Apple III Game - Mr. Sandman - Co Written by Woz

[Apple III Game - Mr. Sandman - Co Written by Woz]

2 hours ago, zezba9000 said:

Is that an Apple III color display that works with color video port? If so what are those called?

 

Also anyone confirm a working Apple II to Apple III joystick converter?

Yes, that's an AppleColor Monitor 100. It's pretty specific to the Apple /// (or an Apple II with the RGB video card for it). There were a couple of other monitors that worked with the XRGB port on the Apple ///, one an Electrohome, and one a Hantarex. You can get a color composite signal out of a couple of pins in that port with an appropriate cable (e.g., one from retrofloppy.com) too, it doesn't look too bad.

 

I don't think an Apple II to Apple /// joystick converter is entirely trivial, but in any event I don't know of any. There were some cards you could get (I think the Titan cards had a joystick port, and I've seen at least one card specifically for plugging an Apple II joystick into), but nothing that's easy to lay one's hands on now.

[Apple III Game - Mr. Sandman - Co Written by Woz]

Hi -- yes, actually, the help screen (hit P) says that if you hit X and Y it will reverse the joystick on each axis. See if maybe that helps? Sounds like it should. Good luck!

[Apple III Game - Mr. Sandman - Co Written by Woz]

Sounds like it's actually potentially dangerous to plug a //e joystick into a /// ...

 

Inadvertent but nevertheless pleasing pun.

[Apple III Game - Mr. Sandman - Co Written by Woz]

Did a bit of quick Googling, there is a description of the pinout differences between the /// and //e joystick ports here:

 

http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/ground.icaen.uiowa.edu/MiscInfo/Empson/joystickA3

 

Sounds like it's actually potentially dangerous to plug a //e joystick into a /// because the way the buttons are mapped, they'll cause a short. I think all the information needed to create an adapter is here, but I don't yet understand how the toggle switch is handled. Atomic Defense, if I interpreted what was happening correctly at least, seems to be able to detect the position of the toggle switch, because it uses the setting of the switch to determine which base fires. I thought it worked by firing from one base when you toggle left and one when you toggle right, but it might be actually that the position of the toggle switch selects the base and the fire button fires from the selected base. I'll have to try it again to be sure. But I don't see from the pinout list (which I'll copy and paste below) what is being used to detect it (there's just one pin assigned to SW1).

 

The Apple III joystick port has very little in common with the

Apple II one. Do not attempt to connect an Apple II joystick to an
Apple III, or vice versa. At the very least, it will not work. At
worst, you could damage the computer.

For starters, if you push either button, you will short out the power
supply (+5V will be connected to ground).

Here are the pinouts, for comparison:

IIe III

1 SW1 GND
2 +5V +5V
3 GND GND
4 PDL2 Joy-X
5 PDL0 SW0
6 SW2 +12V
7 SW0 GND
8 PDL1 Joy-Y
9 PLD3 SW1

Luckily, no single joysticks use pin 7 (SW2). If you pressed that, you
would short out +12V to +5V, which could do some serious damage to the
motherboard.

The Apple III also uses a different circuit arrangement within the
joystick.

The switch inputs are supposed to have pull-down resistors (270 ohms),
and have a momentary-closed contact to +5V. (The Apple II doesn't
need a pull-down resistor, but it wouldn't matter if one was there.)

The joystick analog inputs are supposed to be connected so that one
end of each potentiometer is grounded, the other end connected to
+12V, and the wiper goes to the joystick pin. The potentioment value
can range from 1K ohm to 700K ohm (the manual says that with higher
values, a limited range will be available, so I expect that 100K ohm,
as used in a PC joystick, should be OK).

(The Apple II uses a 150K ohm potentiometer to +5V. There is no
connection to ground - one end of the pot is left unconnected.)
--
David Empson

 

[The entire run of Softalk for Apple to be made available]

Yeah, I have them all too and I've scanned a few of them, but the existence of the Softalk Apple Project has basically caused me to turn my attention to other things. Unfortunately, the progress has been very very slow to date. I'm not sure any of the scans are available from them, but they've been promised for a long time. Some of the 1983 issues in particular are freaking huge, though, a big pain to scan and process, so it's very hard to muster up the energy to go through them when I know that this separate project will eventually make them available.

 

The scans I did do before hitting this psychological roadblock are linked in here (as well as ST.Mac):

 

http://yesterbits.com/tag/softalk/

 

I'm also planning to work through Softalk for the IBM PC, which I also have a full run of, though I've only got the first issue scanned and processed so far as I type this:

 

http://yesterbits.com/scans/softalk-for-the-ibm-pc/

[Apple III Game - Mr. Sandman - Co Written by Woz]

I've used the Cursor /// joystick to play Atomic Defense (though this is just a video of the game, I think you can see the handle of the joystick very briefly when I pick it up):

Mine looks basically just like those eBay photos above. They are quite hard to find though. The one I have I have because Mike tipped me off to an eBay auction he saw before I did, in fact. (Thanks, Mike!)

 

The connection is not the same as the Apple II joystick connection, but it seems like it would be quite useful to figure out how to adapt or modify an Apple II joystick to work in the Apple ///, given the rarity of these things. It may well have already been figured out, I haven't really looked into it, but perhaps now I will. Worst case, I can open mine up and see how it's wired inside, presumably these are not particularly complicated devices.