Dear All,

This technical article discusses the recent LZ4 data compression algorithm and its ability to become a good multi-purpose lossless compression format for the Apple IIGS computer. Mostly for game programming area, where we have to handle multi-types of data (Graphic, Sound, Music, Code, Misc data…), the availability of one generic compression/decompression algorithm will ease developers’ life!

Find more at http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/crossdevtools/lz4/

LZ4 Compression for the Apple IIgs is part of Brutal Deluxe’s Cross Development Tools project, a full set of utilities available on Windows (and other) platforms to enable the creation of new Apple IIgs software : 65c816 Assembler, 65c816 Disassembler, 65c816 Simulator, Graphic File Converter, Resource Catcher…

Antoine Vignau & Olivier Zardini
Brutal Deluxe Software
http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/

Paris, September 1st, 2013 – Brutal Deluxe Software is proud to introduce BenchmarkeD to the Apple II community.

Until now, there were no such utilities for the Apple IIgs. Nowadays, disk devices are USB sticks or Compact Flash cards, physical devices such as hard disk drives or 3.5″ drives are no longer used. It is time to determine the fastest device to get the best experience with modern storage devices.

Download BenchmarkeD at http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/apple2gs/benchmarked.html and share your results with us!

Antoine Vignau & Olivier Zardini
Brutal Deluxe Software
http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/

This monochrome DHGR arcade game had to be released by Froggy Software in 1987. As the company shut its doors, the game has never been released nor distributed by its author.

We auction the first three issues, one after the other. Those were signed by Jean-Louis Le Breton (http://www.jeanlouislebreton.com/) and Richard Soberka (http://www.soberka.com/).

Find the first auction @ http://www.ebay.com/itm/200908966058
Get more information @ http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/2013/

Free shipping worldwide, the 77 next issues will be sold @ brutaldeluxe.fr

Share this vintage moment with us. Apple II forever!

Jean-Louis Le Breton, Richard Soberka,

Antoine Vignau and Olivier Zardini.

Paris, June 29th, 2012 – Brutal Deluxe Software is proud to announce the release of CADIUS, a command-line tool for Windows to manage Apple II image disk files (.2mg, .po, .hdv).

The first purpose of Cadius is to write the output of the 65c816 Assembler directly into an Apple IIgs disk image (usually a .2mg) in order to quickly test the result, avoiding many keyboard & mouse manipulations. Cadius may also manage Source Code files, by setting/cleaning the High Bit and formatting the Source Code to make it easy to read and edit in the Windows world.

Cadius is part of Brutal Deluxe’s Cross Developpement Tools Project, a full set of utilities available on Windows (and other) platforms to enable the creation of new Apple IIgs software : 65c816 Assembler, 65c816 Desassembler, 65c816 Simulator, Graphic File Converter, Resource Catcher…

It is available at http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/crossdevtools/cadius/

Regards,
Antoine Vignau & Olivier Zardini
Brutal Deluxe Software

Fishhead is a GS/OS desktop file copier application. It offers several features which make it a powerful software for diskette and file preservation purposes:

• Attributes preservation
  All copied files keep their original date, time and other attributes (e.g. invisible or locked) information
• Batch mode
  Removable devices can be ejected and Fishhead will wait for the next medium to be inserted before copying it, and so on
• Error handling
  Fishhead does not stop on read errors, it copies as much data as possible
• History log
  The program displays and saves a log file including the result for each copied file from the source disk

Fishhead recursively copies files from a selected volume by chuncks of 256 bytes. The main idea is to recover as much data as possible from a bad medium. Fishhead has been tested (for months) on an Apple IIgs ROM 01 and ROM 3, with Appleshare (localtalk, netatalk) under System 6.0.1.

Visit their website at http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/apple2gs/fishhead/

For those of you who like homebrew devices for the Apple II, you may be interested in Nishida Radio‘s items.

Nishida Koichi, from Japan, builds and offers the following:

• an Apple II USB joystick adapter,
• an Apple II, II+ and IIe USB keyboard adapter,
• SDISK II, a Disk II emulator working with SD cards.

 The projects can be purchased as DIY packages or assembled. And half of the price will be donated to the Tohoku Kanto Earthquake charity program.

Discover Nishida Koichi’s great items at http://tulip-house.ddo.jp/digital/.

Cédric Peltier, maker of the SmartPort Virtual Hard Drive has created a website for his nearly-ready SmartPort Virtual Hard Drive device at http://www.spvhd.org/.

The device is planned to be available this summer and will be offered as:

• a DIY package, priced at 30 euros (+/- 43 US dollars)
• a PNP package, priced at 50 euros (+/- 72 US dollars)

If you are interested in purchasing the SmartPort Virtual Hard Drive, please contact Cédric Peltier who will provide you with the shipping fee to your destination.

Ewen Wannop and Brutal Deluxe Software now make the complete set of the British IIgs Club disks available to the Apple II community. The bimonthly diskazine was published from August 1992 to February 1999.

The archive can be downloaded at http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/public/