Antoine Vignau and Oliver Zardini of Brutal Deluxe have posted a slideshow recorded in 1992 from the GS Club event held in Beauvais, France (near Paris). Check it out at: http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/apple2gs/beauvais1992.html

“Ce n’est qu’un Beauvais souvenir”

Yes, seriously. David Greelish classiccomputing.com and Blake Patterson of bytecellar.com are producing (poducing?) a new bi-weekly podcast that will cover 40% retro, 50% modern and 10% ‘who knows what’ Apple-oriented content. The first episode will be posted any day now, so watch for availability on iTunes at the Not Another Apple Podcast web site.

Kim Howe, author of several popular Apple IIGS applications, wrote in to let us know that all of his titles have been reclassified as freeware.  From his email to a2central.com:

“Just wanted to advise anyone who was interested that my programs have now all be reclassified to freeware. The new versions with updated status and contact details are available at: http://members.optusnet.com.au/appleiigs/index.html.  There are no actual modifications to the function of the programs at this stage.  The programs are: Arachnid – the stand alone GS web browser, TelnetNDA – a Telnet new desk accessory which runs with Marinetti, YahtzeeNDA – a dice game for one to four players, and Shipwrecked – a Hypercard IIGS based adventure game.”

That’s great news for IIGS fans and users of Kim’s products, and we thank him for his generous decision.

In an interview posted on Kotaku today, Jordan Mechner detailed his intentions to reboot Karateka, the popular Apple II title originally published by Br0derbund.  Mechner explains his interest in revisiting the game:

“It’s been eight years since my last game, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time in 2003… I was really itching to get back to my indie roots and make something with a smaller team, and Karateka just seemed perfect for that.Unlike Prince of Persia, it’s remained untouched for nearly 30 years. It’s never been remade and there hasn’t been a sequel. And yet people still remember it so fondly. I’ve gotten hundreds of messages from fans on my website and twitter asking about a new Karateka. It was my first game, the one that started it all for me, and I felt it really deserved to be revisited.”

Read Mechner’s entire interview here.

As predicted, the pre-orders of a2RetroSystems popular Uthernet Ethernet card for the Apple II sold out quickly, with all 45 cards spoken for in less than two days. If you missed out, you can still send them an email and get on the waiting list for a future run which, with the continuing popularity of the cards is hopefully still a possibility.

Brendan Robert continues to improve JACE, the Java Apple Computer Emulator.   Today, he added Passport MIDI Adapter support and fixed a minor bug.  Per Brendan’s comp.sys.apple2 post:

“I just confirmed that JACE can output music from Ultima V very very very very beautifully.  Note that if you use linux you might be better off using OpenJDK as the Sun JRE drivers SUCK for audio. Passport MIDI is mostly emulated at this point.  I didn’t implement any sort of actual MIDI IN/OUT functionality — just a virtual MIDI Out to the embedded java midi synth engine.”

Get the latest build of JACE here.

A2RetroSystems is taking pre-orders for their next batch of Uthernet cards. At last check, the production run is slated for 45 cards, of which only 24 are now available. They always sell out fast, so don’t waste any time if you’ve been waiting to get one.

John B Matthews announced today that the latest version of the Apple II disk image management application, AppleCommander is now available.  This version, “features refinements by David Schmidt to allow writing Pascal TEXT files on DOS ordered disk images.”  Visit the AppleCommander Sourceforge page to check in on the latest project developments and to download version 1.3.5.10.

Gene Buckle announced today that the Age of Reason BBS is online again, after a power spike during a heavy winter storm early last month damaged the Apple IIe that acted as host for the telnet bulletin board system.  Said Gene, “I finally got the hardware issues straightened out and AoR is back online. The clock is a bit duffy (just remeber that “8:” is 1989. :) ), but other than that it’s ok.”

The Age of Reason BBS can be reached at telnet://aor.retroarchive.org

Egan Ford has added mobile versions to  the Apple Game Server and Apple Disk Server websites.  These updates make it possible for you to use your iPhone or iPad to stream the extensive catalog of titles directly to your Apple II.  Egan states in his comp.sys.apple2 post that he has only tested on the iPhone, but any HTML5-compatible smart phone should work.

Apple Game Server mobile edition can be accessed here, and the Apple Disk Server can be found here.