This month on Open Apple, the Apple II community’s only co-hosted podcast, Mike and Ken chat with Egan Ford, aka the datajerk, the Apple-1 and II programmer extraordinaire responsible for the Apple II Game Server Online! Egan expertly demonstrates which CPU is faster, the 6502 or 8088, running circles around everyone listening. Laurie Spiegel is an Apple II user you may not have heard of, but extraterrestrials have, thanks to her contributions to Voyager’s Golden Record; we have some of her music for you to listen to. Courtesy Facebook and scanners, we save Don Worth’s magazines from the trash and Softalk from extinction, but we can’t save derelict hardware from abandoned buildings. Will Steve Wozniak be as good a commencement speaker as the late Steve Jobs? Having heard Woz at KansasFest, we weigh in.

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

Egan Ford has added mobile versions to  the Apple Game Server and Apple Disk Server websites.  These updates make it possible for you to use your iPhone or iPad to stream the extensive catalog of titles directly to your Apple II.  Egan states in his comp.sys.apple2 post that he has only tested on the iPhone, but any HTML5-compatible smart phone should work.

Apple Game Server mobile edition can be accessed here, and the Apple Disk Server can be found here.

Egan Ford’s disk server projects have both reached their final release versions.  According to Ford’s post in comp.sys.apple2:

I think I can call both projects done for now.  The source has been updated and released (links in the READMEs).

Thanks for all the testing and feedback.  I think both services are fairly solid now.  All that is left to do is to populate the disk server with lots of disks.

If you stumble across a bug or issue, please let me know.

Visit the Game Server here, and the Disk Server here.

Egan Ford’s Apple Disk Server, which is an off-shoot of his Apple Game Server ONLINE! has been in development for a while now and has reached beta v5.

Apple Disk Server BETA v5

Here’s a list of all the changes since the project first came online earlier this month.

Jan 8, 2012
* Beta v5 released.
* Extra second of padding for slower drives.

Jan 7, 2012
* Beta v4 released.
* New 8KFI option that uses more reliable 8000 bps code.  Try HIFI first, if that does not work use 8KFI.  8kFI works with emulators too.
* All audio files volume decreased from 100% to 75%.
* In-line help.

Jan 6, 2012
* Beta v3 released.
* New INSTA-DISK with less padding.
* FORMAT and NO-FORMAT options. NO-FORMAT assumes preformatted diskette.
* All audio files volume increased from 75% to 100%. I cannot go any higher.

Jan 5, 2012
* Beta v2 released.
* All audio files volume increased from 50% to 75%.

Jan 3, 2012
* Beta released.

Egan Ford continues to improve his Apple Game Server ONLINE! project, releasing the latest version (0.5) today.  The games available to play now numbers more than 200.  According to the Change Log, v0.5 has these updates:

* Boosted audio volume from 50% to 75%.
* Added MON download option (Apple Monitor text for pasting into emulators). Right-click to save it.

Check out the fruits of Ford’s efforts here.

We first mentioned Egan Ford’s Apple Game Server Online! last week.  Today Egan posted to comp.sys.apple2 that, with the help of Michael J. Mahon, he has updated the server to version 0.2.  The game count is up to more than 200 now, and he and Michael were able to speed up the 12kHz/6kHz 8000 bps HIFI to 12kHz/8kHz 9600 bps.  A significant bug was fixed, and the old CRC check was replaced with faster checksum + file length check.

Check out the new version here.

Egan Ford (aka datajerk of the jerkwerks) today announced that his web-based Online Apple Game Server is open for business. The concept is that games can be served directly to your Apple II as audio files through the machine’s cassette ports. Ford has posted a video tutorial explaining exactly how to get it up and running. Inspired by the original a2gameserver, Ford’s project has been tested on the iPhone 4, iPad 2, Mac Firefox, Mac Chrome, and Mac Safari. More than 100 titles are available to play now.