As previously reported, Vince Briel’s A2MP3 card, previewed at KansasFest 2009, is finally available for pre-order. The card is available assembled and tested for $109.95 — but KansasFest 2011 attendees had the far more fun option of building their own, under the tutelage of the card’s developer himself.

Andy Molloy was one of Vince’s workshop students and allowed his assembly of the A2MP3 card to be documented in a Computerworld.com photo gallery, "Hands on: Building an MP3 player for an Apple II computer". He makes it look easy!

The instructions Andy followed are available online. Per the Computerworld story’s last page, be sure to also check out Michael Kent’s MP3 player software, based on Vince’s original but improved to support 80-column text and lowercase, among other features.

Computerworld.com has a feature on Ben Heckendorn, who last year created a laptop Apple IIGS. Though that particular machine is not the focus of the article, it does look at Heckendorn’s background, design philosophy, and the variety of machines he’s modified, from Atari 2600 to Xbox 360.

The full transcript of the Heckendorn interview featured in the above article was the cover story for the December 2008 issue of Juiced.GS.