Robert Tripp, of the former MICRO INK, Inc. (now known as FlexAble Systems), has announced plans to release the long out of print Apple II title, “What’s Where in the Apple” as an eBook sometime this summer.  Tripp intends to put out more than just a scanned PDF of the popular book, however.  “It is going to be much better than anything that has gone before,” says Tripp. “We are not just scanning and posting, but rather scanning, doing optical character recognition (OCR), cleaning-up minor errors, changing to a better computer/tablet type font and reorganizing the materials to view well on most devices.  The most important — and difficult thing –  is to scan and convert the 100 pages of Atlas and Gazetteer.  Scanning is easy, however just having a ‘picture’ of the tables is not good enough.  Real tables are required that not only look better — properly formatted as columns and real characters — but can be searched.  Want to see all instances of “‘WRITE’ Command”? With the tables you simply enter the search string and all instances will be displayed!”

You can read all about his plans at this page.  Pricing and a release date have yet to be announced, but we can’t wait to see the final product.

Rich Dreher is now accepting orders for the second run of his highly anticipated CFFA3000 compact flash drive controller. Introduced last year during KansasFest, the CFFA3000 quickly sold out within a matter of days after it’s initial release. It’s a safe bet that another virtual stampede and sell out will occur as word spreads in the Apple II Community.

Pricing for the CFFA3000 remains at USD $149.95, and $19.95 for the optional Remote Control board (strongly recommended for 8bit users). Due to the huge interest in this product, an order limit of two units per order/address is being enforced. Dreher is forecasting he’ll be able to ship out about 50 boards a week starting July 2nd while inventory lasts.

You can order the CFFA3000 HERE. Good luck!

Noted retro-computing enthusiast and hardware developer Mike Willegal has announced that the first batch of his ‘Super Proto’ cards will soon be available for sale. Actual pricing hasn’t been set, though its anticipated to be less than $100 USD as a kit. A bare board will also be available.

The Super Proto’s base feature set includes:

• Onboard 32K EEPROM – only 2K is normally addressable from Apple’s C800-CEFF and CX00-CXFF I/O space
• EEPROM is programmable directly from the Apple II’s 6502.
• Glue logic integrated in 22V10 GAL – replaces a number of 74LS glue chips that are commonly seen in designs like the Super Serial Card and the Mockingboard
• Data bus fully buffered with 74LS245
• PCB location for 6522A VIA, with no additional glue logic required
• Two general purpose proto areas
• Locations for more than 5 300 mill DIP chips of varying pin count
• With 6522 VIA, room for an additional 40 pin dip package. This does cut into 300 mill DIP area, but it should be possible build a 3 channel Mockingboard on the Super Proto board.
• Synthesized psuedo PH2 clock available – was required for 6522 interface

Mike says his Super Proto card “takes care of all the heavy-lifting of interfacing to the Apple II.”

On the 25th anniversary of the release of Apple’s first “open” Macintosh, Macworld has published an interesting article on the history of the Macintosh II and its spiritual ties to the Apple II.  Definitely worth a read.

 

image by Macworld

Rich Dreher updated his project status page yesterday with the following:

The assembly house has just informed me that they have shipped 280 (a little over half of the batch) CFFA3000 boards and Remotes to me. They should be here next week. The remaining 220 boards will follow in a few more weeks. I will be opening up and order page and sending out an email to everyone in a week or two.

This is great news for everyone who missed out on the first batch of cards and for those of us who, having sampled the card the first time around, are hungry for more.

(HT: Sean Fahey)

This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken speak with Martin Haye, 8-bit programmer extraordinare. We love us some conventions, be they KansasFest, the Vintage Computer Festival, @party, ROFLCon, or WordCamp. We wonder why video games have abandoned humor and if Kickstarter can bring it back. Steve Wozniak is advising the Steve Jobs film — no, not the one in which Ashton Kutcher will play Steve Jobs, but that raises the question: who will play the hosts of Open Apple? On eBay, we’re suspicious of an Apple IIe that was supposedly once Jobs’, and we wish there were a more comprehensive online resource for Apple II clones.

Listen now at the Open Apple site, or subscribe in iTunes or the Zune Marketplace.