apple II

June 27, 2017

Star Wars: The Last Jedi Trailer Faithfully Recreated On An Apple II

Peter Paltridge apple II, Movies, star wars, Star Wars: The Last Jedi 0

As an old computer enthusiast, let me just say that the Apple II is obviously the best thing Steve Jobs ever created. He would never do anything more significant. It says something that the original Apple II came out at the same time as the first Star Wars movie, and yet it’s capable of recreating the trailer for the latest Star Wars movie pretty accurately. The recreation came to us from New York City-based artist Wahyu Ichwandardi. He used an old paint program called Dazzle Draw and an early form of graphics tablet called a KoalaPad to redraw every scene on an Apple IIc frame by frame — it took 288 of these drawings to recreate the entire thing. The Apple did not display the full trailer as you see it; Ichwandardi saved the frames onto floppy disks (48 in all) and edited them together after transferring them to a modern PC. But could the Apple II actually run this, if it was coded to? It’s possible. There were several

January 14, 2017

Some Genius Ported Portal To The Apple II

Peter Paltridge apple II, Portal, Valve, video games 0

Vince Weaver is an assistant professor at the University of Maine’s Electrical & Computer Engineering department. He has a YouTube channel where he shows off some of his wacky mad science projects, and his latest was to create a port of Valve’s classic puzzler Portal to the Apple II. And he pulled it off! To save disk space and increase processing speed, most professional Apple coders would write their games in Assembly language. But this guy? He actually created this with BASIC. You can see exactly how it was made, line by line, and that is just too cool. Obviously it’s not exactly the same. It functions on a 2D plane, the puzzles have been simplfied and movement is much slower. It’s also still a work in progress and has just two test chambers so far. But it has a fully functioning portal gun and physics to match, plus GLaDOS’ chamber, all rendered in BASIC. You even get the Still Alive song at the end (complete with a giant ASCII

May 31, 2015

Woman Throws Away Original Apple Computer Worth $200,000

Peter Paltridge apple 1, apple i, apple II 0

You may be familiar with the Apple II, the inexpensive yet powerful home computer that put Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak on the map. It wasn’t called “II” for no reason — there really was an Apple 1, but it was literally assembled in a garage by Jobs, Wozniak, and a man named Ron Wayne in 1976. It consisted of a keyboard and a naked circuit board…it was up to the purchaser to supply some kind of box to contain it in, as well as a monitor to display the data. Only around 200 were made, by hand, by the legendary pair (and Ron Wayne). One year later they refined their process, got some funding and launched the Apple II. Given its significance in history, Apple 1s are extremely valuable when they can be found. An unidentified retiree had no idea when she cleaned out her late husband’s garage, found his old Apple 1 and dumped it off for recycling at the plant. The plant workers recognized it immediately. Well,