A2Heaven continues to bring Apple II hobbyists great new hardware. The Apple II VGA scaler (AIIVGAS) is an Apple II compatible circuit board for converting Apple II, II+, Europlus and Apple IIe video to VGA compatible signals for displaying on a VGA monitor.

The board is compatible with both NTSC and PAL systems. Due to the wide variation in Apple II models, there are some jumpers and in some cases additional jumper wires to be connected to enable full functionality. $85 USD

Remember David Schmenk’s awesome hardware hack where he routed the output of an old parallel Connectix QuickCam to his Apple IIe through an Apple Parallel Card?  Of course you do.  Here’s how he did it, in case you want to build your own: Part I – The Hardware, Part II – The Software.

PC World magazine recently posted a nice article showcasing examples of old technology still in use today.  The piece covers a wide variety of “obsolete” tech, from an IBM 402 automated electromechanical tabulator that handles the payroll and accounting at a chemical process filtration firm in Texas, to a Tandy CoCo 3 that today functions as a “programming assistant” to a former Playstation game programmer.  Of interest to A2Central readers though will be the Apple IIe that still manages all the inventory tracking and account keeping at Huffman Industrial Warehouse in Eden, North Carolina.

Says owner Kevin Huffman: “I still use the machine because it is so simple to use, I know the software, and I can still update the tax tables manually.” He adds, “The only glitch in the entire system is that it does not recognize the year 2000, so all my printed financial reports say 1912. But on the invoices, checks, and other forms, it prints in the 11/14/12 format.”  Huffman uses Manzanita Software’s “The Business Accountant” integrated accounting package, and regularly backs up his data with Copy II+.

Coverage of Huffman’s operation and use of the Apple IIe starts on page 3 of the article.

(HT: A.C.)