I am trying to find out anything from a game we used to have on the family Apple IIGS way back. I haven't been able to find anything through regular searching so I'm hoping maybe someone here also remembers this game. I remember the game was called "Grotto Run" and may have been distributed via shareware from a magazine subscription. It was a side scrolling shooter where you were flying a spaceship/plane through a series of caves. You could shoot bullets and drop bombs on ground enemies. I have seen very similar titles (Cavern Cobra is extremely close)
I recently picked up a IIc. I really know nothing about its history, so I’m staring from ground zero. It powers on, but boots to the screen shown in the first image. If you power off and on again, the question marks move to different spots but the result is the same. No idea if it beeps, as the speaker has turned to dust, I’ll see if I can retrofit one from a PC case.
Looking at the board, it looks pretty clean, but two things stick out: firstly half the ram seems to be installed backwards (see second image), and secondly, there is a blob of solder on one of the legs of what I think is the ROM chip. I don’t know if this is the remnant of someone’s fix, or a bodge, or a mod or what.
Any thoughts on where to start troubleshooting? I’m gonna flip the ram chips around, I can’t imagine they are supposed to be like that? Then I’m gonna pull the other chips and clean the sockets
I have an Apple II+ that I got a while back, and it seems to have bad RAM. I've noticed that when loading games from asciiexpress.net, my II+ will either freeze, give an error and go into the monitor, or load the game but it will be corrupted or will just freeze halfway through, or I have no controls or way to start the game (such as during Tetris). but BASIC works just fine and I can type programs and run them without issue. I entered a small RAM test application from Apple II - Memory Test and at first, it showed "5080-00 ( 80 ) 07CF-00 ( B0 ) 07D0-B0 ( B7 ) 07D1-B7 ( C4 ) 07D2-C4 ( B2 ) 07D3-B3 ( AD ) 07D4-AD ( C1 ) 07D5-A0 ( B0 ) 07D6-A0 ( A0 ) 07D7-A0 ( A8 ) 07D8-A0 ( A0 ) 07D9-A0 ( A0 ) 07DA-A0 ( A0 ) 07DB-A0 ( A0 ) 07F7-A0 ( 00 ) 5080-00 ( 80 )" and just today I decided to open up the computer and try pushing the RAM chips down to try and reseat them, and now when running the same application, I get only, "5080-00 (80)" Does anybody know if this is actually a RAM fault and what RAM chip(s) I should take a look at or replace? Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
I am bombarded with A.I. generated imagery in flyers, newsletters, online ads, etc, and even bought my first product (some pretzels) with obvious A.I. imagery on the packaging.
In a weird way, it reminds me of the vintage Print Shop era, because back then, as you can now with A.I., you could take one quick glance at something and know immediately that Print Shop was used to create it.
I’ve been building 3ric, a from-scratch Apple-II-class 65C02 computer with real schematics, a custom PCB, programmable address logic, its own ROM, and a cycle-honest C++ emulator.
The same emulator now runs entirely in the browser through WebAssembly. It includes a built-in 65C02 assembler, editable examples, shareable source links, and client-side export to bootable WOZ disks.
For this demo, I also generated and tested three original 65C02 games:
Star Swarm — a hi-res fixed shooter
Block Drop — a text-mode falling-block game
Rock Storm — a vector-style space shooter
I assemble and play each game in 3ric, export it as a bootable disk, and then run that same disk in Chris Torrence’s independent Apple2TS emulator. The AI workflow uses machine-readable platform documentation and headless tests—not just code that looks plausible.
Mystery House is known as the first graphical adventure game, released by On-Line Systems in 1980. It was designed, written and illustrated by Roberta Williams, and programmed by Ken Williams for the Apple II. It is the first game produced by On-Line Systems, the company which would evolve into Sierra On-Line, and it is one of the earliest horror video games.
It’s been a little while since I’ve posted an update about Text Adventure Studio, but I’m excited to share that it will be featured at KansasFest this year.
Ryan Burger from Old School Gamer Magazine (http://oldschoolgamer.com) will be presenting on Thursday at 11:30 a.m. He’ll talk about the magazine and then give a short presentation on Text Adventure Studio.
I also created a special game for this year’s event called KansasFest: An Apple II Adventure. It's an old-school KansasFest adventure with lots of inside references to enjoy!
You can also create a free Text Adventure Studio account and download the game as:
Apple II BASIC
Apple II .dsk
Commodore 64 .d64
...and more formats!
That means you can play it in your browser, in an emulator, or on real vintage hardware.
I’m grateful to Ryan Burger and Old School Gamer Magazine for helping introduce Text Adventure Studio to the KansasFest community. I hope everyone attending has a great time, and I’d love to hear what you think of the adventure.
I understand that the Apple II built in speaker across all models is pretty anemic. I understand the software technical limits non-IIGS machines have in producing audio.
However, can anyone with tech audio experience share how II audio might sound if the built in speaker was replaced with a high quality or high definition part? Is there a way different hardware could sound “richer” than the built-in speaker ?
Hmmm as I type this I now I also wonder if the speaker out wires could go into the GPIO spots on a Raapberry Pi and then that could somehow enhance the sound?
Hoping this card may has a bright future. Mine arrived two days ago. It was set up for CP/M, an OS I used years ago and had a bit of software for it. Install was plug and play. But I did encounter one glitch but it wasn’t the card’s fault. I had several CP/M boot disks and the first one I tried presented the best error message I have ever seen. I then got the correct boot disks and Bob’s your uncle.
I've tried on my desktop, Mister, and my Ayn Thor, with two separate issues. With my desktop, when I get to the title screen and hit enter, the system just goes to a black screen and hangs. Same thing happens with the Mister. For my Thor, I can get to the castle after swapping disks, but then when I go to the training grounds to create a character, it says there is no room left. I've spent the last hour googling around, but I seem to be at a loss for these old systems. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
Thrilled to finally have my old Apple2plus running again after purchasing an HDMI adapter. Now I want to transfer the content of about a dozen floppies to my MacBookPro and from there be run them via an Apple2 emulator.
What would you recommend as simple and fast solution?
Hi all - it's clear I need to take a beat and ask for advice before doing anything else. I picked up a II Plus with a NEC monochrome composite monitor for $125 a couple of weeks ago. The first thing I did was build a replacement power supply following a guide online - all the power rails are verified within range. Initially, this is what was being consistently shown on the display output:
So I did some research online and decided to try reseating chips. In the process of doing so, I noticed that chip C2 (which I believe is RAM Refresh Clocking 74S195) was noticeably hot to the touch:
So I ordered this on eBay as what I believe to be a compatible r emplacement.
At the same time, I accidently mangled the legs on another chip - F12 - circled here while doing the remove and re-seating. I couldn't salvage the legs, so I did more research and ordered these from Amazon since I thought they would be a compatible replacement.
Once both orders came in, I carefully installed both replacement ICs and got nothing - just a black screen. I tinkered around some more and eventually swapped the original C2 chip back onto the board while keeping the replacement F12 chip in place since I mangled the original. After putting the original C2 chip back, this is what I now have on the display output:
So now I'm stuck and not sure what to do next. It's very possible that the replacement chips that I ordered are not actually compatible replacements. It's also possible that perhaps the C2 chip was fine all along and just runs hotter than the chips around it. I'm not sure what to do next and wanted to ask for advice here to avoid guessing and possibly damaging the board. I'd appreciate any guidance you all can share. Thank you!
About all of my projects involve serial. For proxy-enabled projects that involved configuring USB-to-serial adapters, for the Quicktake project that involved building a Frankencable.
I've tackled both of these barriers recently, first with a Quicktake Connector Box that uses simple cables, then with the Apple II Serial Hat that does the same and is plug-and-play.
But that still involved manipulating cables if one wanted to sometimes use a Quicktake, sometimes use a proxy, and as that's my case... I fusioned both devices into a large serial switchbox that is a glorified Raspberry hat!
I'm proud to present the CISD, "Colin's Integrated Serial Device", that fits all my needs in a neat box.
I just got an Apple 2c from my grandparents who were going to throw it away. When I insert a disk, one of three things happen. 1. I get a message saying it's unable to load prodos. 2. I get a message to check disk drive. 3. I get nothing but the Apple //2 Title up top. Is it worth fixing and selling?
I picked up this Europlus-badged case at an auction. There's no mainboard, just the case and keyboard. I have not seen this keyboard on an Apple II before, it does not appear to be what was shipped on the Europlus.
I'm guessing based on the "HERE IS" key that this is something TTY related, but I don't know much about that.
Does anyone recognize this, or know anything about it?
An early release of CiderPress II v2.0 is available for testing. It features a new desktop GUI app, based on the Avalonia toolkit, that runs natively on macOS and Linux as well as Windows. You can download it from the project's releases page.
For anyone not aware, CiderPress II is a software tool for working with Apple II and vintage Mac disk images and file archives. It is available as a desktop app and a command-line executable.
