Apple //e Overload

[Streck]

I went through my games tonight. So many memories... I can pretty much remember when I got each of those disks, what I originally thought of the game, and if I beat it or not. The pirated disks were rather interesting, I had forgotten I had so many. The game that showed up most often on my pirated disks was One on One followed closely by Centipede, Frogger, and Dig Dug (or Dig Doug as was humorously written on my one of the disks by my dad). I have no idea why One on One was on so many disks, it was a rather uninteresting game save for the fact that you could break the glass and have the little janitor guy yell at you.

 

The most interesting thing I found on my disks is what appears to be a beta of The Incredible Hulk text adventure. The title screen says "Hulk title screen will go here" in large letters. The game itself is rather glitchy but I'm not sure if that's because it's a beta or a dodgy crack.

 

I got them all relabeled and organized, now I need to see what needs to be uploaded to Asimov.

 

Whoa, awesome find if that's a beta!

 

Getting all the various cracks of a game archived is one of my sub-obsessions - maybe one cracking group's method differed from another's. And of course there are the different title screens, splattered with aliases and bulletin board numbers. It's about as niche as historical interest can get... but it's a valid one (or so I claim, twitching nervously).

 

I also try to image original versions of software, where the copy protection is weak enough. I mostly use Saltine's Super Transcopy for this. NIB isn't the most desirable format, since it's pretty much impossible to write that back to a real Apple floppy, but at some point in the distant future there will be no functioning 5.25" drives or disks, and it won't make much difference what format the images are in as long as there's an emulator for them! Of course, perhaps at that point the Internet will have evolved into something else and all the Asimov mirrors will be lost, but let's not think about that.

 

 

Thing is I would love to help in the intelligent and responsible quest of software preservation, but there's some things that would inhibit my ability to help.

 

1: My spare time is quite limited.

2: I don't have the ideal equipment for software preservation, nor the money to buy said equipment.

3: I don't even know if the majority of my Apple][ software is even worth preserving. My copy of Spy Hunter could be a needle in a hay stack for all I know.

 

I don't mean to be a wet blanket, but I really wasn't expecting to be making archival-grade diskette backups. I was mainly going to use this ][ to play games, including ones I downloaded and wrote to spare disks. That's why I was trying to set up a desk of sorts to make it easier to use like a *ahem*, computer..

 

Yeah, I'm definitely not trying to shove you into the role of an archivist; after all, the beauty of the Apple II (or any personal computer for that matter) is that you can do as little or as much as you want with it. The Apple II has a charming sort of multiple-personality disorder - it can be "Wozniak", a playground for you to experiment on and hack away at, or it can be "Jobs", a polished, attractive-looking appliance that you can simply turn on and use for entertainment or productivity without thinking once about its internals. I just wanted to mention that the mechanisms for pulling/creating your own disk images existed, if you ended up being interested. My offer of doing the archival grunt-work stands for as long as I'm alive and mentally sound!

Edited January 12, 2011 by Streck

[Keatah]

What a great thread this is becoming, makes me want to pull out my 3 sider drives (each has 70-100 disk ][ disk images) stored on them from my early bbs days in the 80's. I have not powered these drives up in almost 30 years, but I figure with the low-density recording used back then, they should still have their data today! What a cool experiment too.

 

It's cool! I remember the first 7 or 8 volumes were "single-capacity" and had room for exactly 1 disk ][ image. Volumes 8 through 27 had room for 3 or 4 images?? Data compression depending. And this drive was faaaassssttt!

 

CATALOG S5,D1,V23 !

Edited January 12, 2011 by Keatah

[desiv]

Wait, so does this mean my printer card is a SSC? Boy that would sure be nice! I even have this nice long serial extension cable. Only problem now is the lack of that wide serial plug to small serial plug cable.

 

Depends on the card...

It could be used for printers if you had a serial printer (which were much more common back then..).

 

If your printer card is designed for Parallel printers, then it wouldn't work..

(If by "wide serial plug", you mean "centronics", then that's parallel, not serial..)

 

desiv

[The Usotsuki]

SSC has db25 female though. But if it's like mine it'll SAY Super Serial on the card itself.

[Keatah]

I have been contemplating the best way to sell my entire APPLE II series collection. This is an exercise at this time, until I get everything 100% inventoried and cataloged and the right buyer. It is a rich collection. For example, when I say modems, it means a micromodem, apple-cat, external 1200/2400/9600 hayes modems - Including software, manuals, all cables and connectors and misc stuff & hardware fittings. Or if something, say a like a printer, which usually needs a card, manual, drivers/software/cables, it's there. I recently looked over everything. For the few 5% missing stuff, if that, you can get these doo-dads and odds & ends online or make them yourself. For example, you will NOT need to make a 212 interface cable for an apple-cat, or a cable for the mountain hardware exp chassis, or an accelerator jumper block or daughtercard connector, IT'S THERE! Printers come with extra ribbons or thermal paper. Some, but not everything, is shrinkwrapped. In effect, this is a Complete and Instant collection. None of the stuff is ratty or dirty or anything unless specifically stated. It is to be considered used, but in excellent clean no-smoke/no-mold condition. About 1/6th of the stuff has original boxes, maybe less. The value comes in the completeness and variety of add-on peripherals here. Some stuff is rare, some commonplace. We all know you can find apple II systems in dumpsters and buy them on ebay for a song and dance. But all this stuff, all in one fell swoop?? Fuhgettaboutit!

 

The physically large base cornerstone items in the collection are:

2 apple II+

2 apple //e

1 //e platinum

2 apple ///

1 apple ///+

1 apple 2c

2 apple //gs

about 6 or 7 monitors, amdek, apple rgb, apple monitor ///, big modern samsung 1900x1200 26" lcd, 2x commodore 1084s

6 disk ][ drives and about 7 or 8 other drives 5.25 / 3.5

2 siders (almost totally mint, like most stuff here)

2 or 3 profiles, 5 or 10 meg, I forget

Corvus Constellation hard disk + manuals, card, software, errata sheets (like most stuff listed here)

a few rana systems' 2 and 3 drives.

3 Silentypes (one is completely disassembled) (the other two are spit polished perfect)

2 Epson MX-80 F/T with GrafTrax III rom.

2 Apple brand graphics tablets (one in 'needs work' shape, the other pristine!)

1 Alpha Syntauri music system - complete, great shape (box falling apart, heh) + promo clear floppy 45rpm record.

2 Mountain hardware expansion chassis, card, cable, dox (one is really ratty, the other one is very nice)

 

The smaller numerous items include:

2 or 3 boxes of about 1000+ disks, more or less. Many original with manuals/sheets, some copied.

All manuals for at least 90% of the hardware if not 100% complete. 5 - 7 boxes. small box or 2 of cassettes.

4 boxes of varied books in great condition, no dupes. Small box of promotional material, brochures, Apple In-Depth, Sam's Apple Circuit descriptin, apple blue books, various mainstream books from mall bookstores, warranty cards, apple surveys, errata sheets, original apple spiral-bound manuals for cards and systems, stuff like that. a few nib 5.25 disk boxes. A pouch of various diskette label styles used back then, 16 sector stickers. Apple special delivery software. Some educational material from the library trash bin - that is fluff material. Some good books, some rare, some very commonplace. Computer Station's Programmer's Reference Manual in small yellow binder for example.

a 320gb hard disk with about 100gb of tons and tons of everything, apple documentation and disk images, .pdfs, text files, .bin files, notes and things gathered from around the web over the years, scans, catalogs, manuals, Somewhat dis-organized. But the ultimate reference and emulation collection.

Transwarp gs, with memory add-on, serial card, Super Serial card, a few parallel cards, ieee-488 interface, phasor.

Some rocket chips, a zip chip or two. lowercase chips for II+. ImageWriter printer + 32k expansion cache.

mockingboard, echo+, compact flash drive. Some other ide interface, video-7 color enhancer.

box of video overlay and network cards. corvus omni-net network software manuals and card,

3-d graphics digitizer pen setup. //gs internal fan. beefed-up power supply. spare tadiran cmos battery

Various mods, like sync-mod wires and shift key mod, some rf modulators. 1 or 2 spare II power supplies.

a few z-80 and cp/m boards, profile and sider drive interface cards, a few mice and cards, mousetext rom, lower-case chips for II+, 3.5 drive controllers, Apple II/IIgs SCSI interface, various rom versions. appli-card, numeric pad,

A small box of about 20 various apple /// interface cards including //e emulator-compatibility card, cables, fittings

6809 stellation mill some other ads mathematical accelerators, 64k 80 col card //e,

apple cat with firmware, tone decoder, bsr interface, 212, optional additional manuals, jacks, plugs, expansion, etc.

various memory cards for //e and II+ and 2gs - probably about 12 or 15 different types. 16k-8megs, ramworks I, II, and III, ramworks expander, ramfactor battery backup, 65c02 chips - a few, spare 16k chips, a few sims & sips, some IOU and MMU and HAL/PAL spares i think. a cassette recorder or two, cassette video sync mod, spare speaker.

10 modems more or less, apple-cat, micromodem, external hayes modems, usr, ae.. tg joystick and paddles, apple paddles.enhancer boards, 80 col boards, various cpm and math co-processor boards

videx enhancer, ultraterm, videoterm-80, function strip. 3 or 4 clock cards ae timemaster II H.O., no-slot clock. a couple of multi-function cards, a few blank prototype cards. a very small box of 5 or 6 unknown boards. Apple hardware diagnostics card, echo copy card, wildcard 1 & 2, central point PC copy card. some type of apple scsi enclosure + cd-rom drive for //gs + card. gs-ram, gs-ram plus, viewmaster, z80-plus, microsoft-softcard, adapple,

apple Rom board with red switch. MS ram-card with box & dox. small box of apple disk ][ controllers. rana drive.

gibson light pen and 2 koala pads, passport midi interface, pedals. ae vulcan hard disk interface.

external microbuffer, internal microbuffer, from practical peripherals. orange micro grappler.

box of A.E. boards, including pc transporter card and 80286 pc emulator card and all fittings/cables

Mountain music system, binder manuals, software blahh blahhh, more cables

//e enhancement kit 1 opened and used, one in box, a few custom crack //e roms, kensington system savers (two or 3)

box of parts, enough to build another //gs, and mainboard for both revisions.

Various accelerator cards like transwarp, zip-gs with memory and cache and add-ons.

Memory boards like titan 128, saturn systems, ms ramcard, //e 80-col card, various ramfactor // /// boards + rgb cards. Second Sight VGA board + dox box cables disks, maybe a spare II+ mainboard, 2 spare //gs boards.

small box or 2 of hardware fittings and screws and power lights, brackets, things like that, to bring it all together and perhaps fix something if it is broke (but I believe everything listed works just perfect).

Rich pickins "uncle bill's big big box of cables", I DO NOT mean a box of power-cords or cables for other systems or USB PC crap or keyboards or extension cables. I mean like ALL APPLE ][ RELATED rf cables, power cords, parallel, serial, "custom" internal cables for accessories/mods/cards, "custom" audio cables and connectors for sound boards, drive cables, rj phone jack, rca, scsi terminator for sider, power-split cables, scsi cable or two, audio casette patch cord, joystick adapter cables, accelerator connector cables and adapters, extenders, modem connectors and fittings, 80-column switchbox wires, slot riser, rgb/composite cables + brackets, joystick multiplexer / adapter, rom-board switcher, tons more, specifically for apple // & /// series and accessories. You get what you need to make EVERYTHING work and what is supposed to come with the peripherals. I must re-iterate this box of cables and misc hardware is not fluff, no boring usb ipod and smartphone sync cable garbage. There aren't many duplicates, and in many cases, only one-offs. You won't find 20 of the same thing. Perhaps 2 or 3 of something, maybe. What is in here brings everything together.

Edited January 24, 2011 by Keatah

[Ransom]

Wow, Keatah, that's a lot of A2 stuff! Shipping should be interesting. Wish I could take it all off your hands, but I think it'd completely fill my basement.

 

Good luck with your sale, when.

[Ransom]

Duplicate post.

[Keatah]

I'd guess total volume is about 1 pickup truck's worth, assuming everything is packed nicely. Eventually everything will need to go, hopefully someone will come pick it up.

[Koopa64]

Has it really been over a year and a half? Feels like last week... Anyway, I just wanted to follow up this thread with perhaps one last update on that big huge pile of Apple ][ stuff. After a long time of trying to troubleshoot the problem-prone ADT Pro audio client, I have finally figured it all out and have been writing games to floppy disks. I even got a nice new desk to put the Apple ][ on, along with a 2600 Jr.

 

 

Concerning ADT Pro, I eventually discovered that two of the biggest problems were the audio levels on the host computer (not low enough) and some disk images were in fact bad. They would either consistently fail transfering at specific blocks, or they wouldn't boot after a successful writing.

 

I also backed up that copy of Spyhunter that was mentioned earlier. I tried out the disk image in an emulator and it works fine, aside from the graphic glitching on the semi, which are there on the original floppy too.

 

http://www.mediafire.com/?549hgh9odluwx9k

 

In short, I think this thread had a happy ending after all. The Apple ][ works great, I repaired the cut cord on that custom-looking joystick, but still have to replace the microswitches in the joystick (one is broken) and I've even managed to get some games written to floppy disks.

 

There's just one small issue right now though. I am unable to find clean dumps of Montezuma's Revenge and Apple Cider Spider. Every copy I've downloaded online refuses to transfer completely or boot. Can somebody help me out?

[The Usotsuki]

http://1.buric.co/montrev.dsk.gz

 

Try this one.

[Koopa64]

You're my hero! The image transfered fine and the disk boots! Thanks a ton!

 

Now if I could just find Apple Cider Spider... It's a Sierra On-Line game.

[Tempest]

Now if I could just find Apple Cider Spider... It's a Sierra On-Line game.

It's in the Asimov Archive, I have it.

 

ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/site_index.txt

[Koopa64]

I downloaded that copy and tried to write it to a disk. Unfortunately, the transfer fails at 200 blocks. I know my floppies work fine. That makes 3 different copies now...

 

Know any other sites with Apple Cider Spider?

[Tempest]

The copy on there worked fine for me when I used ADT Pro. Are there multiple cracks of it in the archive?

[Koopa64]

There's just one disk image of Cider in that Asimov archive. Keatah linked me to two more copies. They all fail transferring at exactly 200 blocks.

 

Thanks a ton for all the help so far guys, even if my presence here is pretty short notice.

 

EDIT: I just noticed there's another copy of Cider in the Asimov archive under "cider_spider.dsk", I haven't tried that one. Wish me luck guys!

 

EDIT 2: Nope, that copy doesn't work either. It stalls at 200 blocks... Nothing is written to the disk when it should and the host client says "image transfer failure".

 

For the record, I am using the ADT Pro audio client.

Edited September 19, 2012 by Koopa64

[The Usotsuki]

No Super Serial Card? That might really help.

[Keatah]

I agree. A serial card is required equipment for any 2 series enthusiast. Ebay has one going for 12.95, but that will go up to about 25.00 I bet. I would not pay over $10 or $15 for one of these. And they can often be found in systems getting thrown out as schools upgrade their aging equipment. There's another auction for 30.00, but you get a controller card.

 

I just heard of a new version of ADT that lets you host a virtual ProDos disk via serial/ethernet card in slot 2? Pretty neat!

[Koopa64]

I never found a cheap Super Serial Card, I just stuck with the audio client in ADT Pro, much cheaper. So far, every game I've wanted has transferred successfully over the audio connection, except just one so far, Apple Cider Spider.

[Tempest]

Do yourself a favor and get the Super Serial Card, it's almost a required item for an Apple user. I use my Uther Ethernet card which makes the transfers go really fast.

[Koopa64]

I'll keep an eye out for one I guess... Again, thanks for all the help guys.