Rich Dreher of R&D Automation has confirmed that the parts have been ordered for the fourth run of his wildly popular CFFA3000 flash storage and disk emulation card. If you want one, get on the waiting list NOW.

Steve Chamberlin at Big Mess’o Wires has successfully added Smartport compatibility to his Floppy Emu product. With the latest update, it now can read and write to most of the common disk image formats used to emulate 5.25, 3.5 and larger drives.

Compatible with the Apple IIGS and Apple //c, IIc Plus, the Floppy Emu is $89 USD plus shipping, and has additional options available (extension cable, case).

Volume 20, Issue 2 (Jun 2015) of Juiced.GS, the longest-running Apple II publication in print, is now arriving in subscribers’ mailboxes. This issue features reviews of Ninjaforce’s KABOOM and GGLABS’ RAMGS card; coverage of Oz KFest; a breakdown of how ProDOS formats disks and stores and manages files; a deepening mystery with Det. Pomme and Col. Hexings; reflections on the Apple II community’s best years from its developers, publishers, and artists; and much, much more!

This is Juiced.GS‘s second quarterly issue of 2015, its twentieth year in print. Subscriptions for 2015 are also available at $19 each for United States customers, $24 for readers in Canada and Mexico, and $27 for international customers, with several free sample issues available as PDFs.

Tecnobytes has released a new demo video of their upcoming Tecnowarp accelerator card. It’s rated at 7MHz and has 512KB cache which puts it on par with the very rare Transwarp II card (which only had 256KB cache). Things we haven’t seen yet are adjustable slot configurations, diagnostics, adjustable speed settings, i.e. some of the standard features that were part of the Transwarp II and competing ZipChip products. We’re hoping to get our hands on a Tecnowarp as soon as they become available so we can test it out. In the meantime, here’s the video. The acceleration is impressive.

Quinn Dunki has been featured (again) on Hackaday, this time for a gamepad she’s been working on. We’re posting links to the Hackaday post and to Quinn’s project page at Blondihacks. Something interesting is going on there!

Anthony Martino and Henry Courbis will be opening their new, updated UltimateMicro storefront on Wednesday, June 17th. You can expect to see many of their innovative new products showcased, such as the MicroDrive Turbo, 2MB RAMWorks Expander, the improved No-Slot-Clock and the new Switchable Oscillator along with ROM, RAM and miscellaneous upgrades. Something for everyone!

Thanks to Ninjaforce and the FTA, Brutal Deluxe Software is happy to announce the release of a new toolset for the Apple IIgs, NinjaTracker Tool221.

NinjaTracker Tool221 is a GS/OS toolset to play musical scores made with Ninjaforce’s MODConvert2 software. It works like the Soundsmith toolset 219 written by the FTA. Tool221 integrates the NinjaTracker software that plays Soundsmith-like musical scores to which Amiga MOD effects were added. Discover a new level of music quality for the Apple IIgs.

Get more information at http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/apple2gs/tool221/

Wade Clark (author of horror survival adventure Leadlight) has dug up some of his prior adventure games dating back 25 years. If you like text adventures, you should check them out.

inXile Entertainment is currently running a Kickstarter to fund development for The Bards Tale IV. Yesterday, it was announced that backers at the $20 or higher level would receive free digital copies of the original The Bard’s Tale, The Bard’s Tale II: Destiny Knight and The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate along with a deluxe double album soundtrack.

These games are available now via emulation, but the experience isn’t as seamless as it should be. Not to worry, because inXile Entertainment has partnered with the original The Bard’s Tale III programmer Rebecca “Burger” Heineman and her company Olde Sküül to make the games run natively on Macintosh and PC. That’s great news but the coolest bit is that the re-releases will be based on the Apple IIGS versions of the games (not the PC, or the Amiga… THE APPLE IIGS!) and will also include updated artwork.

I believe I can predict with some certainty that this Kickstarter will be a major topic of interest at this year’s KansasFest, where Rebecca Heineman happens be our very distinguished keynote speaker.

COUNT ME IN! BACKED!