KFest continues on, but it’s getting harder to post timely updates to A2Central. Personally, I’m having such a great time that it’s extremely difficult to pull myself away to put the day into words. By the time I do, it’s very late, or early, depending on how you want to look at it and I really just want to get some sleep. Selfish of me, I know. Sorry. ;)

I forgot to mention a couple of things yesterday. First, Hackfest started Thursday morning and will wind up on noon Saturday. My money is on Margaret Anderson, who seems to have a perpetual knack for winning the event.

And how I could forget to mention this, I’ll never know (sleep deprivation?) but James Littlejohn showed off his “Little Speedup” adapter. It’s an oscillator board that switches the Apple //c Plus from 4MHz to 8MHz. Currently in prototype, the product is undergoing design refinement and should be available from Reactive soon. The Little Speedup will be available in kit and assembled versions. Prices haven’t been determined yet.

The “worst kept secret, secret product in development that everybody secretly wants” prize will probably go to Tony Diaz who is busy working on an internal RAM and IDE interface for memory-expansion //c and //c Plus computers. The card is expected to have 512K onboard, and feature a standard IDE port that will allow the user flexibility in deciding what storage solution they want to use, ie. a 2.5 hard disk or compact flash. The project is still in it’s early stages, but Tony hopes to have prototypes out to testers by the end of the year.

Today’s sessions kicked off with Andrew Roughan providing a walk through of the Marinetti Open Source Project (MOSP). Andrew is the MOSP maintainer, and one of our international KFest participants hailing all the way from Sydney, Australia. Powerpoint slides from Andrew’s presentation are available here.

Next up, Austin Phelps demonstrated medical imaging technology using the open source OS X application Osirix. We wrapped the morning with Tony Diaz hosting the video presentation “Spam, The Documentary”.

Eric “Sheppy” Shepherd gave back to back entry-level presentations on ORCA, going over the basics of how to get started using ORCA. Perfect for the beginning GS/OS programmer.

Ryan Suenaga, with help from Carrington Vanston and Andy Molloy, recorded a “live in front of a studio audience” podcast that should be available from iTunes by the time you read this. Look for A2Unplugged show #0012.

Rounding out the afternoon, Michael Mahon gave a presentation on his sensational AppleCrate Eight-Voice Music Synthesizer.

Our evening activities revolved around more modern Apple topics. Rob Walch of Today in iPhone gave us a live, hands-on demo of the new Apple iPhone. He showed off it’s innovative new features and eye candy, leaving many of us wishing we had one. After that, several folks headed out to the local Apple Store to pick up supplies, buy gear and freak out The Guru with Apple II questions.

Thursday night (10-11pm) is our usual Krispy Kreme gathering, and Denny’s run — but both of those establishments were closed! Someone must have tipped them off that the unruly Apple II crowd was in town because they’re usually open during that time. We might try again on Friday.

Today is the first official day of KFest. For those who made the effort, the day began with breakfast at the Rockhurst cafeteria… but many of us stayed up late the previous night and opted to sleep-in since no sessions were scheduled for Wednesday morning.

Most of the fun that goes on at KFest is in the impromptu socializing. People wander from one dorm room to another and it’s pretty easy to catch a demonstration of new hardware or software occuring, find people brain-storming on a problem together, or sharing humorous annecdotes. If you need help with something, someone is usually close by ready to help. It’s a great community.

Today, I got to see James Littlejohn’s “Littlepower” replacement power supply in action. It’s a bridge board that plugs directly into the GS power connector, so that the computer itself can be powered from an external AC adapter. It’s universal, heavy duty (the unit I saw was 200 watts) and very small plus by getting rid of the internal PS, your GS will run cooler. The Littlepower (and other products James is working on) will be available in the future through Reactive. Pricing hasn’t been announced yet.

Kirk Mitchell and Ryan Suenaga treated us to one of our newer traditions, the KFest Kookout. Burgers and hot dogs were on the menu, as well as vegan-friendly “veggie” burgers. Thanks guys!

After lunch, Ken Gagne kicked off KFest 2007 by introducing our keynote speaker, David Szetela. Mr. Szetela gave us an entertaining look back to his time as an editor for Nibble Magazine, and stories from his stint working at Apple.

Next up, it was time to whip out the soldering irons, as Ed Eastman led a hands-on soldering lab demonstrating basic soldering techniques. Soldering is something a lot of us probably take for granted, but to solder well, is a bit of an art and requires practice.

Later in the evening, Ken Gagne hosted a showing of BBS: The Documentary — a historical retrospective from when dial-up computer bulletin board systems were popular during the 80’s and early 90’s.

Some of us spent the evening testing out a video converter that Jamie “Macdog” Steffens brought. Finding an acceptable method to display GS graphics on modern VGA LCD panels has been a frustrating project for quite awhile, but the unit we tested tonight might be the solution to the problem. More info will be posted as testing continues, and there will probably be a group purchase administered through Reactive in the future.

The last scheduled event for the evening was a reception hosted by Juiced.GS and Syndicomm. Enough pizza was munched down to feed a small army.

And after that, it was back to visiting and working on projects. So far, everyone seems to be having a great time. Wish you were here with us.

Mike Harvey wrote in to tell us Nibble Magazine’s domain has been hijacked, and so he’s moved the site to http://www.nibblemagazine.net.

After months of anticipation, KFest is finally here. We’ve got a great group this time around with several new people as well as some returning folks we haven’t seen in awhile joining the regulars. All have come out to brave the heat and campus mystery food to participate in the largest annual Apple II enthusiast gathering in the world. If you’re not here with us, you’re missing out on a great time!

Tuesday is not an official KFest day, technically, but rather a move in and get settled day. Most of the attendees have arrived and already set up their computers and other gear. After my initial tour, I’m pleased to say many of our attendees were able to bring real Apple II computers with them, while out of necessity, others are relying on emulation. It’s a nice mix.

I’m positive this is going to be a great KFest! I’ve already heard a few rumors of exciting new products in the pipe — hopefully we’ll see some demos soon.

That’s all for now. A2Central will be posting daily updates as time allows. Wish you were here!

Lyle Syverson has published the July 2007 edition of The Lamp!, a monthly collection of postings and news from A2Central’s message areas. Our FTP server contains text, Appleworks and Hypercard versions of The Lamp! for your convenience.

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 Apple 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.

The July 2007 edition of 1MHz! The Apple II Podcast, is now available for download from Carrington Vanston’s website or as a free podcast subscription from the iTunes store.

Salon.com staff writer Farhad “Machinist” Manjoo has posted an article in his blog commemorating the 25th “birthday” of the first microcomputer virus, which sadly, was developed on the Apple II.

Podcast host Ryan Suenaga presents A2Unplugged, show #0011. In this episode, Ryan takes a look at helpful literature for learning assembly language, and makes predictions for next week’s 19th annual KansasFest. A2Unplugged can be freely downloaded from the podcast’s web site, or subscribed to from the Apple iTunes store.

Courtesy Slashdot comes a lengthy interview with Steve Wozniak at the site 10 Zen Monkeys. In addition to talking about the iPhone, Digital Rights Management (DRM), his favorite pranks, and his recent appearance on the television show The Colbert Report (video clips available at 10 Zen Monkeys), Woz also discusses how he coded the Apple II and how he’d like “to publish the code and the schematics with some explanations of what I was thinking.” Search the interview for the section entitled “Apple II was Coded by Hand”.