Briel Computer has announced that their new $99 USD Multi I/O Board for the Replica 1 is expected to ship soon (as in, as soon as the manual is done). The Multi I/O Board provides two bi-directional 8 bit ports with four handshaking lines, a RS232 serial port rated at a speedy 19.2K and an 8K EEPROM programmer to store data and programs. There is also an empty socket for a SpeakJet voice and sound synthesizer (about $25 USD available from speechchips.com).

Also available is a Replica 1 to Apple 1 Slot Adapter for a measly $16 USD. Both products (and more) can be ordered now.

Epcot’s Spaceship Earth ride is reopening soon, but something unexpected happened. It was rumored that part of the attraction would pay homage to Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer (and Disney board member), but it looks a lot more like Steve Wozniak (our favorite Apple co-founder) to us. Click here to see and judge for yourself.

Simon Williams’ 8-Bit Sound & Fury web site covers hardware and software solutions for making music on the Apple II. The site has added lots of material since we last wrote about them a few years ago. From the high end alphaSyntauri synthesizer to the Drumulator to SquareWaver, you can tap into a variety of music resources, including difficult to find documentation. There’s also a selection of Apple II music to sample.

Simon Williams wrote in to announce the RetroChallenge Winter Warm-up 2008 is about to commence on January 1st, 2008! This is your opportunity to share your cool Apple II hacks, projects and/or otherwise demonstrate your retro-enthusiast computing skills (how retro geeky are you, really?). Get involved and show the community what we already know — the Apple II is the best hacking platform ever conceived. Remember, it’s not obsolete, it’s proven technology! Simon’s announcement is after the jump.

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Oliver Schmidt has announced the release of his port of the Contiki 2.x codebase to cc65 targets on Usenet group comp.sys.apple2.programmer. Oliver’s announcement is posted after the jump.

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Ryan Suenaga presents A2Unplugged, show #0016! In this episode, Ryan discusses one of Roger Wagner’s best books, “Assembly Lines: The Book. A Beginner’s Guide to 6502 Programming on the Apple II” and the A2Unplugged web site gets a new look.

A2Unplugged can be freely downloaded from the podcast’s web site, or subscribed to from the Apple iTunes store.

Steve Wozniak will be appearing on a panel at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, on December 10th, 2007, celebrating the birth of the personal computer. Also on the panel will be Adam Chowaniec of Commodore and Amiga and Jack Tramiel of Atari. The full press release is after the jump.

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