apple2history.org Open in urlscan Pro
66.33.218.190  Public Scan

Form analysis
2 forms found in the DOM

POST #mc_signup

<form method="post" action="#mc_signup" id="mc_signup_form">
  <input type="hidden" id="mc_submit_type" name="mc_submit_type" value="js">
  <input type="hidden" name="mcsf_action" value="mc_submit_signup_form">
  <input type="hidden" id="_mc_submit_signup_form_nonce" name="_mc_submit_signup_form_nonce" value="fae86abcf8">
  <div class="mc_form_inside">
    <div class="updated" id="mc_message">
    </div><!-- /mc_message -->
    <div class="mc_merge_var">
      <label for="mc_mv_EMAIL" class="mc_var_label mc_header mc_header_email">Email Address</label>
      <input type="text" size="18" placeholder="" name="mc_mv_EMAIL" id="mc_mv_EMAIL" class="mc_input">
    </div><!-- /mc_merge_var -->
    <div class="mergeRow">
      <label class="mc_email_format">Preferred Format</label>
      <div class="field-group groups mc_email_options">
        <ul class="mc_list">
          <li><input type="radio" name="email_type" id="email_type_html" value="html" checked="checked"><label for="email_type_html" class="mc_email_type">HTML</label></li>
          <li><input type="radio" name="email_type" id="email_type_text" value="text"><label for="email_type_text" class="mc_email_type">Text</label></li>
        </ul>
      </div>
    </div>
    <div class="mc_signup_submit">
      <input type="submit" name="mc_signup_submit" id="mc_signup_submit" value="Subscribe" class="button">
    </div><!-- /mc_signup_submit -->
  </div><!-- /mc_form_inside -->
</form>

GET https://apple2history.org/

<form method="get" id="searchform" action="https://apple2history.org/" role="search">
  <label for="s" class="assistive-text">Search</label>
  <input type="text" class="field" name="s" value="" id="s" placeholder="Search Here …">
  <input type="submit" class="submit" name="submit" id="searchsubmit" value="Go">
</form>

Text Content

THE STORY OF "THE MOST PERSONAL COMPUTER"!


MENU

 * About
   * Subscribe
   * Contact Me
 * Book
 * Apple II History
   * 1-Pre-Apple History
   * 2-The Apple-1
   * 3-The Apple II
   * 4-The Apple II, cont.
   * 5-The Disk II
   * 6-The Apple II Plus
   * 7-The Apple IIe
   * 8-The Apple IIc
   * 9–The Apple IIc Plus
   * 10-The Apple IIGS
   * 11-The Apple IIGS, cont.
   * 12-Foreign & Clones
   * 13-Peripherals
   * 14-DOS
   * 15-DOS 3.3 & Beyond
   * 16-Languages
   * 17-Languages, cont.
   * 18-Software
   * 19-AppleWorks
   * 20-Magazines
   * 21-Magazines, cont.
   * 22-Online
   * 23-Viruses
   * 24-Renaissance?
   * Glossary
   * Bibliography
   * Genealogy
 * Apple II Software Hits
   * 1978-80
   * 1980-84 Misc
   * 1981
   * 1982
   * 1983
   * 1984
   * 1985
   * 1986
   * 1987
   * 1988
   * 1989
   * 1990
   * 1991
   * 1992
   * 1993
   * 1994
 * Apple II Achievement Awards
   * 1990
   * 1991
   * 1998
   * 1999
   * 2000
   * 2001
 * Apple II Timeline
   * 1969-1977
   * 1978-1981
   * 1982-1985
   * 1986-1989
   * 1990-1995
   * 1996-2003
 * Articles
   * Suburban Chicago Newspapers 4/25/01
   * Open-Apple, Feb 1987, ‘Ask Uncle DOS’
   * The Apple Story, Part 1
   * The Apple Story, Part 2
   * In The Beginning There Were User Groups
   * And Then There Was Apple
   * Microprocessor Report, July 11, 1994
   * History of Juiced.GS
 * Museum A-L
   * Ads: Hardware 1981
   * Ads: Hardware 1982
   * Ads: Hardware 1983
   * Ads: Software 1981
   * Ads: Software 1982
   * Ads: Software 1983
   * Books
   * Books: Manuals
   * Computers
   * Computers: Apple-1
   * Computers: Apple II, Rev 0
   * Computers: Bell & Howell
   * Computers: Clones
   * Computers: Custom
   * Computers: Lisa
   * Computers: Prototypes
 * Museum M-U
   * Magazines
   * Magazines: Softalk
   * Miscellaneous
   * Peripherals
   * Peripherals: Apple
   * Peripheral Cards: Apple
   * Peripheral Cards: non-Apple
   * Screen Shots
   * Software: Apple
   * Software: Games
   * Software: Misc
 * Museum V-Z
   * Videos
     * History of Apple II by Apple, 1984
     * Apple Time Capsule, 1984
     * Apple Promotional Video, Fall 1984
     * Wozniak and the Apple History Museum, 1984
     * John Sculley discusses the Apple II, 1988
   * Videos: Commercials
     * Apple II: Apples and Oranges, 1981
     * Apple II: Homemaker, 1981
     * Apple IIc Commercial, 1984
     * Apple IIc: Control a building, 1984
     * Apple IIc: Compared to IBM PCjr, 1984
     * Apple II: Don’t put off what you can do today, 1986
     * Apple II: Get him one of his own, 1986
     * Apple II: Influences, 1986
     * Apple II: Nightmare, 1986
     * Apple II: Teach Your Children Well, 1986
     * Apple IIGS: Dual Mind, 1986
     * Apple IIGS: Give your kids the universe, 1986
     * Apple IIGS: The solution, 1986
 * Parodies
   * Apple II Pie
   * Wreck Of The Apple ][
   * Hack, Hack, Hack
   * They’re Running Our Code
   * Print Some Fonts
   * SCSI !
   * A Visit From Saint Woz
 * Files
 * Spotlight
   * Bob Bishop
   * Don Worth & Beneath Apple DOS
   * Jason Harper
   * Jeff Mazur & the CDrive / CKeeper
   * Mike Harvey
   * Mike Westerfield & The Byte Works
   * The Long Strange Saga of Wolfenstein 3D On The Apple IIGS
 * Links


BEIGE IS BEIGE, RIGHT?

Posted on January 20, 2021 by Steven Weyhrich

Leave a Comment

Long ago I included a quote from Jerry Manock about what color was used on the
Apple II series. Clearly, the correct answer is “Pantone 453” like he said,
right?

Well, perhaps it’s not that simple. Ben Zotto did some deeper research, and
posted this fascinating article on the history of that classic color. Read it
here:

https://bzotto.medium.com/what-color-was-apple-beige-acd14bca0c1a




MINECRAFT APPLE IIE, PART ][

Posted on September 2, 2017 by Steven Weyhrich

Leave a Comment

Well, hundreds of readers have asked me, nay, begged me for this, so I decided
to go along with their request. If you have Minecraft (Java edition, or “real”
Minecraft as us old-timers call it) and know how to use MCEdit to cut and paste
things into world files, here is your opportunity to get your own copy of the
Apple IIe (and ImageWriter printer and modem and disk drive, etc., etc.). Just
click on the link on my download page, and it can all be yours!

> Minecraft Apple IIe and Skyblock schematic




KANSASFEST 2017 POSTLUDE

Posted on July 26, 2017 by Steven Weyhrich

3 Comments

I know that my posts here in the past few years are often just saying “Hey, I
was at KansasFest” and not much else, but, hey, what can I say, there’s not much
new in Apple II history these days.

That being said, I’m going to feature something written by someone else. My
KFest roommate this year was Dave Rogers, a newcomer to the event. He writes a
blog, “Nice Marmot”, and has a good, comprehensive discussion of his experiences
at this year’s event. You can see what he thought about it here, and it is well
worth a read.

Dave also made a discovery that passed me by completely. Way back when, Brooke
Boering had a company called Vagabondo Enterprises, and created a visual
programming language called CEEMAC. It allowed creation of hi-res graphics
animations on the Apple II. Back around 1982 or so, he released a demo disk that
highlighted the capabilities of CEEMAC, and called that demo “Fire Organ”. It
was intended to be a self-running demo, with some ability to interact and change
how it worked.



I had a copy of Fire Organ back in the day, but never spent the money to get the
CEEMAC programming language disk.

What does this have to do with KFest? Well, for the Apple IIe that I brought
along, I neglected to include any disks to boot it with. Or I thought I had not
done so. When I plugged it in and turned it on, I discovered that it did boot up
something, and found there was a copy (so I thought) of Fire Organ in the disk
drive. Oh, cool, I thought; I’ll just run this as an interesting visual demo in
my room here. (Okay, green-screen monitor, so less interesting than it could
have been, but…)

Dave saw this at some point during the week, and took a closer look at the disk.
He pointed out to me that this was not the Fire Organ demo, but was a copy of
CEEMAC v1.61 (beta), meaning that this was actually the programming language
used to create the Fire Organ demo! I literally have no idea where I got this,
but he made sure it got into the hands of 4am, so it could be imaged for the
Internet Archive, as it appeared to be different from the version that was
already there.

So, thanks to Dave’s sharp eye, there is another version of CEEMAC available for
the world to look at. I appreciate his enthusiasm, and also appreciate the work
done by Brook Boering years ago to create an amazing graphical programming
language for the Apple II.

And, although I don’t do much programming these days, and do not do any hardware
hacking, I do still have a strange urge to create song parodies. Two years ago
it was “KFest Funk“, last year it was “Week of the KFest“, and this year it was
“Rockhurst”, a parody of Marty Robbins “El Paso”. The video stars Ken Gagne,
editor of Juiced.GS, the longest running Apple II magazine still in print, and
Chris Torrence, editor of Assembly Lines: The Complete Book.




MINECRAFT DÉJÀ VU – HAVEN’T WE BEEN HERE BEFORE??

Posted on April 5, 2017 by Steven Weyhrich

4 Comments

Waaaay back in 2011, I got started playing this fascinating game, Minecraft. And
it didn’t take long for me to decide to do a build that looked like a giant
Apple II Plus (see the link at the end of this article).

With time, the game evolved and improved, and more diverse blocks were added.
But for the longest time, I didn’t really do anything with my Apple II. Then in
2014 I decided to attack the project again, this time with a larger scale Apple
IIe. I did the entire computer, an Apple Modem 1200, and a telephone, all built
in Survival mode; for those who have not played the game, that’s where you have
to obtain the blocks you build with manually, but mining them and crafting them.
I set the project aside for another three years, and then earlier this year I
went back to it, but decided to complete it by using Creative mode, where you
can just give yourself all the blocks you want; it makes the process faster.

The result is the above video, which includes not just the computer, modem, and
telephone, but also an ImageWriter I printer (producing a Print Shop-style
banner), a joystick, a DuoDisk drive, and a Monitor II, with blocky lo-res-style
graphics displayed. And to complete the project, I built my old favorite stereo
system from college in the 1970s.

Why did I do it? I don’t know, except that it was satisfying to complete the
project I’d started long ago, and do it better than the old one I did back in
the early days of Minecraft. I may not be doing any programming on the Apple II
these days, but this game gave me a chance to be creative in a different
fashion.

BTW, here is the link to the original 2011 video. If you live in a part of the
world that doesn’t allow the background music I picked back then, which was
copyrighted music, you may not be allowed to view this.




KANSASFEST 2016

Posted on July 23, 2016 by Steven Weyhrich

1 Comment

It has been a long time since I made a post here (hello, August 2015!!), but
life has been busy, and I have other things that draw my attention besides my
old stalwart Apple II fun.

What brings me back to the blog again to mention the annual Apple II convention,
KansasFest, which was held July 19-23, 2016, in Kansas City, Missouri at
Rockhurst University. It was, I feel, another excellent gathering of the best
and brightest in the Apple II world, and shows continued growth of the numbers
of fans who find out what fun it is to get together with others who love this
computer, to teach each other and learn from each other, and to press back the
frontiers of what this old machine can do. While the following is not
comprehensive, here are some things that stood out to me:

 * We were treated to updates to Lawless Legends, the new graphic
   role-playing game undergoing development, and a release of a smaller game,
   Ancient Legends, that runs using the same game engine as Lawless Legends (see
   the Legends web site for details on how to get that).
 * PERCOL-8, a networkable Apple II emulator that not only runs old Apple II
   software, but uses special graphics software to manipulate the old screens to
   you can get a 3D type of effect, or even have two different people help play
   the same game at the same time.
 * How the Internet Archive is making it even easier to run old Apple II
   software right in your web browser.
 * How Apple II software deprotector 4am (a great contributor to the Internet
   Archive collection) came up with a program to allow you to automatically
   remove copy protection from most old software (if you have any old uncopyable
   disks).
 * More and more about emulators than I’ve heard at KFest for years

and much more than I have time to discuss here. You can look for videos of many
of the sessions on YouTube; here is the talk I gave about the history of online
services here:



We had the privilege of a visit this year by David Pierini of Cult of Mac, who
wrote five stories about the event:

 * Apple II fans find themselves in hog heaven at KansasFest
 * This guy makes badly aged Apple computers sparkle again
 * KansasFest solder session proves there’s fun in melting metal
 * KansasFest is a second-chance childhood for one programmer
 * KansasFest: Final notes from ‘Nerdvana’

And I was able to complete another parody video about the event, this year with
lots of video from the event:



Not only this, but we will be having it again next year, July 18-23, 2017. Come
next year, and celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apple II !

 


EDIBLE APPLE II

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Steven Weyhrich

Leave a Comment

A few years ago I saw posted info on Geek Culture/Joy of Tech on how to make a
cake that looked like the Smithsonian Apple-1 computer:



Now, Mike Maginnis has posted in the Apple II Enthusiasts group on Facebook a
link to pictures of an Apple II wedding cake.



I like the look of it, but wish they included info on how it was made. What a
dessert at KFest 2016 this would make!


LAINE NOONEY AND APPLE HISTORY

Posted on August 12, 2015 by Steven Weyhrich

1 Comment

This entire web site is focused on preserving and telling the story of
microcomputers, focused with insane depth on the Apple II. I’ve been telling it
for 20 plus years, and have a book about it. So I know what I know quite well,
and if any of you who have taken the time to either read the story on this web
site or in the book also know what I know.

But I always enjoy learning more about the era of the Apple II and its
competition and getting new information or new points of view. The Open Apple
podcast, which focuses on news and interviews about the Apple II is often a
source of stories that expand my knowledge, and episode #49 for July 2015 is
a particularly fascinating listen. They have an extended conversation with Laine
Nooney, a person who is way too young to have been involved with the Apple II
when it was new and exciting. Her research for a dissertation brought her to
look into Online Systems / Sierra Online, as well as with other software
companies of the day, and the conversation they have drifts over into the impact
of the computer on homes and families, and what she has learned about it.

When I think I know so much that there is not much more to learn, a gem like
this interview comes along, and I realize levels of computer history that go
beyond my extremely specific area of knowledge. It is well worth a listen.

Addendum: Here is a link to Nooney’s research on Sierra Online, as much as she
has made publicly available at this time. Read it.


KFEST, AS SEEN BY AN OUTSIDER

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Steven Weyhrich

2 Comments

While at KansasFest this year, we had two new people show up, for the purpose of
doing a news story about the event. I had not heard of their publication,
Motherboard, prior to this, and I will admit I was a little skeptical about how
this would turn out. I have seen interviews and stories before that were done
with a particular purpose in mind, and sometimes the final result is not
flattering.

I must applaud the writer of the piece, Jason Koebler, for a job well done. He
did capture the essence of the event, and did it as someone who has not been
there before, and in fact someone who does not really know anything about the
Apple II.

You can read the article here. The style reminds me of the audio stories I hear
on NPR’s weekly program, This American Life, which I mean as a compliment, as I
feel that most of those stories as well done, and good listens.


CHANGES COMING

Posted on June 27, 2015 by Steven Weyhrich

Leave a Comment

The Apple II History web site is undergoing some changes in the near future, not
only a change in appearance, but also a change as far as how to get these posts
when I put them up.

If you are using an RSS reader to get these posts, change the feed address from
“feeds.feedburner.com/apple2history” to “http://apple2history.org/feed/”. If you
do not make the change, you will not see further updates in messages.

Thank you for your continued interest in this web site!


KFEST 2015 IS COMING!

Posted on June 16, 2015 by Steven Weyhrich

1 Comment

That annual Apple II conference is only a month away, and yes, I’ve got another
music parody for it:



Come down and help me make it better with live action!

 

1 2 3 … 13 »

SIGN UP FOR APPLE II HISTORY

Email Address
Preferred Format
 * HTML
 * Text


Search

BLOG POSTS

 * Apple II
 * Apple II Plus
 * Apple IIc
 * Apple IIe
 * Apple IIGS
 * Book
 * General
 * KansasFest
 * Magazines
 * Pictures
 * Uncategorized
 * Update

ARCHIVES

Archives Select Month January 2021 September 2017 July 2017 April 2017 July 2016
August 2015 June 2015 April 2015 July 2014 June 2014 February 2014 January 2014
December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013
June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December
2012 November 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April
2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October
2011 July 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011
December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010
Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Natural by Organic Themes.