Axlon RAMDISK 320

This is the Axlon RAMDISK 320, a Disk II-sized box that can connect to the Apple II (and reportedly also to the Apple III, with a different interface card) and serve as a fast RAM disk. It looks nice. Because I assembled this in pieces, I have not actually had a […]

How to Operate the Apple II Plus

Back in 1982, computers were not as intuitive, and Apple didn’t hold workshops in the Apple stores, which didn’t exist. So, some training tools were developed by enterprising third parties, one of which was FlipTrack, who produced a three-cassette audio course called “How to Operate the Apple II Plus”. They […]

Motorcycle disk drive

For no particularly good reason I found myself looking at the boot code for Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia, the source code for which was released to the world a little while back. I was flipping through the protection code, and found a comment that said “Motorcycle disk drive“. A […]

Peelings II

I’d always been fairly aware of the Peelings II magazine back during the early 1980s when the Apple II was going strong, because they advertised fairly aggressively in things that I did read, but for some reason I’d never really read any of the issues. Probably this is because the […]

Not quite beating Autoduel. Yet.

I tried making some nibble copies of Origin Software’s Autoduel to run in an emulator, and of course it didn’t work. So I figured I’d try my hand again at boot tracing. Tricky stuff. There are a couple of hints out there about how to make the Autoduel disk copyable […]

MUSE and ABM

MUSE Software is probably most famous for Castle Wolfenstein, already a fairly early game for the Apple II platform, but they got their start much earlier. In 1978, MUSE was already producing quite a few titles on cassette, back when their name stood for Micro Users Software Exchange. Already by […]

Boot tracing in the 21st century

In a previous post, I went over the contents of The Electronic Mailbag program, but I want to also run through how I managed to get it into a usable format, since it was an interesting foray back into the world of boot tracing. The disk itself is fairly resistant […]

Intro to email

A while back, I got a copy of a disk called The Electronic Mailbag from eBay. The purpose of the software was to help the user get used to the idea of electronic mail and how checking/sending messages, printing, mass emails, and searching worked. A way to practice without the […]

Space War, Road Race Game. Wow.

One of the tapes I recently got was this one. On the front it says “Road Race Game”, copyright “WOW”. Ok. I’m appropriately awed. Flipping it over, I saw that the other side contains “Space War” and that “WOW” is short for “Wise Owl Workshop”. I’d never heard of Wise […]

What happens in Cupertino stays in Cupertino

Back when the Apple II was new, there wasn’t a lot of software available for it. On the earliest price list I’ve seen, April 1977, Apple listed the Apple I™ and several cassette tapes for it, and the then new Apple II™, but with no software available. The next iteration […]