Adapting Apple's RGB Color Monitor for Analogue & MiSTer

While the Apple IIgs could connect to a composite display, Apple released a high-quality color RGB monitor specifically designed for the IIgs. This monitor was called the Apple Color RGB Monitor, A2M6014. It was the only color monitor Apple ever released which could accept full analog RGB video signals at the standard 240p/480i resolution (using a 15.7KHz horizontal line frequency). I have recently acquired a full Apple IIgs setup, and while the IIgs needs some repair to its mainboard the monitor works. Even though this monitor has a connector only used by Apple, with a converter it is possible to use it with a variety of game consoles. In this short blog article I will detail how I got it working with my Analogue consoles and MiSTer.

Observations on Early Versions of Wizardry

Wizardry is the first role playing game to make a substantial, widespread impact on video gaming. First released for the Apple II in 1981, it spawned many, many ports, sequels and spinoffs. Its origins tend to be obscured by later releases and re-releases, so in this blog article I will discuss what made the features of Wizardry as it was first released to the public so interesting.

DOS Commands Across Home Computers: Apple, IBM & Commodore

To those people familiar with the MS-DOS command prompt, have you ever wondered how similar tasks are accomplished with non-PC compatible systems? Well, I am one of those people and I have wondered, so I have written this blog article to compare common disk operations with the DOS for the IBM PC, the Apple II and the Commodore 64 (and VIC-20) to compare how these tasks might or might not be accomplished on each system.

The 1977 Trinity - Which Computer is the Best Buy?

The 1977 Trinity, Courtesy of Wikipedia, Image by Timothy Colegrove

Consider that you have been transported back in time to the heady and hot summer of 1977. You are wanting one of these new "personal computers" that you see advertised in Popular Mechanics and Byte Magazine. Maybe you've seen an ad from Radio Shack. Perhaps you saw a flyer from that pocket calculator company called Commodore. Or you are a hobbyist frustrated with time sharing on the local college's PDP-10 and want a microcomputer of your very own. After you've seen Star Wars for the third time, you want to be part of the computer age. You have three choices, which will you chose? Let's break down the Apple II, Tandy Radio Shack TSR-80 and the Commodore PET 2001 and see how they might factor into a buyer's decision.

Completing the Apple IIc Upgrade Experience

The Apple IIc, while a great little system, has a great deal of upgrade potential. In a previous blog entry I talked about the Mockingboard 4c, which is one of the most interesting upgrades for the system, but there are other upgrades worth discussing that may not be worthy of a full blog entry. So here are some of my thoughts and review of some other upgrade options for the original IIc.

The Mockingboard 4c - Adding Sound Card Functionality to the Apple IIc

Among the Apple II models, the IIc is undoubtedly the restricted of the bunch. The system integrated just about every necessity for mid-1980s computing, a built in disk drive, serial ports for printing and telecommunications, an external drive and a joystick/mouse port. The Apple II line has been previously well-appreciated for its expandability, with each of the three predecessor models having multiple general-purpose expansion slots. For the compact IIc, there was no capability to upgrade the system internally at first, later IIcs permitted an internal memory expansion. This meant that software that did not use a built in peripheral had to be updated to support similar peripherals which had to be accessed in other ways. Today we are going to look at a product that tried to go a different route and try to answer whether it succeeded!

Is that a Cricket I Hear? - Contemporary Sound Options for the Apple IIc

The "c" in the Apple IIc stood for compact. The Apple IIc was designed to be the epitome of the Apple II series, providing the options most people used in a realistically portable form factor but sacrificing the internal expansion slots which made the predecessor models in the Apple II line so popular. While sound cards like the Mockingboard were not the most popular of expansion cards, about three dozen games and music programs supported them. As there was nowhere to plug in a Mockingboard into a IIc, that left the IIc with only the internal speaker for audio output. But at least two sound products were made specifically for the Apple IIc, and I will take a look at one of them, the Cricket, in this blog article.

Apple IIc - Epitome of the Apple II Experience?

In 1984 Apple Computer released the fourth computer to its Apple II line, the Apple IIc, A2M4000.  The Apple IIc was a "compact" version of the Apple IIe with many expansions built-in.  It was released alongside the Macintosh and despite the hype the market did not respond in the way Apple had hoped.  Nonetheless they still sold about 400,000 systems from 1984-1988.  In 2023 these systems can still be purchased for $150-200, so let's take a look to see what makes them special.

Apple II Sound Cards & Gaming - A Niche Precursor to PC-Compatible Sound Cards

The Apple II was distinctive when it was released because it was the first microcomputer and the only one of the "1977 Trinity" of consumer-friendly computers (TRS-80 and Commodore PET being the other two) to come with any kind of audio capabilities built in.  Those capabilities were primitive, a speaker that could be clicked in software by the CPU.  Other computers followed with sound chips built in like the Atari 400 and 800, the TI 99/4 & 4A, the Commodore VIC-20 and 64 and so on.  But the Apple II was more flexible than any of its 8-bit competitors in having expansion slots to allow for less expensive and less bulky expansion options.  Eventually games began to look at some of those expansion capabilities, and in this article we will talk about how they explored them in terms of sound. 

Mass Storage and the Apple II - Conquering the Final Frontier

When we think about storage devices and the Apple II, everyone's first thought is usually the same, the 5.25" floppy disk.  Maybe the more historically informed of us may think of cassette tape or 3.5" disks or even the Apple Hard Disk 20SC, but those devices come a distant second to the mainstay of Apple II program and data storage, the 5.25" floppy disk.  When one is introduced to the Apple II, one must at least understand how floppies work on the basic level.  But what can you do when you want to go beyond the standard floppy disk to explore faster, higher capacity storage solutions.  If all software of any note was originally released on copy protected floppy disks, why bother looking for something else?  And if you want to explore, what will you need?  In this blog entry, I will try to answer these questions.

The Modern Unfriendliness of 8-bit Keyboard Layouts

Keyboards today have a standard layout.  All keyboards are based off the 104-key standard layout from the mid-1990s, and before that the IBM Model M 101 key layout.  But back before the IBM PC line introduced the 101 and brought uniformity to the home computer world, things were not standard at all.  Every home computer manufacturer had its ideas about what keys should be on the keyboard and where they should be.  This tends to cause some annoyances for emulating those computers, especially when the program relies on certain keys being in certain places.  

Apple II Composite Artifact Color - NTSC, PAL and Filters

The Apple II computer are unique in that not only was it the first home computer ever released to the mass market, it was the first computer released to support color graphics, all the way back in 1977.  It worked by exploiting quirks in the NTSC color system called artifact color which TVs were attempting to suppress.  The design of the Apple II was so solid that its color works rather well on almost anything that can accept a composite signal, even today.  But the color method used did not translate to PAL countries and later improvements to color filtering could modify the colors shown.  In this article, let's take a deep dive into how artifact color works on the Apple II and how it was adapted for systems where artifact color could not exist and how artifacts can change according to the display technology inside a display.  

Digital Joysticks and the Apple II

The Apple II had thousands of games released during its long life-span, and from its first game, Breakout (later known as "Brick Out" and "Little Brick Out"), many of them used analog controllers like paddles and joysticks.  Other home computers and consoles used digital joysticks, which were often better for single-screen games than analog devices.  During the Apple II's commercial life, there were a few attempts to bring digital joystick support to the computer.  When it became a retro-computing machine, there have been a few more homebrew hardware efforts to bring digital input to older games.  This article will give an overview of attempts both old and new.

The Computer in Monochrome - Practical Advice for Using for a Macintosh SE

The Graphical User Interface is something computer users have taken for granted for twenty-five years since Windows 95 computers became ubiquitous.  Of course, to owners of any Macintosh computer, the GUI was something they had experienced since day one.  The original Macintosh was designed to be a low-cost productivity computer.  It eventually evolved into a fully general purpose computer, but the systems were sufficiently popular even in the earliest days to enjoy a wide variety of software, including games.  I recently acquired an earlier example of the line, a Macintosh SE, and decided it was worth getting it up and running.  In that process I will be sharing some of the issues I have encountered and solutions.

Floppy Drives - Single Density and Double Density, FM, MFM & GCR

In the IBM PC world, there is no such thing as "single density" floppy drives.  Floppy drives started out as double density and later matured into high density and even extra high density.  Those of us who grew up in a PC world had no need to know about "single density".  But where did single density come from and which systems used it?  Moreover, what happens when system builders try to stretch single density reading into double-density capacities?  The truth is a bit more complex than you might think.

The .woz Format - Accurate Preservation of Apple II Floppy Disks

The need for proper preservation of floppy-based software cannot be understated.  Floppy disks were not designed to store data for forty plus years, but for the oldest home computer systems like the Apple II, most of its software is at least thirty years old.  But it is not preservation merely to dump a copy of a game which was pirated in the day.  Those games usually have "cracktros" which do not represent the developer's intended presentation of the game, may have cut out elements of the original game to save space or may include corrupt data in them.  Ideally one should have a proper image of original disks with all data preserved.  Of course, from almost the earliest days of the Apple II's Disk II drive, copy protection schemes were implemented on commercial software to prevent casual disk copying.  True preservation requires preserving them as well, and that requires emulation to become more accurate than it needed to be for just sector based .dsk images.  In this blog article I will describe in as much detail as I can how the Disk II Floppy Drive works, how it is different from floppy drives for other systems, how data is stored on disk, the benefits of the .woz format and how .woz images are made.

wDrive v. Floppy Emu - Comparison of the Best Apple II Disk Emulators

The 5.25" floppy disk was the principal medium of program storage for the Apple II series of computers.  Thousands of software titles were written specifically for the Apple II's Disk II drive and its successors and clones.  Using floppy disks, and more specifically disk images, is essential to using an Apple II computer.  To use a disk image is to either write the image back to a disk, a cumbersome and sometimes unreliable process, or use a disk emulator.  In a recent past blog article, I have written about the Floppy Emu, a very capable Disk II drive emulator.  I have recently acquired the wDrive, another emulator device which can simulate a Disk II drive.  While similar to the Floppy Emu in many ways, the wDrive has its own benefits and quirks, and here I will compare the two hardware floppy emulators.  

Review of Products Three for my Apple //e

A minimally-functional Apple //e requires very little in the form of upgrades.  Add an 64KiB memory expansion, a floppy disk controller card and a disk drive or two and you should be all set.  But a few upgrades can really improve the experience, and to allow my Apple //e to be the best Apple //e it can be, I purchased three modern upgrades for my newest vintage computer.  Here I will review each product, describe its features and caveats and indicate whether I recommend it.

Apple II - Classic Games and Resources

When I re-started my Apple II journey I wanted to share some of the knowledge I had acquired over the years and put into full service when I began to build my Apple //e system in October.  For me, an Apple //e is a gaming machine, and there are lots of great games for the system.  I will discuss some of them first, then give links to more information which I have found helpful for Apple II users.

Running the Apple //e - Intermediate Topics

In the last blog entry I focused on the basics of how to get an Apple //e up and running.  In this entry I am going to focus on some of the more advanced issues that users may encounter with running software, programs and hardware on an Apple //e.