This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Sean Fahey of A2Central, major league collector, and member of the KansasFest Committee. It’s not too late to register! Go to kansasfest.org right now. If you listen to this show, you should definitely be there. The Garage Giveaway will be larger than ever this year. You won’t want to miss the amazing pile of free Apple II gear. The other classic traditions keep getting better as well- the cookout will be catered, and the prizes for the various contests are amazing this year. All the great Apple II community vendors have stepped up with a lot of hardware, tools, and software to give away.

KansasFest 2016 runs July 19th – July 24th at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, MO. The keynote speaker this year is Mike Harvey, best known in the Apple II community as the editor of Nibble magazine. He has some great stories about the business and culture of the early computing era.

We don’t just talk about KansasFest this month. We dive a bit deeper into the murky world of Apple II clones. Also marvel as Mike pretends to know nothing about KansasFest, and roll your eyes as Quinn continues to beat a dead horse joke about the eBay segment. Fear not, however, because the world is a better now that we all know the Lode Runner board game exists.

Z0DWARE WHERE ARE YOU?!

This month on Open Apple we sit down with Peter Lount, co-developer of Gemstone Warrior and Gemstone Healer for the Apple II. Canadian programmer Peter and his partner Trouba broke new ground in video games by combining fast action combat with procedurally generated caves and dungeon content. Gemstone Warrior doesn’t get credit for being the predecessor to Blizzard megahit Diablo, but it should. Peter talks about tuning his rendering engine, including rewriting huge chunks of it overnight to meet a deadline. What’s your reality resolution?

Tune in to hear Mike complain that Gemstone’s monsters are too smart for him, and hear Quinn choke on the most important Apple II announcement of the year. We talk a lot about solid state drives, marvel at underground ‘zines, and bask in the awesome glory of Brutal Deluxe’s tape collection. Audio is still the “best” way to move data after all these years. “A bold statement,” you say? “Nonsense,” you cry? Listen and decide.

Meanwhile, Ultimate Micro continues to kick butt by reverse engineering all that sweet Applied Engineering hardware, Quinn makes terrible “card” jokes, and we catch up on lots of feedback.

Breaking the fourth wall on segment bumpers- good idea, or great idea?

KansasFest 2016, the 28^th annual Apple II convention, is now open for registration.  Users, programmers, hobbyists, and retrocomputing enthusiasts are invited to Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri, from Tuesday, July 19, through Sunday, July 24, for six days and five nights of sessions, demos, announcements, contests, and camaraderie.

Mike Harvey, a business executive, salesperson, technologist, project manager, entrepreneur, programmer, and best known in the Apple community as the founder and publisher of Nibble magazine, will join us with a keynote presentation. Harvey will be available immediately afterward for a Q&A and autograph session.

Attendees are encouraged to share their knowledge by presenting their own hardware and software sessions related to the Apple II. All KansasFest sessions are presented by the attendees, who are known for unscheduled events and debuts, too. Whether it’s a behind-the-scenes look at new software, preorder opportunities for new hardware, a hands-on workshop, a podcast recording session, Structris tournaments, or an athletic round of Bite the Bag, there are experiences to be had and memories to be made at KansasFest that aren’t possible except in the company of surprising, brilliant, diehard Apple II fans.

Register by May 31 to guarantee a price of $385 for a double room or $455 for a single, which includes admission to all sessions as well as most meals. After that, prices rise $55. Official KansasFest shirts are extra and optional and must be ordered by June 22; registration for staying on-site closes July 1. To register, please visit the official registration form.

KansasFest invites any and all Apple II users, fans, and friends to attend the longest running annual Apple II conference. KansasFest is working towards non-profit status, which will help keep the conference alive for many more years. For photos, videos, schedules, and presentations from past year’s events or to sign up for the email list and for inquiries, please visit the event’s Web site.

KansasFest 2016, the 28^th annual Apple II convention, is scheduled for July 19 – 24 in Kansas City, Missouri. Mike Harvey, a business executive, salesperson, technologist, project manager, entrepreneur, programmer, and best known in the Apple community as the founder and publisher of Nibble magazine, will join us with a keynote presentation.

Harvey started his career as a salesperson for IBM and continued with various roles at other major technology companies, including marketing at Burroughs, planning and project management at Xerox, and executive positions with several others. In October 1979, he was between jobs and thought he would start an Apple II magazine, Nibble. The first four issues contained his own programs until he was able to attract free-lance authors. Over the next 12 ½ years, he published over 16,000 pages and inspired countless technology-related careers. At its pinnacle, Nibble earned about $5 million annually, had over 100,000 readers, and had the second highest circulation among Apple II magazines, all handled via an Apple II-based order and fulfillment system that he developed. The technical challenges were considerable – for example, figuring out how to sort and print 30,000 subscriber labels in ZIP code sequence on a network of Apple IIs. The success of Nibble contributed to Harvey’s publication of PC Hands On for IBM PC compatible systems and to four years of Nibble Mac. After Nibble shut down in 1992, Harvey returned to executive leadership in the mainframe industry. He retired in 2000 and now enjoys web development, photography, computer art, and travel. His breadth of industry experience and unique business perspective is certain to inspire and entertain KansasFest attendees.

KansasFest is an annual convention offering Apple II users and retrocomputing enthusiasts the opportunity to engage in beginner and technical sessions, programming contests, exhibition halls, and camaraderie. KansasFest was originally hosted by Resource Central and has been brought to you by the KFest committee since 1995. Any and all Apple II users, fans, and friends are invited to attend this year’s event. Registration details will be announced on the KansasFest Web site in February 2016. For photos, videos, and presentations from past KansasFests, please visit the event’s official Web site.

Volume 20, Issue 3 (Sep 2015) of Juiced.GS, the longest-running Apple II publication in print, is now arriving in subscribers’ mailboxes. At 28 pages, this is the largest issue of Juiced.GS ever, featuring coverage of the KansasFest and Apple II Festival France conventions; Carrington Vanston’s HackFest journal; an interview with the editors of Scholastic Microzine; a breakdown of ProDOS file headers and fields; the penultimate chapter of Detective Pomme and Colonel Hexings’ latest mystery; and much, much more!

This is Juiced.GS‘s third quarterly issue of 2015, its twentieth year in print. Subscriptions for 2015 and 2016 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.

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Tony Diaz- KansasFest committee member, and consummate Apple II collector. With KansasFest just days away, we go deep on Tony’s amazing collection of unique prototypes, documents, peripherals, and the stories that go with them. If there’s a person with deeper knowledge of the early history of Apple Hardware, we haven’t met them.

Thanks for your patience in June, everyone! Some technical and logistical difficulties kept us from posting this episode as soon as we would have liked. We hope the show is worth the wait. We dive into lots of new hardware toys, KansasFest-like events around the world, lots of software updates, and one of the best Apple II games ever made.

How many times does Quinn boo Atari this month? What can we learn about Mike’s dark, mysterious past? How many tedious Jobs movie news items can the world produce? Listen and find out!

KansasFest 2015 is just days away. Hope to see you all in Kansas City this week!

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Paul Lutus, author of seminal early Apple II software such as AppleWriter and GraFORTH. We talk about the impacts of software development on society, the value of the individual in the process, and the trials of coding software in the woods.

We talk extreme offsite backups, KansasFest keynotes, telnet BBSing, and the hurricane of awesome that is ReactiveMicro. We reminisce about the original Home Computer Wars (these kids today arguing about their smartphones are so darned cute), and also Boo Atari.

We trek from Bulgaria to Korea to Canada and back again, to bring you the latest in sound cards, solid state storage, and portable Apple IIc action. You won’t want to miss Quinn plugging Phil Plait for some reason. With our story on Atari 8-bits in Poland, this marks the most Atari content ever on Open Apple. It also qualifies us as the 698th currently operating Atari podcast. Boo Atari. See what you get when you poke the bear, people? ][ Infinitum.

KansasFest 2015, the 27^th annual Apple II convention, is scheduled for July 14 –19 in Kansas City, Missouri. Rebecca “Burger Becky” Heineman, a prolific computer game programmer, designer, and industry veteran, will join us with a keynote presentation.

Heineman learned programming at age 16 and gained fame in 1980 as the first National Space Invaders Champion with a score of 165,200. Her career soon blossomed with credits in over 250 games including classics such as Tass Times in Tonetown, Dragon Wars, Crystal Quest, The Bard’s Tale III: The Thief of Fate, Battle Chess, and Wolfenstein 3D. She developed numerous titles for the Apple IIgs, other contemporary platforms such as the Macintosh and Super Nintendo, and modern platforms such as the Xbox 360 and Playstation 4. She has founded or co-founded multiple game companies, including the venerable Interplay Entertainment, and worked for many more. Heineman continues to work in the game industry, and her company Olde Sküül recently announced a new RPG, Dragons of the Rip. She has not announced an Apple IIgs port.

KansasFest is an annual convention offering Apple II users and retrocomputing enthusiasts the opportunity to engage in beginner and technical sessions, programming contests, exhibition halls, and camaraderie. KansasFest was originally hosted by Resource Central and has been brought to you by the KFest committee since 1995. Any and all Apple II users, fans, and friends are invited to attend this year’s event. Registration details will be announced on the KansasFest Web site in April 2015. For photos, videos, and presentations from past KansasFests, please visit the event’s official Web site at http://www.kansasfest.org/.

Volume 19, Issue 3 (Sep 2014) of Juiced.GS, the longest-running Apple II publication in print, has been mailed to all subscribers. This issue features coverage of KansasFest 2014; developer journals for both Lawless Legends and Apple2048; an interview with Robin Bailey, author of novels based on Infocom text adventure games; a tutorial for dealing with resource forks from an 8-bit environment; and much, much more!

This is Juiced.GS‘s third quarterly issue of 2014. Subscriptions for 2014 and 2015 are 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.

Registration for KansasFest 2014 closes on Thursday, July 10. This is your last chance to get the sessions, camaraderie, and keynote from Margot Comstock.  Also, don’t forget to register for the optional “Build Your Own Computer” workshop with Vince Briel and “Stitch Your Own Apple IIe Ornament” workshop with Sarah Walkowiak by July 10.

Here’s the latest list of sessions.  The final schedule will be available shortly before KansasFest starts.

• Off-the-Grid Total Portability for the Apple IIc (Steven Buggie)
• Sew your own Apple II ornament (Sarah Walkowiak)
• Apple II Pi (David Schmenk)
• Controlling I/O via game port interface, or “How I learned to stop worrying and love the Apple II rocket launcher” (Ivan Hogan)
• Emulator detection in 6502 assembly language (Mark Pilgrim)
• Accelerating the IIc+ (James Littlejohn)
• How to Play STAR SAGA: ONE using VASSAL (Michael Sternberg)
• AppleTalk Networking with GSport (Peter Neubauer)
• A2CLOUD and A2SERVER 2014 (Ivan Drucker)
• Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of Sara (Tony Diaz)
• Jungle Adventure: an interactive text adventure (Ken Gagne)
• 3D Print Your Next Apple II (Charles Mangin)
• Making Apple II software on Mac OS X with cc65 (Carrington Vanston)
• A.P.P.L.E. — A Highlight of Current Projects and Products (Bill Martens & Brian Wiser)
• The Third Wave: A brief history of the Apple /// Development (Mike Maginnis)
• An Overview of the Apple3rtr Emulator (Mike Maginnis)
• Getting Started with an Apple ///: Oh My Gosh, What Did I Just Buy? (Mike Maginnis)
• Computer Art Technology (Andrés Lozano)
• Build a computer workshop (Vince Briel)
• Japanese on the Apple IIGS (Ian Johnson)
• Lawless Legends top-to-bottom (Martin Haye)
• The Internet Archive: It’s Been a Busy Year (Jason Scott)
• Satin Weave (Daniel Kruszyna)
• Veronica – a 6502 pilgrimage (Quinn Dunki)