World Tour Golf

Apps:

Calendar Crafter
Medley 2.0
Notes 'n' Files
Smart Money
Word Perfect
Your Money Matters

Cartooners
Color Plus
Designer Prints
Designer Puzzles
Draw Plus
DYOH: Architecture
DYOH: Interiors
DYOH: Landscape
Graphic Writer III v3.0 (by Richard Bennett)
Graphics Supermarket
Hometown U.S.A.
Imagemaster: Basic Paint
Mercury
Platinum Paint
Show Off!

Diversi-Tune v1.1
Instant Synthesizer
Master Tracks Pro

Nexus

Auto Ark
Balloon v2.0
DeskPak
Express v2.1
Flash Boot
Font Factory v2.0
The Graphic Exchange
GS Font Editor
HyperLaunch
Independence
Kangaroo v1.3
Life Guard
Pointless v2.0.3
Prism
Salvation Supreme
Second Chance
Soft Switch
Super Convert v4.0
Switch-It!
Trans Prog III
TypeSet
Universe Master
Wings

Teleworks Plus
FAXination

We'll focus on eduuational software a bit later.

I've reviewed the steps I've taken to scan manuals for best possible quality, so if you'd like to submit something, check out these guidelines first.

Another Round of Updates

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0200

Tony Diaz has submitted cover scans for two of the missing issues of the Apple IIGS Buyer's Guide, specifically Fall 1987 and Spring 1988. Tony recalls that Joe Kohn gave one or both of these magazines to him, so not only can we thank Joe for the legacy of his writing, but also for these scans.

Not only that, Tony's also submitted cover scans for the books Apple 16, Programming the IIGS in C & Assembly and All That GS Jazz Vol. II.

Tony's also contributed even more hardware scans, so when it comes to RAM, you can rely on using this site as a reference to quickly identify those expansion cards you find in the odd IIGS picked up at a garage sale or thrift/recycle store. The latest additions include the Applied Engineering GS-RAM II, QRAM and RAMPak4GS. At the almost the same time, both Tony and Wayne Stewart submitted scans for the 4+4 revision of the Sirius RAM card, and it took me a while to distinguish between the 4+4 Rev versus the version 2.0 revision scan I already had; both are now included.

Wayne's also submitted the Parallax TopRAM manual, in his perfect PDF reproduction style.

If it's one thing you can count on at the moment, it's that Antoine Vignau of Brutal Deluxe is always up to something with the Apple II. Recently, he's patched Bubble Ghost, Gauntlet and Paperboy to run from a hard drive, as well as System 6. I've updated the individual 2image archives for these titles, as well as the 32 meg ProDOS image that includes all action games. Three cheers for less disk handling! He's also scanned in the rare paid shareware version manual for DuelTris, as well as scanned the Mac version's cover art for Cogito and the Tinies.

As I've been pouring through A+ and InCider magazines looking for content to add to the book, I came across some interesting IIGS titles that I'd not previously listed. They're all Hypermedia titles and they all involve the use of an accompanying laser disc; a device for playback and control of laser discs with the IIGS was almost completely unheard of, but none-the-less, these titles were developed for the education market. GTV was the first, but then the Science Vision series followed (at least according to InCider/A+).

In addition, I came across an article in InCider/A+ December 1990 to perhaps the only IIGS specific CD-ROM software title: Your WordBox!

If anyone has more info on these very rare titles, please write in.

Probe GS Uncovered, AppleWorks GS Documentation & Renegade Box Scans

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0200

Kyle Wadsten of Plaid Vest Software wrote in to let me know of his Probe GS block editor program that he released way back in 1987. Not just letting me know about it, he also included a disk image and PDF manual as well as his wish that it would appear on 'What is the Apple IIGS?'.

Antoine's as busy as ever, and has contributed the complete documentation to that perennial productivity favourite, AppleWorks GS. Like any accompanying PDF manual, you'll find the link to download it under the link to download the disk image archive. Expect to see even more documentation soon.

Lastly, I've included a box scan for the 8-bit version of Renegade. If you look really carefully, you can see the GS screen grab in the right hand bottom of the synopsis for the game. The score is using the font Shaston, so it was definitely a screen shot from some point in the game's development for the IIGS. If only someone would come forward and let the GS version out into the wild!

Italy Represents!

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0200

The IIGS has always been well represented across English and French speaking countries, but now Italy's love of our favourite Apple II is now indelibly stamped on the web at Apple IIGS: ieri, oggi e domani (that's Apple IIGS: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow for those of us unfamiliar with the romantic language). There are great scans of many different magazines featuring the IIGS at the time of its launch, not to mention a tonne of hardware hacks and all-round tinkering. Lavoro piacevole Mauro!

New Apple II Archive - Apple2Online

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0200

Dr. Ken Buchholz wrote in to me know about his Apple2Online site, a new and independent archive devoted to all models of the Apple II. It's always good that unique archives like this appear and store their own copies of software, because you never know what you might find, like a newer version of an app you've been after for ages or an 8-bit educational program on a 3.5" disk (like I found for the Children's Writing & Publishing Centre, a program I wanted to confirm was not actually IIGS specific).

Anyways, enjoy!

More Manuals, KEGS the Basis for New GSport Emulator and Catan

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0200

Antoine Vignau has volunteered yet more manuals for games, educational software and applications:

Pipe Dream (the reference card), Foundation v1.02 and Genesys (both resource editing apps), The Graphics Supermarket, The Graphics Exchange, Cavern Cobra, Visualizer and SmoothTalker.

Additionally, Antoine has provided rare French documentation to Seven Hills Software titles The Manager, Kangaroo, Express and Transprog III. Speaking of Seven Hills titles, if you have the latest versions of the Manager (beyond version 1.0), Kangaroo (beyond version 1.3) and Transprog III (beyond version 1.1) I'd love to hear from you.

As Antoine provides more documentation, so do I, delving into my IIGS educational software with classics Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego as well as GeoPuzzle USA.

In other news, development of KEGS has split off into another project on Sourceforge - GSport. Quite a few people have expressed interest in extending KEGS beyond v0.91, which hasn't been updated for a few years. Initial features being developed in GSport are Ethernet/Uthernet and printing support.

Speaking of Sourceforge, I found a project there for a 'port' of Catan (it's a popular European board game) to the IIGS called gsSettlers back in 2009. I tried contacting the founder of the project at the time, but got no reply. Sounds like a great idea for a game, so if anyone can provide further news on this project, it would be appreciated.

Storybook Weaver: Entirely Recovered! Remember the Children!

Mon, 24 May 2010 00:00:00 +0200

There's still some software for the Apple IIGS that eludes capture. Like missing episodes of Doctor Who, the likelihood of ever finding them becomes less likely as time drags on, but Bill Garber has slapped the face of depressing odds: back in December 2009, Bill scored the winning bid to an eBay auction that included a slew of MECC titles.

MECC, or the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium/Corporation, was the developer and purveyor of many quality 8-bit Apple II programs throughout the 80s, (one title not least of which was the Oregon Trail) and continued producing Apple II software well into the 90s, meeting demand in schools across the U.S.; all this in spite of the fact that all of the fruity logo company's attempts at this time were to ensure that the only Apple in education's eye was the Macintosh.

MECC also published Apple IIGS software, most of which is held within this archive. Storybook Weaver, a IIGS program I had only cottoned onto of its existence in recent years, was provided by Arnaud Brossard and cracked by Antoine Vignau only last year. This hidden treasure carries the quality traits of other IIGS MECC software.

Flicking through GS+ magazine, I came across a review for ‘Storybook Weaver: World of Make Believe'. MECC made more than one? Great news, except that no-one has ever approached me in the ten years I've been running this archive asking about it or offering it.

But then came this bumper auction on eBay, re-listed several times as the original asking price was asking one hundred times of what people are actually willing to pay for vintage software like this. But it's true to say it was rare, because not only did it include many 8-bit titles available on convenient 3.5" disks (sure reduces a lot of disk swapping compared to 5.25" inch disks) that weren't already on the Asimov archive, it also included Storybook Weaver: World of Make Believe AND Storybook Weaver: World of Adventure. Some great purchasing and imaging of the disks by Bill and more cracking by Antoine, and we've gotten another step closer to a complete educational software archive for the IIGS.

Speaking of cracking, Antoine is effectively keeping a log of his cracking exploits on the HackZapple site. It's a great record of how to deprotect various games and apps, so if you're vaguely inclined to open a sector editor to make unprotected and hard drive installable versions of software, be sure to join in.

Not only does a more complete archive go hand in hand with the objective of ‘What is the Apple IIGS?' (that is to archive every piece of commercial software) it also fulfils a personal wish to collect as much educational Apple II software as possible, especially if it's 8-bit software on a 3.5" disk. Some of you may be thinking why bother when there's loads more titles on 5.25" disks. Well, 3.5" inch 8-bit software has some advantages, especially used with a IIGS: for one, there's no disk swapping (no educational software should do this as it allows kids to tune out), two, using this software on a real IIGS becomes easier as 3.5" disks are much easier to find than 5.25" disks and three, chances are the software can be cracked to also allow use on a hard drive.

It's my hope one day to bond with my kids (when children do arrive one day!) by playing together on an Apple IIGS, learning first with McGee and the 8-bit Playroom, then moving on to Reading & Me, Math & Me, Milliken Story Teller, working up to the Orange Cherry, Unicorn and Davidson's software for ages 6 and up. Perhaps after that it might be hard to tear kids away from a Playstation 5, but I'd hope at least to enjoy sharing some Carmen Sandiego and the wonders of travel.

To that end, I've assembled a list of 8-bit educational software on 3.5" disk that isn't currently held on Asimov. If anyone can provide disk images of the following, Antoine will be able to crack them and more recorded history will be possible:

Stickybear Reading Tutor (Weekly Reader Software)
Grammar Gremlins (Davidson)
Word Attack Plus! Vocabulary (Davidson)
Algebra Blaster Plus! (Davidson)
The Treehouse (Broderbund)
Oregon Trail (MECC)

It's also likely that there are many other MECC titles available, but without a definite list/catalogue of those titles, it's hard to know what else was available on 3.5" disk, but Bill and Antoine are creating disk images of all the titles in that eBay haul.

Also, there are still these IIGS specific titles that still require disk images:

Talking Dinosaur Reader
Talking USA Map
Talking Academic Quiz Kid
Computer Video Reader: World of Nature - Reading About Animals; Reading About Sharks
Bird Watcher
Inner Body Works
Logic Master
Playwrite: the Talking Puppets.

So if anyone can provide any of the above, it would be incredibly appreciated.

In the spirit of furthering educational software, I've been continuing to scan the various manuals I have for IIGS specific titles. So parents, I hope you can stretch more worth out these titles:

Katie's Farm, McGee at the Funfair, Stickybear Talking Alphabet, Stickybear Talking Opposites and Stickybear Talking Shapes.

One last present from Bill Garber (for this update at least) is the documentation to the useful commercial NDA utlity Disk Access.

Where in the World is Alex Lee?

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0200

So, some of you might have been wondering what's going on with the site with the outage and lack of updates.

Fear not.

Back in late June I quit my job as senior graphic designer at Madman Entertainment after 7.5 years and with my partner Bronwen and embarked upon a planned 5 month long discovery of Europe. We've now completed that leg of our adventure and are now trying to live in the UK with working visas.

During our time living in England, it might be a good opportunity to meet up with those unique and isolated individuals in the UK who chose the Apple II over the homegrown Commodore and Sinclair variants back in the 80s. Or even cross the channel and meet those talented French men who still even now find new things to do with the IIGS (hi Antoine!)

On our journey, they particularly loved the IIGS in Croatia. Oh yes, they have 'GS' on most of the number plates of the cars residing in Zadar and Plitvice. What more evidence do you need?

And in Prague, they like their GS's RAW and they're not afraid to wear it as a literal badge of honour. I'm guessing 'RAW' in the sense of the 2.8Mhz, 512k of RAM and no hard drive variety.

But enough of my travels, which have sadly come to end...for the time being. Instead, let's pick up where we left off, by making 2010 the year of manuals! Gust L. Friedemann provided a few manuals as far back as May, so Gust, please accept my apologies for it taking this long for them to appear on the site after your scanning work!

So enjoy these manuals, which as usual, can be searched as all text has OCRed:

Auto Ark
Cartooners
Design Your Own Home Interiors
Second Chance
Softswitch
Typeset

As one last thing I can impart to Apple II users at Christmas, check out my latest blog. Merry Christmas everybody, I hope you enjoy it. I know I am given its the first winter Christmas I've ever experienced!

First Round of Updates for 2011!

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0200

I've had an awesome response with submissions since announcing the site would see more updates in 2011. Speaking of updates, if you want to catch-up with all the 2010 news, do so here. I'll have to get round to creating more obvious buttons on the right hand side of the News for easier access!

Mauro Rospocher has scanned and uploaded the following games' manuals:

GBA Basketball
Gnarly Golf
Jack Nicklaus Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf
Leisure Suit Larry
Mean 18 Famous Course Disk Reference
Tetris

Keep the manuals coming in everyone!

Mauro's also scanned in the box for the Mean 18 Famous Course Disk II - if anyone has Course Disks III and IV, please scan those boxes and send them in as well.

Robert Spitz has submitted the driver and utility for the Applied Ingenuity Inner Drive, after asking around in order to get his own hardware up and running.

Brian Picchi pointed out that First Bytes' Mad Libs can't be found anywhere on the site! He's completely right, so I've created an entry for that title including a disk image and screen grab.

I just cottoned onto Rich Dreher's update to the CFFA3000 card from December 9 2010. Although delayed, it's great it's still moving forward. This is the one piece of hardware I'm looking forward to most...but it'll be sometime before I can use it, being away from my beloved IIGS machines whilst in England.

Last but certainly not least, François Michaud let me know about his amazing catalogued Apple II collection...amongst his even many more Macintosh items. Check it out and be green in envy.

Apple IIGS Emulator for the iPhone and iPad!?! Kinda

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Wow! Now you can emulate the Apple IIGS on your iPhone or iPad! Get excited, but also realise that currently you can only run FTA software with it. Yes, that's right, all the work Olivier Goguel has been putting into emulating a IIGS through a browser, best demonstrated at Virtual Apple ][, is also paying off for use on mobile devices.

While it was revealed that Olivier was working on a iOS IIGS emulator solution thanks to footage at the FTA's recent FTA Wormz Party, there were many doubts as to how anyone could get past Apple's stringent control checks before allowing apps to appear in the iTunes Store. The Gogs has managed to do it, but in keeping Apple happy, he's only included FTA software with the app.

Playing around with the app on my iPhone 3GS, it can keep up with emulating a stock standard IIGS at 2.8Mhz with a minor skip here and there at 20 frames per second. I imagine on an iPad or iPhone 4, emulation speed would never dip and fingers crossed it performs at 60fps. If anyone who regularly commutes, let us know how it affects the battery life of your iOS device running the app.

More Manuals! NiftySpell New Desk Accessory now freeware!

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Antoine Vignau continues with scans of all the manuals he has to hand:

DeskPak, Jam Session, Pointless, Salvation Supreme, TML Pascal (for Complete Pascal - I hope the documentation doesn't vary too wildly between the early and later versions) and Word Perfect. If you've got more up to date documentation for Complete Pascal v2.0, or any other manuals not currently on the site please refer to this list and submit them.

In a nice surprise to the Apple II community, Ewen Wannop, IIGS communications software developer extraordinaire, has released the NiftySpell New Desk Accessory as freeware. The new package got started when Chris Vavruska, the original author of NiftySpell, asked if support could be included for Ewen's SAM2 Email client for the IIGS. After discovering incompatibilities with SAM2, Ewen disassembled NiftySpell, its source code long lost, fixed the bugs and then released a public domain version that's now better than ever.

From Ewen's site, he's also recently released the HTML Tool Set, a programming library that programmers can use as the engine for a IIGS web browser...interesting! Maybe a IIGS web browser might look something like this?

More Lost Software Found! Playwrite: The Talking Puppets

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Good news everybody!

We now have another piece of IIGS software that I found out about in the last 12 months for which we now have a working archive!

Playwrite: The Talking Puppets is a sequel of sorts to Cartooners, the animation program specifically for kids. Talking Puppets allows kids as well as the young at heart to create talking dialogue between two characters, setting the scene, costumes and even the tone and pitch of the actors' voices! It's always great finding 'new' software like this, especially when you've got another reason to show off some educational software to the youngins.

Thanks go to John Liska and Antoine Vignau (even though no cracking was required this time!) for this rare find. There are still other educational software titles the archive does not yet hold, so be sure to check this list and see if you can help.

Another Previously Lost Educational Title Found! Talking USA Map

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0200

A huge thanks goes out to Daniel Kruszyna (who'll be presenting at this year's KansasFest) for not only being able to make working disk images for Talking USA Map, but also for a scan of its box and manual! Fantastic! Another educational title now archived, no longer in danger of being lost forever!

This brings the list of IIGS specific educational disk image requests to this shorter list:

Talking Academic Quiz Kid, Computer Video Reader: World of Nature - Reading About Animals; Reading About Sharks, Bird Watcher, Inner Body Works, Logic Master.

There are also educational hyper/multi-media titles still required too, although they also require a laser disc. Although no form of emulation for the Apple IIGS supports laser disc and the Apple Video Overlay Card (and probably never will), a video capture of the content of the laser discs would be ideal to preserve their content alongside disk images of the actual GS/OS software: GTV: A Geographic Perspective on American History, Science Vision: Astrovision, Science Vision: BioExplorer, Science Vision: Chemical Pursuits, Science Vision: EcoVision, Science Vision: ErgoMotion and Science Vision: TerraVision. Lastly is the IIGS only CD-ROM title that quite possibly wasn't even released: YourWordBox!

And in preparation for a big bonus of software soon to be added to 'What is the Apple IIGS?', we're also on the lookout for 8-bit educational software that was released on 3.5" disk. See if you can help with any of the following titles:

The Treehouse, Word Attack Plus Vocabulary, Alge Blaster Plus!, Grammar Gremlins, Stickybear Numbers, Stickybear Reading Tutor, Stickybear Spell Grabber. Also, be on the lookout for other Davidson, The Learning Company, Learning Ways Inc., Hartley, Sunburst and Weekly Reader titles.

Lots of new Visual Content and More Manuals!

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Thanks to François Michaud's growing Apple collection, including a sizeable section devoted to Apple's first line of computers, he's been able to scan a lot of missing covers for applications including AppleLink: The Personal Edition, Beagle Draw, GNO/ME, Micol Advanced BASIC, FAXination, Express and DeskPak. Additionally, he's also contributed manuals for Express, FAXination and Firepower.

I've also included a manual and cover scan for Flashboot (courtesy of Wayne Stewart, although I'd had this for a while!) as well as a cover scan for Deluxe Paint II Arts Parts Volume 2 (thanks to Antoine Vignau). Detlef Kahner has also helped out by submitting the manual for Chess Master 2100.

As always, please check the list for box scans and manuals we still need to complete the archive here at 'What is the Apple IIGS?'. I've been recently writing the text for the coffee table book and in these days of the Apple App Store, Android Market and other online venues to get your software, it's becoming clearer just how important it is that we record ANY history of how software used to be obtained...and there's no better way to do this than by scanning the packaging of software from the past. Consider: with the future of the digital age sprawling wider and further in front of us - there will be but a small period of time in which people went to physical stores and bought tangible media from which to run or install their software. Those days will soon be forgotten unless this is all recorded.

So spread the word if you're one of the lucky ones attending KansasFest next week, or if you'll be at home during the event, why not delve into your collection and add to history? Contributions are always credited (unless you wish to remain anonymous) and will appear online and within the coffee table book. As for the book...no, I still can't give a release date yet!

There's also a NEW category for which you can contribute. Before leaving Australia I scanned almost all of my original 3.5" disks (OK, so I missed a few in my rush to reach the plane before it took off) and as it turns out, Antoine's also been scanning his disks...and François as well. Between the three of us, we've got well over half of all game and application disks and a good start to educational software. If you've got any original disks with their labels intact, check the list and read the step by step guide as to how to get the best possible quality scans.

8-bit Software Available on 3.5" Disk

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0200

There's now a hell of a lot more software on 'What is the Apple IIGS?'. Strictly speaking, it's not Apple IIGS specific software, but 8-bit software that will run on the IIe, IIc and IIc+, but it IS on 3.5" disks, which has the convenience of no disk swapping, faster disk access, 3.5" disks are easier to come by than 5.25" disks and many of these programs are hard drive installable and even System 6 compatible.

This new section of the archive is very much a work in progress and at the moment only covers games and educational software...but there's a huge first haul to be had between these two new categories. Currently, you can only access them via these links, as I haven't even had time to update the pull down menus of the masthead navigation.

For 8-bit Educational programs available on 3.5" disk go here.

For 8-bit games on 3.5" disk look no further.

As usual, I ask everyone to have a look at these new sections, see what's missing in terms of disk images, cover scans, manuals and disk labels and help where you can by checking what you have in your own collections.

And for all of you at KansasFest, keep an eye for these items at the Garage Sale! ;-) A big thanks to Antoine Vignau for providing cover and manual scans for The Whole Neighbourhood and Read n Roll, as well disk images for The Whole Neighborhood and Story Starters: Science. Rare titles indeed.

GSTape! Alge Blaster Plus! Sweet 16 v2.3.1! Lots more manuals!

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200

We've got more goodies to fill out the archive quite nicely this month.

Antoine Vignau, busy as ever, has provided a working archive and complete documentation to one very rare utility: GSTape, which allows you to back-up to tape drives via SCSI on the IIGS (see docs for what SCSI cards and tape drives can be used). Also adding to utilities, are So What Software's batch of little useful programs: DiskTimer v2.1 (for benchmarking performance of IIGS hard drives), SCSI Hacker (for those who want to mess with SCSI configurations at a low level), Screen Thief (for screen capture, similar to Ninja Force's Picture Ripper) and Menu Maker, for use with their Iconix BASIC extender.

Additionally, Antoine's also sent along Simon Says and Women in History, both with their accompanying documentation, adding to the new category of 8-bit educational software on 3.5" disk.

Not only that, but if you can handle a little French (or let Google translator handle it for you) Antoine's also scanned in the manuals for the following titles: Bouncing Bluster II, Full Metal Planete and Photonix II.

He's also provided the docs and a packaging scan for Call Box, the programming framework that allows you to tie together BASIC programming with the IIGS toolbox and also for Prism, the graphics conversion app. Last but not least, Antoine's also scanned complete documentation to Talking Math and Me.

Antoine's also done some digging about what the fate of Ultima VI on the Apple II was, or more specifically, was a IIGS version really in the pipeline? As always, if anyone has additional info regarding unreleased software, be sure to write in so we can set the story straight...and relax in the knowledge that there's nothing to actually pursue in regards to disk images!

Daniel Kruszyna has been able to supply a disk image for Alge Blaster Plus! from his original copy and Antoine has been able to crack it! Keep these Davidson releases coming in people! It's strange to think that such classic software for the Apple II such as these haven't been archived before now!

That's it for content additions, for now anyway.

KansasFest is over for another year, and I'm typically late in reporting anything about it. Some highlights of the event include the release of version 2.3.1 of Sweet 16, the IIGS emulator for Mac OS X 10.5 and higher, its greatest benefit being that it no longer freezes when playing back SynthLab or Diversi-Tune music.

Also, some new hardware was previewed: The long awaited CFFA 3000 card, which works not only as a solid state hard drive like the CFFA cards before it, but also as a virtual floppy drive where you 'insert' disk images from a handy USB stick, was available for pre-order...was being the operative word. 300 cards were produced and already, 300 cards have been pre-ordered! Rich is considering another run in 6 to 12 months time. I myself have pre-ordered a card, even though I won't have access to it until I return to Australia late in 2012! It really will be one of the most convenient additions to a IIGS or IIe, eliminating the need to use and wait for floppies! If you missed out, let Rich Dreher know you're interested by sending an email.

But that's not all: Vince Briel, another hardware developer extraordinaire, has developed the A2MP3, a card that will play MP3s from a USB stick and be controllable from your Apple II! Sheppy is hoping to develop a IIGS New Desk Accessory, so you can play your tunes as you work in GS/OS, but in the meantime, control can be had with any model of Apple II. I love the concept, that the Apple II is simply a 'front-end' for such a sophisticated device (at least in relation to the Apple II) and wonder what else could be achieved with new hardware in this fashion? Perhaps another revision would be to include an antenna that could pick up digital radio?

Even More Content Added! Sesame Street Learning Library & Disk Access II

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200

François Michaud's began the next round of content updates to the site by submitting manuals for The King of Chicago (with some good hints and tips as to how to complete the game, which I never have) and Font Factory (the comprehensive font creation and editing program from Seven Hills Software) as well as an alternate manual scan for screensaver extraordinaire Twilight II, which has made for a good cover scan.

Antoine, never to be out-done of course, has shot through some more material as well: manuals for Chess Master 2100 (specifically, the IIGS reference card), Instant Synthesizer, Master Tracks Pro, Second Chance, So What Software Utilities and Universe Master. In addition to the documentation to Second Chance, Antoine's also found version 2.0 of the program, now included in the archive. It's an interesting program – the beginnings of something like Adobe Photoshop for the IIGS! Additionally, Antoine's also been able to provide version 1.0.2 of Universe Master, newer than the v1.0.1 the archive previously held.

A recent trans-world effort to help catalogue and archive more Apple II software between myself, Antoine and Bill Martens of Call A.P.P.L.E. has yielded some early fruit in the form of several disk images: Disk Access II (a new desk accessory that enables file management from any standard GS/OS program) and Sesame Street Learning Library Vol 1 (a nice addition to educational 8-bit Apple II software on 3.5" disk). Additionally, a new version of Speller Bee (v2) has been found and added to the archive. Again, this shows that many programs received newer iterations and that sometimes obtaining the 'same' software again reveals nice surprises like newer versions.

Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

As tributes to the co-founder of Apple continue to pour in, I thought I'd make a contribution.

Although Steve Jobs didn't have any direct influence on the Apple IIGS, his focus having been the Macintosh up until his well publicised ousting and resignation in 1985, our favourite Apple II still owes much to Jobs.

Obviously, it was Jobs and Woz who saw the original Apple II and the company itself to fruition in 1977. But one of the real flourishes of the IIGS can be attributed to one of Jobs actions in 1982, bringing in Frog Design, a European industrial design group whose modern style was exactly the attention to detail Jobs was looking for in creating ‘insanely great' products. Creating a range of studies as to how the future of computers might look, including tablets, the ‘Snow White' design language evolved and first was used on the Apple IIc. The IIGS was next to receive this styling, although substituting the white of the IIc with the neutral but warm ‘platinum' colour, which would remain with the Macintosh until the release of the iMac. The look of the IIGS was finalised by its unique hammerhead shark design with detached keyboard.

The other major benefit to the IIGS that derived from Jobs and the work of the Macintosh team was of course the graphical user interface they developed, now rendered in colour for the first time on the IIGS, as well as the toolbox, which allowed developers easy ways to take advantage of the GUI.

On a personal note, I've found it hard not to feel admiration for Jobs. We should never forget that Jobs has worked with incredible collaborators, from Steven Wozniak to Jonathan Ive and without them Apple would not have flourished. But what Jobs has done in his career is quite remarkable and why he is credited as a huge influence in the way technology has developed is well deserved.

It's certainly been true that Jobs' passing has made for some interesting discussion as to his merits or otherwise. The interesting thing is that if Jobs were still alive to read what everyone was saying about him, I doubt he'd care anyway. You can't make everybody happy, and this certainly is true of his customers and the people he worked with. But his unflinching focus remained on wanting to see computer products that would be smaller, easier to use and reveal more and more uses for everyday life certainly has changed technology for the better, allowing a much wider and broader audience to enjoy the possibilities of a digital world.

I think he needs to be more recognised for being able to cut through the bullshit of people in suits: of striving to bring better products to market instead of playing things safe, yet still playing within the rules and making deals with the music, film and software industries. It's a far more reaching and holistic view of designing products and the end result is and has been that Apple has always made more interesting products than its competitors and that's what the praise for Jobs should really be about. It's a hell of a legacy.

On another personal note, Jobs lost his life to pancreatic cancer, which was how my family lost our mother a little over 2 years ago. It is one of the most insidious forms of cancer and my heart goes out to all those who knew Steve personally.

Hard Drive Image Revisions & More Content Updates

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0200

I've been constantly revising my 32 meg hard drive images which can provide a quick setup of a virtual or real IIGS with compact flash based storage. The updates include newer versions of software and adding new ones, including more icons, cleaning up directories, colouring folders (red indicates it does not run from System 6 or isn't hard drive installable. The results are now available from the home page of 'What is the Apple IIGS?'. It should be the quickest way anyone even vaguely curious about the IIGS can quickly see what the machine can do.

In the quest to find every obscure IIGS piece of software ever made, feel free to submit your own hard drive images if they're loaded with apps (as long as they're apps no longer being sold), games (we just might find another hard drive installable version that the archive doesn't currently hold), and anything else that may be on them (graphics, sounds, etc). The older these old partitions, the better – any random setup may just hold a few gems not already archived.

Dave Touvell has submitted some awesome updates. Firstly, the archive now has the last revision of Hyper Studio, version 3.1j. I couldn't find any details as to what's different between the older 'g' version held in the archive, but it's nice to know we now have the last iteration of bug fixes and features ever for the popular hypermedia program. Also, Dave has sent an official hard drive installable version of the Print Shop IIGS, including a scan of an addendum that specifically refers to the removal of copy protection in version 1.1. In additon, Dave's scanned the docs for the Graphic Library Special Edition that came bundled with many copies of Print Shop IIGS (not mine, unfortunately!). Last but not least, Dave's also included an addition to the Graphic Exchange – originally the program included a Mac HFS formatted disk with utilities and some sample images to convert to the IIGS. This is now included in the archive, although because it's formatted in HFS, it's a Macintosh Disk Copy format disk image, which will probably only work with emulators Sweet 16 and Bernie ][ the Rescue.

I've recently also added the very excellent Script Central and Stack Central/Studio City collections for HyperCard IIGS and Hyper Studio respectively. A2 Central reported they were now available via a Creative Commons license back in 2010, so I've added them both to the hypermedia section of the archive.

In other news, I was overjoyed to read that the Apple IIGS version of Rastan was decided to be the best home conversion of the arcade title in issue 91 of Retro Gamer Magazine, outdoing all other home computing platforms and console versions!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year...no, for 2011 of course!

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Well, it WAS that time of year again. You know, Christmas.

But I've been so busy with my new job in the UK and in the lead-up to Christmas, had no time to prepare my usual Christmas cheer!

But fear not, although you've already put away the Christmas tree, here are some things you could have put under it:

François Michaud, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last November, has contributed a few scans from his amazing collection (maybe I'll see it one day!): ShadowDial (now we just need a disk image for this rare IIGS communications program), Show Off, Life and Death IIGS Reference, McGee Reference and Balance of Power IIGS Reference Cards.

For another round of treats for which I can claim no responsibility for, subscribe to Brian Picchi's YouTube channel, predominantly featuring Apple IIGS game reviews, but some other great Apple II tidbits as well. Speaking of which, if you're more into 8-bit Apple II stuff, then check out Highretrogamelord89's channel for some great overviews of Apple gaming goodness.

Another gem I've recently found comes by way of Arnaud Brossard. He's managed to secure what is surely one of the very first CD-ROMs dedicated to the Apple II and released in 1990 - GEM (the Generous Efforts of Many) which was a comprehensive collection of freeware and shareware up to that point, and released in a very professionally put together package. I always love going through archives like this, as there's bound to be a few finds that haven't appeared on other archives. Sure enough, it's revealed a few more shareware games, which I have placed on my System 6 with free games image and the Sports & Unreleased Games image (which also includes shareware games).

Additionally, I've scanned through the NDAs, CDAs, INITS and icons of the GEM disc and included whatever wasn't included in my own System Extensions collection, including:

Xordan BiClock (Human and Alien Clock)
Crayon (change desktop colours)
Dates v1.1 by Joel A. Quejada
File Info by Steven White
Palette Puller by Ed Robisheaux

FixColour CDA (which prevents black and white Apple II desktop programs (like MouseDesk, Publish It!, Springboard Publisher, etc) from going into colour after visiting the classic control panel.

DeskTop Mod INIT by CK Haun
Dr Daily INIT by Guy T Rice (virus checker)

But surely the best Christmas gift we could have ever hoped to receive has come from Stephan Kleinert, who, to appease his girlfriend due to the growing size of his vintage Apple computer collection, has written a brand new game for the IIGS to keep her, and now us, amused! The name of the game is Mitosis, a clone of the existing game Ataxx, a 2 player strategy puzzle game that features cute graphics and sound wrapped in a nice simple interface that follows Apple's standard GUI.

The only (minor) problem with the game is when you quit - it crashes the system. Stephan has been unable to figure out what's causing it and so has included the source code along with the application. If anyone can make any suggestions, it would be most welcome. Hey, we might even turn Stephan away from developing on the Mac and iOS and to make IIGS toolbox programming his full-time ambition if we can solve this ;-)

You can also find Mitosis on the System 6 image with shareware and freeware games.

My new year's resolution is to finish collecting every piece of commercial Apple IIGS software and even every 8-bit educational and gaming software for 2012. Hope you can help ;-)

Oh, and as with last year, you'll notice all the news items from the last couple of years are no longer accessible. However, that's not quite true, although I don't have an elegant solution to present news from 2011 and 2010 at the moment. The alternative is this: Click on the 'NEWS ARCHIVE 2009' button in the right hand column. Then, go to the URL bar. Notice that it's 'http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/news/2009'. Swap '2009' for '2010' or '2011' and you'll have access to those years worth of news again.

(Fashionably Late) Easter Updates

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Apologies to everyone for not getting these updates out sooner (particularly to those who contributed), but at last, What is the Apple IIGS? has some new content! Andrew Roughan has submitted the following manual scans:

Balloon, GSNumerics, Kangaroo, RAMGS. Big thanks!

François has sent in scans for My Paint IIGS reference cards and a nice box scan to replace my original manual cover which I tried to pass off as the box! Hopefully we'll be able to make a working disk image of his version 2.0 copy.

Speaking of which, between François and Antoine, they’ve been able to produce a disk image for Shadow Dial – all those in France, be sure to play with it – you’ve only got until the end of April when the MiniTel service finally closes down. Be sure to take a few screen grabs with Shadow Dial so we know how it looked on the IIGS!

The most exotic find this month has to go to Mauro Rospocher. He's come into the possession of a fairly rare card for the Apple IIGS (and II, II+ and IIe) called the Floating Point Engine. Combined with the drivers, this card will boost GS/OS applications by way of a maths co-processor. An image of the card, the software necessary to use it and the manual have all been included on a new archive dedicated to this piece of hardware.

Oh, and just a little specific request – if anyone has Nibble issues April 1987 and October 1987, could they scan the covers please? I realise Nibble can be bought from the original publisher Mike Harvey, however, I am compiling a complete cover scan collection that will be very high resoluton and retouched to maximise quality.

IIGS News Summary

Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0200

What's been going on in the Apple IIGS world?

Well, here on the site, if you follow the forums, you'll see a request was made by cbee as to locating two of John Carmack's earliest games, released for the Apple II. John Carmack is of course famous for programming Commander Keen, Wolf3D, Doom, the Quake games and most recently, Rage. The games in question are Shadowforge and Wraith: The Devil's Demise and they are now included in the beta section of 8-bit Apple II games on 3.5 disk.

Speaking of John Carmack's early efforts on the Apple II, another source of his work can also be found in Softdisk and Softdisk GS collections, original monthly on-disk publications, where the Dark Dimensions and Catacombs series of games similar to Shadowforge and Wraith made their debut, are now no longer available. Apparently another party has since bought the rights to the entire back catalogue to Softdisk Publishing, and there's been no word on re-releasing the Softdisk collections on CD-ROM as Syndicomm had done up to a year ago before their license expired.

In news away from this site (and there's been plenty of it) Ewen Wannop has created a Sweet 16 starter kit in the form of a customised 32meg 2image for the OS X emulator. It's a self booting image that loads up System 6.0.1, Marinetti, the TCP stack that allows a IIGS to connect to the internet (and with a specific link-layer, enabling you to do this all from Sweet 16). Also on the 2image are Ewen's unique GS/OS apps for handling email (SAM2), Usenet (SNAP) and FTP (SAFE2). The last is particularly useful, as not only can you access FTP sites like Asimov and the GNO Archive, but you can also access the boot volume of you Mac...handy, because now you can easily transfer files to AND from your virtual IIGS to OS X. This is a most welcome solution, as since OS X Lion, Apple removed Rosetta and with it, the ability to use the ageing ADFS program for transferring files to and from 2image archives. I plan on upgrading to Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard soon and I can relax in the comfort that this gives me in that I'll still be able to add files to 2images.

Which is a great segue to introduce Brutal Deluxe's CADIUS. The first release of an effort by Brutal Deluxe to create great cross platform development tools for IIGS software (and hinted at by Olivier Zardini in the comments section of a blog article I wrote about the state of software development for the IIGS) this software enables a command line interface for handling disk images. But more than that, it allows control over text file formats (cleaning the high-bit) as well as the precious handling of resource forked files, which both the IIGS and Mac use, but become corrupted on any Windows volumes. Stay tuned for more.

Dr Ken Franklin got in touch with me earlier this year and let me know that Plunder, which is one of my all time favourite IIGS games, is set to become a board game! Look forward to that! I think it would also make a great iOS game, or even a Facebook game, given its turn based nature.

David Finnigan has released a book called ‘The New Apple II User's Guide' - it covers the advances made to the II series since its heyday, as well as getting anyone up to speed on how to use any Apple II. And Steve Weyrich is now in the process of creating a book based on the many years of research and revision of his Apple II history. I'm envious that others are getting on top of their Apple II publishing projects!

In defence of the tardiness of my own book, there are two primary factors:

1) Life getting in the way. Those I've been in touch with the most over the last two years will know I quit my long term job in Melbourne, Australia, saw a LOT of Europe in 2010, have worked in many contract jobs in London for the last 18 months, and in between bouts of unemployment, continued to add content to this site and work quietly on the book in the meantime. I'm about to embark of the next leg of my adventure with my girlfriend Bronwen - to take in the parts of Europe we didn't have enough time to see 2 years ago and actually revisit a couple of spots we adored, including Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia and via the trans-Siberian railway, China, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Singapore.

2) My own surprise at learning things about the IIGS I never previously knew. As I'm continually delighted by researching every piece of software, publication and hardware I sift, discovering more than I ever knew, I hope I can re-create the same wonder in anyone who's interested in the IIGS and a visual history dedicated to it.

And the folks running KansasFest are once again preparing for another onslaught of geek heaven. If you love the Apple II and can make it to Kansas City July 17 to 22, do it!

Oh yeah, it was the 35th Anniversary of the Apple II in June, and apparently when the two Steves decided to create Apple Computer Inc, as well as the iPhone's 5th anniversary. Time flies...just hope we're still having fun!

Major Update to System Add-ons

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0200

This is easily the biggest update to the System Add-ons 32 meg volume. Apart from the new additions listed below, some duplicates have been removed, others put into more suitable categories:

System Add-ons (~12.5meg)

Most notably, added software from Aaron Pulver — there's some very cool stuff here! Firstly, there's the NetTime CDev. This nifty control panel will enable you to sync to a time server (if you've got an Uthernet or LANCGS ethernet card and Marinetti installed), which helps allay the problem of incorrect time on your IIGS if your Battery RAM (BRAM) is dead (short of you having to manually update the time).

Another gem is Aaron's Address Book NDA. This little beauty includes cellular/mobile phone and email fields, something no other address book NDA does on the IIGS.

What's better still is that I recently got in touch with Aaron to ask for permission to include these system add-ons (along with Bisquit INIT, Freek NDA, Second Sight Toggle CDA) for Aaron was happy and also alluded that he's returning to IIGS programming to improve these system extras - hopefully to enable NetTime to be automatic on start-up (which in league with other BRAM system extensions, would negate the need for replacing your IIGS' BRAM!) and getting Address Book v1.0 final. Look forward to those updates!

And there's lots of miscellaneous new additions:

Finder Extras (FExts)

v1.0.1 updates to Chris Vavruksa's Finder Extras: CD Remember (a cool utility that remembers open Finder windows from write protected volumes (like CDs) when you return to the Finder after checking out an app, as well as Finder Refresher (redraws Finder windows) and Work Sets (which allows you to record a bunch of folders to open in the Finder at once).

rPacker Finder Extension by Brian D. Wells. An interesting Finder extension that saves drive space (and possibly load times) by deleting empty or placeholder resources. Back up your data (as the docs say) and give it a go - it might enhance the performance of System 6 on your IIGS. It doesn't seem to work with Sweet 16 however - using the same System 6 install I put rPacker on, it works fine with ActiveGS, but crashes the system on Sweet 16. When it works, I managed to save 62k of data running it through my System 6 install with shareware and freeware games. Not bad. Although I only scrounged 2.5k from the Action games volume.

Also from Brian is Fix Finder Windows. It's a patch that apparently fixes the ‘About', ‘Help' and ‘Preferences' windows and dialogue, although I can't fathom exactly what the problem is. I'll be trying this one time patch out regardless. Perhaps GUPP (the Grand Unified Patch by Nathan Mates) fixes the problem? It's included for completeness and is in the Patches folder.

Teach Reader Finder Extra by Jupiter Systems/Chris Trimble has been updated to v1.01, including several bug fixes.

Newer version (v2.0) of DiskOpen Finder Extra by Greg Betzel.

rBundle Banger FExt by Clayburn W. Juniel III. In the spirit of improving resources, rBundle Banger helps sort which filetypes are linked to what application you want opening them.

NDAs:

AZERTY NDA by Huibert Aalbars - for AZERTY keyboards, obviously, but not sure if it's needed for System 5 and up.

BRAM Detect NDA by ?, complete with source code.

A time waster NDA - Bugs by ?

RAMDisk Manager Demo NDA - only a demo, but purports to speed up RAM disk 3 times faster.

Minehunt NDA game by Nathan Mates.

Accessory Chooser by Alberto Paglino is yet another NDA to load other desk accessories.

CDAs

AE RAMKeeper CDA - should provide useful utilities for those with these cards.

Switch Control Panel CDA by Tim Grams. Not sure what this does, but for use with the IIGS control panel and ProDOS 8 apps.

Nexus by Tony Morales - adds commands to NiftyList.

There's a CDA that unmounts Appleshare volumes. No docs included.

BASIC Errors CDA by John Link

CDA Term by Guy T Rice now includes all docs and source.

CDevs

TWGS Reporter by John Link, another CDEV that provides info on your TranswarpGS, which I haven't been able to test without access to a TWGS. It may only work with System 5.0.2 as well. Can't imagine it would hurt too much if you gave it a go with System 6.0.1.

Font Editing:

Newer version of Font Edit (v2.01) with docs. and Font Scan v0.5.

Newer version of Font Doctor (now v1.0b11 over v1.0b9)

Patches

SF Fix - an init that fixes a bug specifically with System 5.0.4 and prefix #8 when returning from ProDOS 8 programs - never encountered this bug myself.

Le Fix - an init that fixes potential crashes caused by programs that incorrectly setup the line edit toolset incorrectly, apparently TML Systems' demos are the main offender.

Nicon patch by Jeff Dickson allows you to decide if startup icons for CDevs and Finder Extras appear at boot time. Useful for limiting the number of icons appearing when System 6 boots.

INITS

Ultra Blanker v2.06 by Robert S Claney is now included, but v2.0 is still included, as that still allows it to be run from System 5.0.4.

OnHold INIT by James Stanford that replaces the usual wristwatch waiting cursor with a spinning beachball (which is actually the last thing I'd like see whilst emulating a IIGS under OS X!).

Some new random Icons:

SoundSmith
Mean 18
Music
Gazelle

And even a couple of new finds for shareware/freeware games:

Let it Ride Texas Hold-em Poker game by Thad T. Taylor (a bit rough around the edges, but enjoy)

Battleship by Chad Faragher and Jim Gauld (I remember liking this back in the day, but it doesn't seem to let you quit!)

These new additions are actually on the Sports & Unreleased Games (~13.9 meg) as there's no more space on the System 6.0.1 Hard Drive Image (~13.3meg) volume!

As always, Antoine Vignau is to thank for a lot of this stuff (especially from his recently re-released DeluxeWare CD-ROM). I hate that guy. He's the nicest guy and the most amazingly talented programmer and cracker you could ever hope to get encouragement and aid from! ;-)

Wishlist

Even after all this time and existing software, there are still some system extensions I'd like to see on the IIGS.

1) AutoMenus, but configurable so you need a single click to pull down menus (currently, existing AutoMenus versions simply reveal the pull down menu if you mouse over them). With a click, this would mirror the convenience of Windows and OS X.

2) I'd love to see a Finder Extra that simply added the ability to restart the IIGS, changing the boot scan slot to 5 or 6. This is a feature that was included in MouseDesk, as well as Instant Access, and it's a great way to quickly start up that DOSless demo or game without having to manually change settings in the control panel. Good for real 3.5" drives, emulated ones, or with the CFFA 3000!

3) There's probably a third one, but now I can't remember it. Anyone else have any ideas as to what they'd like to see enhanced in System 6.0.1?

Missing:

Anyone got a copy of Fontasm v2.x in English?

And now for something completely different:

Mitch Spector has found this rather interesting blog on a special IIGS game that was never released. What do you make of it. The site possibly hasn't been updated since 2005, but I've emailed the author. Hope he gets back to me.

Accrued Updates: Hostage Box and docs! Plus many more docs! Mad Libs Box! The Joy of Hard Drive Image Submissions! MultiScribe GS Returns!

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Right, submissions have been accumulating over the last couple of months and it's time everyone's hard work to archive the IIGS was enjoyed by all!

Antoine Vignau (did you REALLY think he'd stop helping?!) has submitted something highly prized, to me anyway: The IIGS box of Hostage. In the 10 years I've been scouring eBay for IIGS stuff, this has never appeared. Through a haul in Belgium, Antoine was able to secure the box, as well as the manual and disk label scan. All are available from the Hostage archive, except the disk label scan - those will appear at a later date on the site. The new box replaces the old Amiga version placeholder I've had for years, that has the incorrect 'Hostages' title.

And just for an encore, Antoine has also provided the Big Red Computer Club versions of manuals for the following programs: the Bard's Tale I and II (which include interesting manual addendums for the newer GS/OS versions of these two classic games), Mazer II (possibly the most enigmatic IIGS game ever, where a manual should provide more of a clue), Zany Golf, The Immortal, Cartooners and Instant Music. Additionally, better quality scans of the documentation for Ultima I are available. After answering a request on comp.sys.apple2, we also have the full manual (albeit in black and white) for Apple's Video Overlay Card. One last piece of documentation very welcome is the English translation to the docs for Photonix II.

If that wasn't enough, Antoine has also found the ultra rare Sound Source Star Trek Audio Clips for the IIGS. Originally comprising three disks, these classic Trek samples are among the best quality sound bites I've heard on the IIGS and you can setup each sound using System 6's sound control panel for different functions of your IIGS that provide audio feedback. The documentation is also included.

Another Mac to IIGS release for multimedia is the Bruce Jones Design Inc. Maps!Maps!Maps! collection. Whew. Thanks Antoine!

Adding to Antoine's manuals, Andrew Roughan has submitted the manual for the Second Sight card, the third party solution enabling VGA graphics capabilities for the IIGS! Andrew's also let me know I need to create a list of manuals still needed to complete the archive...I promise I'll get onto that soon!

Matt Reichert made a surprising find - an Apple IIc+ specific version of California Games. Although screen shots were included on a IIc+ review for the November 1988 issue of A+, I just assumed there was a 5.25" disk drive hidden away in the background, but it turns out that was a bona fide screen shot with the game being run from the built in 3.5" drive. Really, the only difference between the IIc+ and the version for the IIe and IIc is the disk medium - the IIc+ version comes on a single 3.5" disk and doesn't require disk swapping, and that's a genre this archive is wanting to collect for. You'll find the disk image, box and IIc+ manual addendum all from the California Games (8-bit) archive. It also works perfectly well for the IIGS, but preferably, you'd want to play the IIGS specific version with better graphics and sound.

Another welcome contribution has been made by your favourite YouTube poster and mine, Brian Picchi. He's scanned the box to Mad Libs, a hard to define title that I've included under Reading and Writing.

Clayton Cummins has submitted something new that I'd love to see everyone submit more of: entire hard drive image dumps. Why do I want to see these types of archive? If they're from SCSI or Vulcan drives from back in the the IIGS' heyday, they might include some rare software, system add-on, icon or imagery, etc. that's not yet archived. And in the case of Clay's contribution, it's turned up exactly that:

Shareware games Backgammon by Phil Doto, Memo Cards by Carole Fox (translated into English from the French original) and Solitaire by Bill Hamshire (adding to his collection of well executed card games).

I've included these new additions on the System 6 bootable image that includes Shareware and Freeware games, trying to keep together the other works of Phil Doto and Bill Hamshire. Just a suggestion for a 32meg volume 2image - if anyone's got a fully installed GNO/ME with lots of executables installed with it, I'd love to get my hands on that.

Robert Gomez has quite rightly pointed out there's no downloadable archive for MultiScribe GS, the precursor to BeagleWrite GS. So if you now download the zipped archive, it will also include v3.01 of MultiScribe GS. The older version still seems to exhibit intermittent unresponsive mouse clicks when used with Sweet 16.

Buy a CFFA3000 for your real IIGS if you haven't already. I believe there are still quantities of this amazing card, so order one to enjoy your Apple II with a major speed boost without physical drives and multiple storage mediums!

Pangea Software Celebrates 25 years of Game Development via YouTube Video

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Pangea Software, who started on the 8-bit Apple II, but first gained attention through the IIGS and its commercial game Xenocide as well as its 24 hour games and shareware games Orbizone, Senseless Violence I & II and Cosmocade, has posted a video on YouTube Celebrating their 25 year anniversary. The video reveals how Brian Greenstone started the company back in college and reveals some very interesting facts and tidbits from not only the IIGS era, but his later working relationship with Apple and then further success with iOS. A great watch.

A Belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year – Goodies Inside!

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0200

I'm going to have to invent a word for delivering gifts after Christmas. Let's just ignore my tardiness for another year and get on with these late presents!

Father Christmas, or as I've always known him, Antoine Vignau, has bestowed us Apple II children with multiple gifts.

First and foremost, Antoine did some unorthodox searching looking for the extremely rare title I added to the archive a couple of years ago after stumbling upon an article in InCider/A+ magazine: YourWordBox! Antoine found it for sale on an online bookstore. He ordered it and within a matter of days during the busy Christmas period, Antoine had in his possession the only known program that was specifically designed to only run from CD-ROM for the Apple IIGS.

Antoine has sought permission from the original publisher and developer, Terry Loar (as well as the artist, Joe Szarek) and it's been granted for inclusion on What is the Apple IIGS?! In the process, Antoine asked Terry a few questions about this very rare title (the interview reveals how many copies were sold and why):

Antoine Vignau: Why did you write that title for the Apple IIGS?

Terry Loar: At that time I was a certified Apple developer and Apple assured the
educational developers that the ][ GS would remain the educational platform,
and the Mac would be used for scientific and business applications. However,
Apple reneged on their promise and discontinued the ][ GS - even though an
upgrade design was in the offing.

Antoine: Did it sell well? By which channels (direct, resellers, schools)?

Terry: I did direct selling and it sold about a dozen copies, if I remember correctly.

Antoine: Was there a volume 2 developed (as stated in the volume 1 cover)?

Terry: Volume 2 was never published.

Antoine: Is that volume 2 (and 3) available for sale? I am interested in
those ;-)

Terry: No

Antoine: Did you convert the titles to the Macintosh platform?

Terry: No, it would have cost me $250,000 to convert to the Mac.

Antoine: Have you developed other titles for the Apple IIGS? Are they available?

Terry: Your Wordbox! Is the only title that I developed for the ][ GS.

YourWordBox! is one of the most historically interesting IIGS titles ever. The program itself and what Terry stated about Apple ‘promising' to keep the IIGS as their educational platform of choice lends even more evidence that the Mark Twain ROM04 prototype was something Apple was seriously considering as their flagship for the education market. One of Steven Weyrich's recent blogs also provides more evidence for this.

Beyond the exciting find of YourWordBox!, Antoine's also been busy with some other purchases. Suitably festive, Antoine has submitted everything for Paper Models - The Christmas Kit, a set of graphics released by Activision in a similar vein to Hometown U.S.A. that you can print out, cut, fold and make paper models from.

In addition, he's also been able to provide manuals for Design Your Own Home: Architecture, Platinum Paint, Arts Parts volume 1, (which I've rolled into the Deluxe Paint manuals collection, as well as a scan of the box), The Wonders of the Animal Kingdom (also including the box), the fairly rare hand held scanner Lightning Scan GS (although we're still missing the software drivers, please help if you can!) Magical Myths (and its box) and Medley. Last but not least, Antoine's also provided a box scan for Audobon Whales.

Santa's Little Helper, or more widely known as Andrew Roughan, has also submitted some manuals. Replacing the black and white manual scan that Antoine previously had done, Andrew's scanned the manual for Apple Video Overlay Card (as well as a supplement for the Australian PAL version of the card). Another graphics card, the AST VisionPlus, has also been given the full documentation treatment as part of its archive.

As always, all manuals have been OCRed, so search within Acrobat, Preview or even from OS X's Spotlight!

Andrew's also been able help out Ewen Wannop with his suite internet apps for the IIGS. A new version of the FTP client SAFE2 (v2.2.6) was recently released, along with a new desk accessory, Byte Bagger, which enables users to change file attributes and edit the raw data of a file while never leaving whatever GS/OS app you're in.

If you didn't get that Christmas present you were after, you might find it on a relatively new eBay store.

It's a very comprehensive store, although IIGS titles aren't specified well, which particularly becomes a problem when there is both an 8-bit Apple II release and a 16-bit IIGS specific version of the same title. Ask the seller if ever you're unsure.

Don't forget the other largest Apple II store on eBay: Vintage Software and More.

And last but not least, I saw Wreck-It-Ralph just before Christmas and enjoyed it immensely. There was a name that caught me during the rather awesome end credits: Art Director - Ian Gooding...Ian Gooding, where do I know that name? Oh yeah, he's the genius who did the graphics and animation for Zany Golf and The Immortal, who later went on to work at Disney. Hope it was a nice return to the 16-bit era for him working on the film!

Happy New Year everyone! Here's to a bumper Apple II year in 2013!

P.S. If you're looking for news for the last three years (as the buttons on the right hand side only go up to 2009)...

2012

2011

2010

Now at a Store Near You – Every item from the Bard's Tale I and II

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Fans of the Bard's Tale I and II for the IIGS? (which incidentally are definitive versions featuring the best graphics and sound across all platforms the game was released for.)

Clay Cummins has provided some hacked character disks that might make new adventurers a little bolder. Or seasoned adventurers wonder where on earth all these amazing items in Garth's inventory store came from.

That's right, rather than hacking characters traits and hit points, Clay has hacked Garth's Store to include every item that can be found in the game! Not only are some of the items critical to finishing Bard 1 and 2, but also include very rare and exotic weapons and armour with which to equip your party. Be warned however, you still have to save your golden pennies to purchase these luxury items.

Clay has so far provided fully stocked store hacks for both the original ProDOS 8 version and GS/OS versions of The Bard's Tale I: Tales of the Unknown and The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight. Oh, you didn't know there were newer GS/OS versions of Bard I and II? Try out these newer flavours if you haven't already, although I do still prefer the original ProDOS 8 versions myself with sample based instruments recorded specifically for both games. Just download the 2image archives for each game and enjoy with your favourite emulator or real IIGS.

Following a discussion on comp.sys.apple2, I also added another link to the programming libraries included in my post For Home Brew Just Add Hops...Skips, Jumps, Blood, Sweat & Tears. Created by Christopher Sheperd (no relation to Eric Sheperd), the libsoundGS library takes advantage of RAMfast or compact flash based storage and oversampling to play back music larger than can fit into a fully maxed out IIGS with 8 meg of RAM. Additionally, the library provides a means of adding other triggered sound effects to play in addition to sampled music. Sounds perfect for a potential port of Snatcher, but I've lost interest in that project as I don't think HyperCard is quite robust enough to do it justice on the IIGS. Needs an interpreter written from scratch.

Please disregard the spam at the end of that particular article. I will get around to fixing the holes that fill up with a favourite proverbial pork based by-product.

The Treehouse Found!

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Brian Picchi has turned up another rare Apple II soft – The Treehouse! Quite possibly the last production to ever come out of your favourite 8-bit Apple II publisher and mine, Broderbund. Although it's not IIGS specific, it comes on a 3.5" disk and marks the end of an era. Brian's also provided a scan of the cover and a scan for the cover for Rampage, another 8-bit title that was released on 3.5" disk.

I promise sometime in 2013 I will be able to add links to the navigation bar to easily take you to the categories of 8-bit games on 3.5" disk and educational software on 3.5" disk. I may even add another category, apps on 3.5" disk as well! In the meantime, use the links above to get these rare wares.

Some Classic IIGS Games Now Hard Drive Installable! Plus, More Icons!

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0200

I'm a pretty happy camper at the moment. After buying IIGS games like Mean 18, World Games and Winter Games some 25 years ago, I can now finally play them from a hard drive, thanks to some instructions I found on the TABBS CD-ROM. Thanks to Speccie for making TABBS available to all and for some guidance on using Byte Bagger and understanding sector editing!

The article by Joe Jaworski can be found here, which was originally taken from the file called ‘PATCHES.IIGS' on the TABBS CD-ROM.

It's enabled me, a complete non-programmer and even worse sector editor, to change the hard paths of some games that couldn't just be copied to a hard drive (or any mass storage volume) and run from there without requiring the original (deprotected) floppy disk volume being mounted.

I ended up using Salvation Supreme - Deliverance to sector edit. It includes some neat features like find and replace, with a case sensitivity option. Replacing all instances of paths in a couple of clicks is wonderful and potentially saved me many frustrating hours of going line by line of the represented ASCII data.

While I'm happy with what I have made work, there are still a few games that resist hard drive/mass storage installation. Dream Zone is particularly of interest, and from the TABBS CD-ROM, I've found a specific article detailing how to make that title hard drive installable - I've spent hours trying to make it work, but it hasn't. It's possible the deprotection method used on the copy of Dream Zone I have is different to the one described in the article, and I need to change that. For the moment, I'm a bit sector edited out and will come back to it later when I'm motivated again. In the meantime, if someone else wants to try, read the following.

Games with Path Modifications (~8.8 meg download)

Games that are now playable from this new hard drive image:

Aargh!

Bard's Tale I (the original ProDOS 8 release, however, still needs a floppy disk for characters. Also note: found an executable that enabled it to run from a hard drive and System 6. No hard paths were changed)

Bard's Tale II (the same caveat applies to the sequel)

Blackjack Academy

Impossible Mission II

Mean 18 (you'll need to click the ‘Next Disk' button several times to find the courses on the root directory of the ‘G' volume. Also, play with a minimum set of system extensions)

Roadwar 2000 (again, needs a separate 3.5" disk for saved games)

Skate or Die (Will only run from early versions of ProDOS 16 - it WON'T work from System 6!

Super Star Ice Hockey (will only work from System 4 or 5)

Strip Poker II (will only work from ProDOS 16 and data disks must still be accessed from 3.5" disks)

Tower of Myraglen (Open the game from the ‘TWR' folder, not the ‘TOWERMYR' folder. Save games will work fine WITHOUT additional disks)

Winter Games

World Games

While this makes me happy at least, there's good news (obviously) and bad news. The bad news is that you can't change the name of the volume these games are installed to and neither can you change the name of the folders they reside in. You may be able to change some of the application names to something more user friendly, but then another part of the program, like Mean 18's Architecture program, is expecting to find ‘GOLF.SYS16' specifically for when you want to try out your golf course creations in the game, and WON'T find it if you change its name.

Here's a list of games that still aren't playable from hard drive - If anyone fancies a challenge with sector editing, or if you could just check you don't already have a HD friendly executable on your old SCSI drive, all submissions for ProDOS mass storage installable versions of games, apps and educational software are very welcome:

Dream Zone (I've had a go at trying the specific HD install with sector editing it for a few hours, but it didn't work. I'll come back to it a bit later when I'm a bit refreshed, but I won't stop anyone else from giving it a go!)

Destroyer (changing hard path doesn't look like it's an option)

Grand Prix Circuit (changing hard path doesn't look like it's an option)

Hostage (changing hard path doesn't look like it's an option)

Pirates! (changing hard path doesn't look like it's an option)

Silent Service (changing hard path doesn't look like it's an option)

Bridge 6.0 (not really System 6.0.1 compatible, and disk name of single character ‘X'! Problem!)

4th and Inches (changing hard path doesn't look like it's an option)

GBA Basketball (uses BASIC to start! Weird. Updated Prefix but no joy)

Hardball (changing hard path doesn't look like it's an option but found it uses ‘*' wildcard - can these be kept when moving to another volume? Does the ‘*' wildcard actually work?)

Serve and Volley (changing hard path doesn't look like it's an option)

Questron II (System 6.0.1 compatible. PROBLEM! Disk name is has two fewer characters to convert to the new path convention of /G/.. !!!)

War in Middle Earth (System 6.0.1 compatible. PROBLEM! Disk name is has two fewer characters to convert to the new path convention of /G/.. !!!)

Monte Carlo (changing hard path doesn't look like it's an option)

And then, some games don't even have a standard operating system and will probably never be able to be run from a hard drive:

Alien Mind

Tomahawk

The Hunt for Red October

Additionally, I've been collating more icons to make launching our IIGS games a little bit prettier. While it's still not a complete collection, we've mostly got sports covered now, most unreleased games covered and a couple more sim games. Not to mention that most of the new hard drive installable games have icons too! As always, if you can contribute with some icons of your own, it would be much appreciated. Grab the new icons by re-downloading the Games 32 meg ProDOS volumes from the home page.

Manuals for Mini Putt and GATE; Styleware Font Library; New Unreleased Rumours Roundup

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Frank Rossi has submitted scans for the manuals of Mini Putt and GATE, as well as scans for disk labels for California Games, Neuromancer, Mini Putt, 4th & Inches and GATE. Disk labels aren't included on the archive yet, but the archive is already coming close to a full set of disk label scans for games already. Check the list to see if you can contribute labels for games, applications and educational software.

Resettling back into Melbourne, I came across a title I've had for years but neglected to archive it – Styleware Font Library Vol 1. It includes fonts specifically designed for the IIGS, which believe it or not, is a fairly rare thing, as most other fonts were directly converted from the Mac. The manual (actually in the innerside of the package) includes some interesting information on how fonts work on the IIGS (as well as the Mac) which is the most I've ever read on the subject.

Also recently, Michael Shopshin wrote in to mention that he once saw Cyan's The Manhole (an early HyperCard based title for the Mac) on a IIGS when he visited a McGraw Hill dealership in the early 90s. I'm always first to play devil's advocate and suggest that his memory was playing tricks on him, but Michael affirms that it was on a IIGS connnected to a CD-ROM drive and was in colour (which the Mac version wasn't). Anyone ever heard of the Manhole being available for the IIGS? It's possible given it could have been converted to HyperCard IIGS and the graphics given a makeover in colour.

Another unreleased game that could have been available for the IIGS is Fire Brigade, a turn based strategy game that François Michaud found when buying the DOS and Mac versions of the game. The game's manual revealed that a IIGS version was done. François then proceeded to contact Panther Games, the developer (based in Australia no less!), but they confirmed the IIGS version was scraped due to 'hardware limitations'. A shame to be sure.

Also recently coming to light thanks to Antoine's scans of catalogues that came with some Unicorn titles, is that there seem to be even more Unicorn Software educational titles released for the IIGS than previously thought. The titles are:

Phonics Fun
Fraction Action
Decimal Dungeon
Percentage Panic
Ghostly Grammar
The Logic Master

These titles haven't appeared anywhere else (reviews or mail order catalogue listings in A+/InCider magazines) so they're either rare or they weren't released either. If you know anything about these titles, be sure to write in.

Antoine was able to get in touch with Joseph B Hewitt, who worked at Unicorn in the mid to late 80s, but unfortunately, he couldn't shed any further light on these titles.

In other IIGS releated news, Ewen Wannop has released another desktop based application, called Phoenix. Like it's namesake, this program will undelete files like a phonenix from the ashes. Ewen has also updated the Byte Bagger NDA to version 1.0.4, so go to his download page and sort yourselves out.

Hard Drive Image with Multiple Versions of ProDOS and GS/OS now ROM03 Compatible

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0200

This is something that I'd been meaning to do for a while, but the motivation was lacking. Going through my working IIGSs kept in storage at my father's place, I now know I have two ROM03 machines and that's finally given me the impetus to do a fresh re-install of a newer version of Taifun Boot, Ninja Force's utility for giving you the option to boot to different versions of ProDOS and GS/OS from the one volume, that is ROM03 compatible. In addition to the previous ROM01 only Taifun Boot volume I have provided, I've added a couple more versions of ProDOS 16, so you can quickly experience of the evolution of the IIGS's native OS from its humble beginnings all the way to System 6.

You might ask what use being able to boot to different versions of the operating system might be. Primarily, it's useful to run programs that aren't compatible with System 6 from a hard drive. For example, Superstar Ice Hockey, which I recently patched so it will run from a hard drive, will only run from System 4 or 5. So you can quickly choose System 5.0.4 from Taifun Boot's menu, then launch Superstar Ice Hockey from the Finder and voila. Another game is Bouncing Bluster, which annoyingly has only ever run from System 4. Another use is if any developer wants to test their wares across multiple OSs quickly.

Two notes: I've turned off saving Finder data (the positioning of windows and icons) for the systems below System 6. This is because earlier systems will overwrite the postitioning System 6 remembers, as well as turning the default yellow of folders back to the old white, which I personally don't like. Also, under emulation, you may notice a slight pause accompanied with the wristwatch cursor when you get to the Finder desktop from System 4 and 5. This is because it's searching for 5.25" disks. If the pause bugs you, you dip into the system folder, go to 'Drivers' and make the 5.25" disk driver inactive from 'Get Info'.

The updated image is availble from the homepage, along with the rest of my 32meg images, or here:

All versions of GS/OS & ProDOS 16 Hard Drive Image (~13.6meg)

Homebrew Helpings: Lots of Courses for Mean 18

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Sorting through many miscelleous archives forwarded on from Antoine as he comes into contact with random collections and images each disk from them, I came across 8 disks worth of golf courses for Mean 18, the excellent golfing sim from Accolade. To use them, you'll need to point the Mean 18 or Architecture programs to the 3.5" disk images (or actual disks). Unfortuntaely, you cannot copy all the levels to the recently sector edited Mean 18 that runs from a hard drive. The program will only list up to 6 courses per volume, so you might as well keep them on the disks as is.

Mr Sprite and Brutal Deluxe's Cross Platform Development Tools Plans

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Brutal Deluxe has released another asset in their set of cross platform development tools for the IIGS - Mr Sprite. It's a useful utility on several levels that makes the preparation of sprites the best available for the IIGS. It automagically extracts sprites from a sprite sheet (where all sprites for an intended game are included in an image), mirrors and flips existing sprites so you have sprites facing all necessary ways (if necessary) and automatically generates code for Merlin 16+ for each sprite, which is the most optimised code you'll ever find on the IIGS for sprites. If there was any doubt this is the best method, check out Antoine and Olivier's comprehensive summary of how their sprite tech works.

Mr Sprite joins previously released cross platform development tools from Brutal Deluxe Cadius, KEGS for modern IDEs and Window Capture.

Olivier Zardini explains the philosphy behind making development tools for the IIGS... that aren't used on a IIGS: 'We have started from scratch. We are rewriting all the required generic tools allowing us to to minimize the time required to create new games. And because it is more efficient to use modern tools & computers, the way to go is to create such tools on a PC and using the IIGS as a target machine, not as a developpement machine. Did people writing video games for Nintendo at the time also use the Nintendo console to program? Answer is of course NO. They were using more advanced hardware like a PC with dedicated tools like a cross compiler. Of course it takes more time to recreate everything on PC than just using the IIgs native tool; but if you have to create several games, at the end, you will be more efficient by spending a few times first to design inovative tools than using the same old tools.'

On Mr Sprite: 'It is a sprite compiler for the IIGS. It creates fast assembly 65c816 code to display sprites on the IIGS screen for games. You start with a GIF file full of Spirtes and 1 second later, the code is ready to be tested in your IIGS! It is probably the most efficient way (fast) to display something on the IIGS screen today. Faster means more sprites on the screen or bigger ones. Instead of writing such tools on the IIGS, we have designed it to work on the PC so we can process huge number of sprites in one click and the code we produce (a direct 65c816 output) is VERY optimized (thanks to the MB of memory & processor power the PC provide). You design your graphics on your PC, you organize your sprites there on very large pictures and you don't care anymore to have the IIgs to do the conversion. For all the next games, we won't have anymore to care about finding the best way to display sprites on the screen. We did it! By covering all the basics of video game programming needs (read keyboard, joystick, display sprites, play sound, play music, do scrolling, play animation...) as generic library, we will end by having only the core of the game to create for each project. And this is about 20% of the total line of code. 80% is (or should be) game independant.'

On what cross development tools Brutal Deluxe is going to produce next: 'We have also few other to deliver like the one used to re-create the animation steps from sprite sheet and the one used to get resources from binary files (Memory Dump or ROM from video game). Next tools will be more development oriented (65c816 cross assembler, 65c816 cross disassember...).'

I asked Olivier 'How do you and Antoine want people to use these tools? For example, are you happy that people randomly start catching resources of certain games, or are there specific games you've already done a technical evaluation on and would rather that IIGS users out there concentrate on resource gathering for those games?'

Olivier responds:'The tools are for everyone and also for the future (if one day someone decides to go back to IIGS programming he will be probably happy not to start from scratch). The first idea with the tool is to give a modern easy way to program the IIGS. Perhaps you have some people here and there ready for that but they don't want to face the 80*24 text mode (environment to write code) anymore. When do you have time nowadays? Sometime at the office, sometime in a plane or in front of your laptop. So we have to bring the tools there, on the machine people are using everyday. It is hard to go back into Dream Graphix in 320*200 when you can use PhotoShop in 1920*1080. Everything is not yet done to have the complete chain of IIGS software creation on the PC side, but we're taking it step by step.'

'Of course, we also use the tools ourselves, just to make sure they are efficient.'

'We encourage people to use our tools to grab the resources for the games they want to see one day on the IIGS screen, because it is the first and very important step of the grame creation process. And we maintain an invitation for helping you with your own development efforts.'

I ask Olivier the following: 'How about music and sound effects? There was a recent discussion on c.s.a2 about how to add triggered sound fx and music together for games. Do you have any development frameworks in mind for that? I'm not a big fan of MIDISynth music (requires too much CPU and sounds very artificial) but it's true to say there's a lot of MIDI music that we can convert easily.'

Olivier:'Sound effects are, for once, very easy to handle because the IIGS has separate RAM and a dedicated chip (the Ensoniq and its DOC RAM). Also because all computers use the same sound encoding (moving a sound to 8 bit resolution at 22 khz is piece of cake comparing to graphic conversions are). So, we fill the sound RAM with 64 KB of sound effects and we have very few CPU power to play the sound. Perfect for games.'

'Music is a real topic. The easy way is to use MIDI files, because they are available everywhere and render well on the IIGS. Once gain, who today will spend energy to write music using IIGS capabilities using Soundsmith or NoiseTracker?'

'I think we can have games without music. But probably not without sound. Or we can keep the music for the introduction and switch to sound effects during game (what we think we'll do for Barbarian).'

Lastly, I ask :'What about scrolling in games? Mr Sprite handles sprites (obviously) but what about scrolling? I ask because the Generic Tile Engine that Lucas Scharenbroich was working on was quite amazing, but even after years of development, Lucas still felt it could be better. Now Lucas' blog has disappeared and can only be accessed by Web Archive.'

Olivier:'Mr Sprite displays the sprite but do not remove it from the screen. Or, in animation, you have to alternate the sequence : draw sprite / remove sprite (=display background) / draw sprite at new location...'

'Before entering the scrolling part, we have first to deal with sprite animation. It would be useless to have a very fast drawing routine if the cleanup is very slow! So next step would be the Animation Tool, to create, from a Sprite sheet, smooth sprites animations (using of course the Mr Sprite drawing routine). This will help to recreate the animation steps from a sprite sheet.'

'Scrolling will be (yet) another topic.'

Well, there you have it people. Another great tool and without wanting to put too much pressure on Olivier and Antoine, a brighter future for cross platform development for the IIGS. Thanks guys!

Updates Big and Small

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0200

We now have pull down navigation links to the 8-bit programs on the 8-bit 3.5" disk categories; for games, educational warez and at last, applications as well (although it's a modest start). There are also some brand new categories as well - Unreleased and Vapourware applications, which is currently unpopulated by I'll add a few titles soon, and Special Needs educational software. This section is primarily reserved for the programs of Laureate Learning Systems', who even into the 2000s, was still selling their 8-bit and IIGS specific software. However, they have since stopped selling the software and my email enquiries to them go unanswered. If anyone has any of their rare and valued software, please write in or submit it via the site.

I recently learned that some of the 8-bit game and educational titles on 3.5" disk images weren't working properly with the CFFA3000, and it was the old and buggy (at least with OS X Snow Leopard) program I use, ADFS, for converting between different types of disk image. I've now fixed a variety of titles from these categories so the 2images now work fine with the CFFA3000, so feel free to download each of the images again from the 8-bit educational and gaming software on 3.5" disk if you've ever encountered issues. I might have to look into installing WINE for OS X so CiderPress is available for my disk imaging utility needs.

Speaking of the CFFA3000, if you haven't already got one, why not?! It'll eliminate the need for SCSI hard drives and the Disk ][ floppy drive, but not the 3.5" disk drive for IIGS users, as my forthcoming review of this still splendid card will reveal. It's still the best way to store anything on an Apple II and luckily, R&D Automation have just announced that a third production run of the card will be coming in Spring, hopefully September. Check out the project status and be sure to sign up to be notified when pre-orders are ready.

In the meantime, it's back to updates on this site: The DuelTris limited edition jewel case packaging has been submitted by Antoine. This rarity was mailed out to all those who paid for their shareware fee for this killer version of Tetris.

Jorma Honkanen submitted a scan for the Championship Edition Lode Runner box, which works well with the ACS IIGS only compilation of Lode Runner and loads of extra levels to play with.

Arriving back in Melbourne, unpacking everything and going through some old CD-ROM archives, I came across a scan Algebra Blaster Plus!, that I forgot I had and unfortunately, can't remember who (I think it was an Australian chap who needed to sell his Apple II collection) originally submitted it to me perhaps some 4 or 5 years ago.

I've also made some updates to the Freeware and Shareware games 32 meg volume: a newer version of Carte Primus, grouped the Todd J Wood and Doug Davies' card games together in a folder and added their card converter program, which allows you to add your own designs to all of their card games, found the icon to Operation Lambda at last (how did I ever misplace it!?) I've also updated some icons here and there across all the 32 meg ProDOS volumes. Check em out via the home page and as always, if you can provide an icon for an app you don't see already has one, go for it!

For petrol heads, I've been able to create a fully loaded ‘Play Disk' for Test Drive II, something that I had tried to do in the past, but encountered a very unfriendly MS-DOS installer. That hasn't changed, but whatever voodoo I employed, it now let me add all the extra cars and scenery disks for the game to the one volume, which now means NOT having to swap between each of the individual disks all the time. Now, you can simply load the Test Drive II Master Disk, insert the Play Disk, and enjoy disk-swapping-free driving pleasure. Be sure to read the documentation for more specific info.

Additionally, I've got some extra info on how best to enjoy Captain Blood, the rather challenging adventure game. Check it out at the end of my review.

Andrew Roughan spotted there was a Christmas Songs disk available for Diversi Tune and it wasn't included in my archive. Well, thanks to Antoine again, who recently sent me his own disk images of Diversi Tunes, I happened to come across the missing Christmas Songs...as well as American Folk and Gospel. They're all available from the one easy to download .zip archive. Who's for a sing-a-long?

I've also created a new 32 meg volume, entitled Hardware Apps (~3.6meg). It includes all the software found on separate disk images for each of the hardware items on the site that includes any software/drivers for them. I've also moved the ‘Drivers' directory from the System Add-ons 32 meg 2image into Hardware Apps, as it's more relevant there. It also frees up a *little* bit of space on the System Addons volume, allowing me to include the latest system extensions from Ewen Wannop, the brand new NDA RamRunTime (which allows you to store BRAM settings AND lets you use an ethernet card in conjunction with the Marinetti TCP/IP stack to automatically set to your IIGS' system clock if you have a failed battery). Also available, the v1.0.5 update to the Byte Bagger NDA. Of course, it's always better to grab them from Ewen's own site, as he has made exquisite PDF manuals to go with each of his productions.

As usual, if you come across a hardware related piece of software or driver or any system extension that you don't see on this 32 meg 2image, let me know and submit it.

Last but not least, I quite like the Noirlac | when kevin wins, the planet loses blog. I've been hesitant to endorse it fully, because it doesn't credit where the pixel art filling this digital scrapbook comes from, or which artists originally created it and it's a bit dodgy given Noirlac (or kevin) is making money out of it selling t-shirts. Because of it, I fear to watch yet cannot turn away thanks to my love of pixel art. Make your own mind up. The collection is VERY platform agnostic, you'll see anything from the C64 to the PC88, and even a lot of Apple II stuff, and even... IIGS imagery. The thrill of finding some random pixel of our favourite platform is quite fun :-)

Wings & Kangaroo Manuals now available. Dungeon Master Demo Fixed!

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Antoine's found some missing manuals and scanned them to include in the archive here. Wings, the alternative launcher application, can now be more fully appreciated through its rich feature set now that it's documented and Kangaroo, the system extension that greatly improves the open and save dialogues on the IIGS. Antoine had already provided all the French manuals, but now the previously elusive Seven Hills manual in English is archived. Still proving elusive however, is the newer English version 1.5 of Kangaroo however. If anyone can submit that, or v1.4 or higher for Transprog III or v1.1 or higher of the Manager, that would be great.

Rick Gast wrote in to let me know the 2image archive for the Dungeon Master Demo was corrupt and has been able to replace it with a fully working copy. Game demos can be interesting little beasts – sometimes revealing earlier features of a game that were changed for the final release. Rick may be able to provide more demos not currently archived either, so stay tuned.