Eric Neilson wrote in to let us know that Gerard Putter has updated his awesome OS X 8-bit Apple II emulator, Virtual ][, to version 5.8.
Eric writes:
Hi. I’ve been working with Gerard, the author of the Virtual ][ emulator, on adding half-track/nibble sending support to Virtual ][ and ADT. It’s working now and you can download the package from here.
Details on half-track format are in this forum thread. With half-track/nibble support, Apple II users should now be able to archive about 99% of the Apple disks out there.
ADT is GPL and free while Virtual ][ runs on OS X (sorry PC guys) and is shareware.
Hopefully other Apple II emulators will pick up this format and more wonderful Apple II programs will be preserved for future posterity.
Virtual ][ 5.8 also includes the following improvements and fixes:
- The A2V2 utility now supports transfer of AppleΓ II disks containing half-tracks.
- Finished the implementation of the “floating bus”, and added an example Applescript to demonstrate this feature.
- Optimized graphic rendering, resulting in lower overall CPU load.
- Improved the compatibility of the Epson FX-80 emulation; it now works with the Fontrix application.
- The Inspector now shows the total CPU cycle count of the emulated 6502.
- Added an Applescript command to slow down text input from a script, and used it to make the included demo scripts easier to follow.
- Solved an issue where the text “Paused” could remain on the screen after a restart of the machine.
- The program could crash when a new diskette image was created and ejected. This has been solved.
- Solved an issue that could cause one disk image to be mounted in multiple drives at the same time.