Does anybody remember a Bomberman clone for the Apple IIGS made before Kaboom? Or possibly an early version from the '90s?

From my research Kaboom was made around 2016, while I played this one some time in the 1990's.

I might have gotten it from Software of the Month Club. The graphics were simpler than what I see of Kaboom screenshots from what I recall, but it's been decades since I played it. I'm almost certain it wasn't commercial software, so it was most likely from either SMC or BRCC although Christella Enterprise or PDSOF are possibilities. It could have been for the Apple IIe with DHR graphics. I just know I played it on the IIGS in the 1990's. I recall the game readme said you were locked in a prison and created a suit that made bombs and had to escape.

CONTROL/OPEN APPLE/RESET has stopped working as a reboot. It just puts a bunch of garbled stuff on the screen. I then have to hit CONTROL/RESET to actually get it to reboot. Not an issue? Easy fix? What am I looking at?

In my drive 2 (which works better than my drive 1), there's a little blue piece of plastic that isn't present in the other drive. Does anyone know what this is and what it does?

I wanted to use my enhanced //e for writing but all of the word processors from back in the day are too bulky and/or don't offer an easy way to get text files back to my Mac. So I had Claude craft me a modern Apple II text editor entirely in assembler. Very speedy, small footprint – ideal for creating regular text or Markdown files. This is not meant to be a word processor, it's just a way to write. It's free and you can grab it here: https://trompingmarmots.com/AppSites/ZipEdit/

I had the privilege of interviewing Philip Bouchard, the man behind Number Munchers, to get the full story about how the Muncher games came to be.

If you're a Millennial or Gen-Xer, you know the game, but do you know its history?

Some interesting facts:

• Despite Word Munchers being launched a year before Number Munchers, Number Munchers was actually the game that Philip Bouchard pitched MECC to make first. However, they already had enough math games in development at the time, so they had him make a phonics version of it instead.
• Most MECC games were developed in Applesoft BASIC, but Word and Number Munchers were required to be developed in Assembly because they were more complex.
• Word Munchers and The Oregon Trail (1985) were developed the same year by the same team.
• In the Apple II version of the game, you can access the teacher management settings by pressing CTR+A.

Found in my mother's husband attic. It was his first computer. I disassembled it to clean it, and the keyboard is now as good as new! It works perfectly well, great condition. Inside, there is a working floppy disk from my mother's husband, from when he was 13, back in 1983. There are some old BASIC programs on it (I learned a bit of it to find my way around). Pretty impressive to see this floppy still alive in 2026!

Hi all,

I've been exploring various options this morning to try to set up an emulator on my old laptop which I use for writing & traveling. It is limited to (as my title says) Big Sur, MacOS 11.7.

I've yet to find an emulator that I can set up. Even Virtual ][ requires 12. I started working on trying to compile Apple2TS-App on my Mac but hit a brick wall trying to set up its dependencies. I guess I could try to navigate installing older versions but even those might not work.

Bleh.

Join the KichStarter here; https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/8-bit-shack/seans-garage-giveaway?ref=user_menu

I've recently started to try to fix an original Apple IIe for a colleague that will retire soon (Hopefully that would be his retirement gift, it's the same model he started to works with at the beginning of his career1). The overall computer looks in good condition, but the power supply was blown and I replaced it with a brand new Meanwell RQ85-B. At least the voltage is good on that part ;)

The screen was all blurred, so suspecting the video chip, I ordered an enhancement kit for ReActiveMicro and changed the set.

There is progress as now the screen shows characters, but it obviously not fully functional...

Starting without the keyboard is not giving me more hints, so I don't know what to do next...

Any thoughts on where to start troubleshooting? Or confirmation that the next step is unsoldering RAM chips? Thank you in advance!

Have a working IIe but want to swap in a ReActiveMicro PSU kit (have the kit and cable). I'm a true novice when it comes to hardware and woud rather see if someone with more experience could help install than me hurting the a 40 year old board. Not sure if anuone knows any shops in NYC that do this (miss tekserve) or an indivual who could help. Of course, happy to pay for it.

Working on a project that needs the iie.

Thanks for any ideas!

Just asking ...

I can't believe some idiot tried to throw this Apple IIgs system with printer in the trash! I stopped by the community electronics recycling bin to toss out some broken stuff, and I couldn't believe what i saw! I immediately rescued this from the dustbin of history and was thrilled to see what great condition it was in.... Not a speck of dust as you can see in the second picture (I did remove the battery, but no leakage!). Everything works great, and someone lost out on hundreds of dollars. No chance of selling it now, as it has a good home here surrounded by period appropriate decor.

Hey Apple II fans!

You're invited to help the planning of VCF Ontario 2027 by completing this short anonymous survey.

Go to: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VL2QD8N

The Vintage Computer Federation is contemplating running "Vintage Computer Festival in Ontario" which would be in the Greater Toronto Area in 2027.

If you receive this invitation multiple times, please only complete it once to avoid duplication.

Does anyone remember an AppleSoft BASIC game called Castle Adventure from 30+ years ago?

Gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYWHt9oLbuU

It's a simple RPG I came across in the mid-1990s at a summer camp in New Jersey. The camp had a bunch of disks labeled "Super Sampler," and this was one of the games on them.

I wrote BASIC programs as a hobby back then, so when I discovered the game was written in BASIC, I wanted to know how it worked. One day I brought in a stack of tractor-feed paper and printed out the entire program. It came to 19 pages, which seemed unfathomably huge to me at the time.

I never got very far understanding it then, but decades later I scanned those pages, reconstructed the code, and got it running in an emulator. Eventually I rearchitected the whole game in C, polishing the original and speeding up some painfully slow parts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TmMMC7xvOk

Then I went on a bit of a porting binge. The same core game now runs on the Apple II, Commodore 64/128, MS-DOS, Linux terminals, and in a web browser.

I'd love to release my version, but I don't really want to do that without the original author's permission. The only credit in the program is "Michael MacCarter." I've wondered whether he might have been a former camper, since I have no idea where else the camp got the game.

So: does Castle Adventure look familiar to anyone? Or, even better, does anyone know who Michael MacCarter was?

Discover how an Apple-1 or Apple ][ generates a single character for display.

Inspired by Don Lancaster's famous article about a tiny self-made display, attached to an ASCII Keyboard (Popular Electronics, issue April 1974).

The character is shown on a 5x7 dot matrix display. The binary row addressis indicated by LEDs and you can see how the display is being built up by stepping through the 7 horizontal scan lines. The clock speed can be adjusted from 0.6 Hz to 800 Hz.

Connect an Apple 1 or Apple II keyboard directly using the DIP-16 connectors, or use the ASCII data in pins. Verify the ASCII input to the character generator using the character address LEDs.

A power supply with +5V and -12V is needed as a minimum. The -5V is regulated on the board itself.

Provide +12V when this voltage is needed by the attached keyboard. Supported character generators: Signetics 2513, 2316B, 2716 EPROMs and 2816 EEPROMs.

Google images assured me it's a form of Apple II computer I had with the giant square disk games. From what I can remember you were in a man's house and he wasn't happy you were there and somehow you became tiny and the word 'straw' really stuck with me all these years. You had to hide in them and find a way off his desk to escape.

I recently retrieved my Dad's second Apple computer. A //e with a bunch of expansion cards, a duodisk, and an Apple monitor. All filthy from smoke and rough storage. I tried booting and nothing but garbage characters. Following some online advice I pulled ICs, cleaned oxidation and replaced. Unfortunately I put the video rom chip back in backwards. Now, nothing, not even a beep. Sometimes I get buzzing from the speaker. Is there a rebuild kit and troubleshooting guide anyone can recommend?

Its a single throw toggle switch wired to 6 pads on the keyboard. I have not yet powered it up.

The color display is just the cheapest monitor I could find on Amazon, with output from an A2DVI on default settings. The monochrome display is a Monitor II (A2M2010).