This month on Open Apple, the Apple II community’s only monthly podcast, Mike and Ken chat with Brendan Robert of the Java Apple Computer Emulator (JACE) and Apple Game Server.Innovative cross-platform tools are being used to bring Lawless Legends, an original 8-bit RPG, to the Apple II and Commodore 64; as part of the programming team, Brendan takes us behind the scenes. He lives in a lawless land himself — the Old West of Texas, where gaming icons Ion Storm, Zynga, Lord British, Rooster Teeth reside. But when it comes to games, sometimes you can’t do better than Tetris, of which there are many new and devious deviations. We get rid of old toys, like a SCSI CD-ROM 7-disc changer and a LANceGS card, so we can all have room for new toys, like A2CLOUD, Apple2Pi, BenchmarkeD, AppleIIWorks Envoy, and Final Cut Pro X. And sadly, Wayne Green of InCider and Byte has passed away; we remember his magazines fondly.

Find the show at the Open Apple Web site or in the iTunes and Zune podcast directories.

Brendan Robert has released the latest Java Apple Computer Emulator (JACE) build. Here are the changes:

] Fixed nasty bug that caused crashes when joystick buttons (alt-keys) were pressed. Airheart is 100% playable again!

] RamWorks support is now available for up to 8 megabytes of memory. In addition to the RamFactor support it is possible to use both at the same time. Not that you’d ever use 24mb ram in an Apple //e. :-P

] CPU can now log warnings if 65c02 extended opcodes are used. You can enable this to detect old incompatible usages of illegal 6502 opcodes.

] Cleaned up a few improperly implemented softswitches. MMU implementation is 100% compatible now.

Download it here: https://sites.google.com/site/brendanrobert/projects/jace

Brendan Robert released a new JACE update yesterday.  Here’s the list of new features, fixes and release notes:

This is the first major release, bringing this emulator within a hair of my original vision for what I wanted it to be: it is a complete recreation of the computer I had growing up.  (yaaaaaay!)  There are a few bugs left to fix, but the only people in this world that claim software is ever complete are sales people.  In spite of its flaws it’s ready to get some heavy use: I took the BETA label off the sourceforge page.

] Several timing and deadlock fixes, this not only spells more stable but also a lot more efficient in some cases.

] AE RamFactor card implemented and working.  You will need to install the AE Ram Expander for Appleworks to see the extra storage.
    *There is an additional option to max out the speed of the emulator when the ramfactor is in use.  This means that any applications using Ram for cache or extra storage will speed up dramatically.

] Mockingboard works perfectly with Ultima 5.  
    *AE Phasor support has been implemented, but it isn’t working right just yet.  For now, just use Mockingboard mode.
    *Note: Only use ONE mockingboard.  Using more than one will cause the timing issues and sound horrible.
    *You can use a mockingboard at the same time as a Passport MIDI card.  It has a strange syncopated sound to it.  it does reveal, however, that the mockingboard playback is pitch-perfect. :-)

] Visual UI completely overhauled: Now fullscreen is possible (press F9)
    *Pressing F8 while in fullscreen will toggle aspect-constrained or stretched displays.

] Indicator icons now appear for:
    *Disk II activity
    *Mass storage activity
    *Mouse activation
    *SSC activity
    *RamFactor activity

JACE, the Java Apple Computer Emulator is an open source, multi-platform Apple II emulator.  Get binaries, source code and documentation at the JACE Sourceforge page.  More information is also available at Brendan’s page.

Hot on the heels of last week’s update, Brendan Robert has released another Java Apple Computer Emulator (JACE) build.  This release contains a number of new and exciting features, as well as a few bug fixes:

(2012-08-02) This is a HUGE feature release and also fixes a few old bugs. All in all, this is a very stable and heavily-tested release.

Re-architected underlying memory event handler model to include CPU opcode/operand memory accesses. This makes it much easier for anyone to extend the emulation by registering events to be triggered by CPU executes to specific addresses.

New memory heatmap view added to MetaCheat (press END to activate). This lets you visually inspect ram as it is changing.

Fixed graphics glitches in hires mode. This caused annoying artifacts on the boundary between alternating hi/lo bit bytes in hires modes.

Improved RGB Mode 7 support to auto-detect RGB mode. This implements the spec as laid out in the Video 7 patent as well as the Apple RGB manual, with the exception that 160-column mode is not implemented and will be treated as a regular 140-column mode.

Reset also causes the RGB mode to flip back to plain 140-column mode again.

Fixed Disk ][ bug that caused hangups in programs like Apple Desktop ][.

Ancient debugger panel (F10) now fixed so that breakpoints happen as the instruction is executed, not afterwards.

As always, the latest binaries, source and documentation are available at the JACE Sourceforge page.

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.

JACE, the Java Apple Computer Emulator has been updated.  Per Brendan Robert’s comp.sys.apple2 post:

1) Concurrent modification exceptions have been eradicated when you apply settings changes.  These used to kill the emulation when you used the config screen to tweak settings or change disks.  I am very happy to say it works correctly as it was intended to work from the get go.  You can even switch to the ][DB debugger rom in mid-session without a crash!  Also supported are changing out card assignments, though some software only detects on start so you might have to use a three-fingered salute anyway.

2) Frame generation is now cycle-perfect, so split screen modes work as expected

3) Other video generation controls are provided, so it is possible to slow down the scanner, or change where HBL is generated from.  This seems rather silly, but for some reason it is the only way to get certain things (floating bus rainbow example) to work for now (default settings are compatible)

4) It is also possible to beautifully render the money munchers title, just set the HBL x/y offsets to 0 and set the scan interval to 3.  I’m not sure why, but this is the only way I could get it to stop flickering madly, though I know it is not **correct** at all.

Download the latest build here.