Last weekend I attended the second annual Boatfest gathering, which again took place in Hurricane, West Virginia. Despite its name, the event has nothing to do with boats — it’s a gathering of retrocomputing and retrogaming enthusiasts named after the organizer, John “Boat of Car” Shawler.
Boatfest is difficult to summarize because it’s different things to different people. Some people… read entire post
Category Archives: Apple II
SLLEA RCA Video Adapter – You Get What You Pay For
The old saying “you get what you pay for” is usually true.
Recently I had a brilliant idea. Instead of hooking up my old computers and video game consoles to a large television, wouldn’t it be nice if I could hook them up to a small flat screen monitor? I have a couple of 4:3 ratio flat screen monitors out… read entire post
Give it Away, Give it Away, Now
If I were to tell you I purchased the computer currently sitting on my dining room table fifteen years ago, you might wonder what I was doing with such an ancient piece of technology. The truth is, when I purchased the computer back in 2003, it was already 20 years old!
The machine is an Apple IIc, the fourth machine… read entire post
Apple II: Back in Business!
Just over six months ago, my Apple IIe blew up. The smoke was impressive; the smell, even more so. As I mentioned in my post from last year, and as you can see in the following picture, I paid $1.98 for this particular Apple IIe computer.
The most frequently suggested solution I received was to replace the failed vintage power… read entire post
Releasing an Apple IIe’s Magic Smoke
On July 21, 2016, Ancient Legends was released for Apple II home computers. The game is similar in design to classic role playing games from the 1980s like Ultima and Bard’s Tale, and I was greatly looking forward to trying it out on my vintage Apple IIe computer.
A few years ago I purchased a CFFA3000 card for my Apple… read entire post
Trivia Fever
My parents owned and operated a small computer store in the mid-80s, Yukon Software. I didn’t get to bring a lot of software home from the store, but one program I ended up with was Trivia Fever.
I’ve posted this picture before. That’s me in the mid-80s, wearing a Miami Vice knock-off jacket with a Footloose-esque spike hairdo. That’s my… read entire post
A New Apple II Joystick
Well… not “new” new.
While it’s no secret I’m a Commodore fanboy, I do like to give credit where credit is due. Although pretty much across the board the Commodore 64 versions of games looked better than their Apple II counterparts, there was one thing I was always jealous of — the Apple II’s second fire button. While Commodore opted… read entire post
Apple IIe — Back to Life
Back in December I wrote a blog post about trying to make one working Apple IIe out of four parts machines. The project hit a snag when none of the parts machines I had acquired had drive controller cards. For the past three months I’ve had a table out in my garage that looks like this:
While digging around in… read entire post
An Apple IIe Hoard…
The line between collecting and hoarding is a thin one, one I’ve straddled for many years. Although hoarding is tough to define in a single sentence, I personally think of it as acquiring things I’ll never “do” anything with. And I’m pretty liberal when it comes to “doing” something with a thing — even displaying things counts as doing something… read entire post
Franklin Ace 1000… Destroyed
I routinely tell people that my family used to own an Apple II computer, but technically we didn’t. We actually owned a Franklin Ace 1000, which was 100% compatible with the Apple II. In fact it was so compatible that Apple soon sued Franklin soon after it was released for copying their ROMs.
In this picture which was taken at… read entire post