The Usotsuki Posted April 3, 2014 Share Posted April 3, 2014 Hear, hear. I always considered myself an Apple ][ user who thought like a C64 user. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 3, 2014 Share Posted April 3, 2014 Apple II is definitely a strong community. Its members are richer monitarily, poorer spiritually (of heart and soul), and their very psychological makeup combined with advancing age tends to push "organization on the internet" out of the top slot. To me, the cracked images with title pages and all that are decent. And as a matter of fact (for me) it is how I remember first seeing and experiencing whatever software was out there. I also purchased tons upon tons of disks - keeping the cracked copy next to the original. And we were always playing the cracked copy. A genuine backup! Back in the day when I was a shit-faced kid I knew members of Apple II user's groups there were already old. Today they are no doubt 2 meters under. Participating in the Apple II community today is more expensive than the C64 or 400/800 spheres. Prices on fleabay are going up (good for us collector/hoarders), bad for noobs. Finally I don't see what the big shit is about intercommunity animosity. To me it's an ego thing formed from falling down a rabbit hole and spinning things around in your head. Just pay no attention to it. That's not to say the Apple II community is without fault. It's full of asses too. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 3, 2014 Share Posted April 3, 2014 One more thing, the fragmentation in the Apple II community (and I suspect to a lesser extent other platforms) seems it can be divided up into several modes of activities. 1- Period correct rich collectors hemming and hawing over date codes and serial numbers. 2- True hobbyists from back in the day using their own hardware today. 3- Noobs 4- Developers making new hardware. 5- People documenting peripheral devices and archiving material. 6- Fat ladies on epay, equating anything old and "Apple" with Steve Jobs and $$$. Many times over the years I've contemplated disposing of 80-90 percent of my collection and retaining only my original disks and my 5 original consoles and their peripherals. I would be focusing on enjoying the platform and essence and history behind it instead of collecting everything. An example would be dumping all the printer cards except for 1 or 2 Grappler+ interfaces. Getting rid of all the near-no-name disk drives and hard drives except for my original Siders. Getting rid of all the modems except for the Apple Cat and Micromodem.. You get the idea! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted April 3, 2014 Share Posted April 3, 2014 I thought I remembered seeing an Apple II at PlayExpo in Manchester last year? Couldn't you have used that instead? Not really, i'm a complete novice with the machine and have no idea what i'd need to do in order to get a machine running my code. If we're talking about the same Apple II it conked out fairly early on Saturday morning, i've got a photo of it in my gallery where someone is trying to resurrect the poor thing on the Sunday so it was nekkid! I'm further down the M62 in Bolton and will be attending the May event in Blackpool if you need a real Apple IIe with DuoDisk and/or CFA3000 to run it on? I have a Green Screen Monitor II or maybe a Commodore 1701 if you prefer colour? The "ongoing" project is just a text-based Snake style game (i was keeping things painfully simple to get a feel for the system) so colour isn't necessary, but all i really need is to have someone run it and compare the output to what Apple2Win kicks out; if there isn't any obvious tearing and it runs at the same speed it's all good. Which stand were you on? I was carrying around a 6-month old granddaughter who was dressed as Baby Mario. My kit was just over half of the aisle opposite that broken Apple II - i've got VGA monitors on half the machines so it looked like this... ...and that's the game in question on the right hand monitor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Usotsuki Posted April 3, 2014 Share Posted April 3, 2014 One more thing, the fragmentation in the Apple II community (and I suspect to a lesser extent other platforms) seems it can be divided up into several modes of activities. 1- Period correct rich collectors hemming and hawing over date codes and serial numbers. 2- True hobbyists from back in the day using their own hardware today. 3- Noobs 4- Developers making new hardware. 5- People documenting peripheral devices and archiving material. 6- Fat ladies on epay, equating anything old and "Apple" with Steve Jobs and $$$. I suppose I'm closest to 2, although my actual metal collects dust and I do most of my work in emulation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 3, 2014 Share Posted April 3, 2014 (edited) @TMR: In the captions you keep referring to the //e as a //c. Why? A typo to be sure.. Can you tell me what upscale converter you're using? Edited April 3, 2014 by Keatah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkO Posted April 3, 2014 Share Posted April 3, 2014 I don't get this. It's a pretty strong community, although quite fragmented. I think it is actually an older crew than the commies, in general. I'm starting to find it a bit more, but I do wish it was more localized on the 'net. I agree with an Older Crew and yes, Apple ][ users are harder to locate, there still is a lot of activity on UseNet ( comp.sys.apple2 ). Commodore may have more newbrew game releases (after all it was designed with games in mind), but the Apple II has more new and weird hardware design going for it. The scenes still differ and offer different things. The Apple][ seems to have more new hardware than new software... It's always disheartening to hear inter-system animosity from Commodore fans. I don't know why anyone cares anymore about seriously pitting one retro system or group of users vs another. Both systems are awesome, each with their own strengths. I'm happy to own both and enjoy both, even though I was originally an Apple II user. And I love Atari 8-bit stuff too. I would have had all three back in the day if I could. I agree, I own some Sinclair ZX81's, Apple]['s and Commodore's including a very nicely working SX-64.. Each platform has it features and drawbacks.. Their each cool in their own way.. As far as the archive, the Asimov archive has most of the dsk images available. And nearly everything fits on a 16gb CF card, which is fun with a CFFA. There are many other sites that have PDF's of Manuals and Magazines too.. I think cracked images are cool, but when they are the only thing archived, it's hard to know exactly what the original work was. I'd really love to see all the versions available, not unlike when you have MAME arcade images and they have all the images to choose from. I'm happy to see folks fixing the images. Some cracks refuse to work outside of slot 6 or are very picky about the location of disks or disk images. Because of the Apple Disk System being entirely on the Floppy, the ability to customize the Operating System is a large part of the Copy Protection of Apple ][ Products... It would nice to see Perfect Cracks, so you could experience the Applications like they were designed, but I have to admit the Modified Screens are part of the History too... It would be nice to chose to see them either way... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 3, 2014 Share Posted April 3, 2014 (edited) I suppose you choose them by selecting the appropriate disk image. More and more .NIBs are being made every day. I bet many titles were pirated more than the originals sold. I'm not all hard-up to have "One-Site-To-Rule-Them-All" for Apple 2 material. A short list of bookmarks linking to the important sites is more than sufficient. Edited April 3, 2014 by Keatah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted April 3, 2014 Share Posted April 3, 2014 I don't get this. It's a pretty strong community, although quite fragmented. I think it is actually an older crew than the commies, in general. That's a bit more complicated a comparison than it might seem. Painting very broad strokes for a moment, the C64 community divides into PAL and NTSC and the latter, who are more productivity-oriented, tend to be older than the the people doing demos and games in Europe. Just look at how the groups get together for example, there is some crossover but the US is mostly user groups and regular meetings and Europe leans towards crews and scene parties where they meet friends and often try to drink each other under computer-laden tables. From what i've "seen" of the Apple II community it's remarkably similar to the NTSC side of the C64, possibly because the US got stuck into home computing a few years earlier? Commodore may have more newbrew game releases (after all it was designed with games in mind), but the Apple II has more new and weird hardware design going for it. Does it? That's a genuine question but i don't see either camp being ahead on that front, it's just the implementation tends to be different because the C64 is designed to be expanded through cartridges rather than cards. It's always disheartening to hear inter-system animosity from Commodore fans. I don't know why anyone cares anymore about seriously pitting one retro system or group of users vs another. There's inter-system animosity from pretty much every camp (visit a format-specific forum and you'll find some) but the question is how seriously people are taking what they're saying. And it's worth remembering that, for some people at least, the whole playground-style "my Platform X is better than your Platform Y" thing is as much a part of the nostalgia for them as the machines or games they're playing. Personally, i love those kinds of discussion as long as they don't get too fraught or laced with personal insults and when the coders pitch in you get all manner of interesting technical information about the machines involved; i learnt a huge amount about the Atari 8-bit, Sinclair Spectrum and Amstrad CPC from a massive 1990s USENet flamewar for example. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkO Posted April 3, 2014 Share Posted April 3, 2014 One more thing, the fragmentation in the Apple II community (and I suspect to a lesser extent other platforms) seems it can be divided up into several modes of activities. Apple seems to lead in this area, probable because Apple as a Company still exists... 1- Period correct rich collectors hemming and hawing over date codes and serial numbers.I am not rich, but I do appreciate Original, Period Apple "stuff"... 2- True hobbyists from back in the day using their own hardware today.I have most all my Original Hardware from 1983-1989, one place or another... 3- NoobsNot It... 4- Developers making new hardware.This I definitely want to get into doing... 5- People documenting peripheral devices and archiving material.I am working on doing this already. 6- Fat ladies on epay, equating anything old and "Apple" with Steve Jobs and $$$.PUKE!!!! eBay miss-naming drives me to Anger... "Apple ][+ Macintosh by Steve Jobs", now REALLY!!! Many times over the years I've contemplated disposing of 80-90 percent of my collection and retaining only my original disks and my 5 original consoles and their peripherals. I would be focusing on enjoying the platform and essence and history behind it instead of collecting everything. An example would be dumping all the printer cards except for 1 or 2 Grappler+ interfaces. Getting rid of all the near-no-name disk drives and hard drives except for my original Siders. Getting rid of all the modems except for the Apple Cat and Micromodem.. You get the idea! WOW!! and hurt ALL those "Fat Ladies" on epay by Depressing the Apple ][ Market.. Your a Cruel One, Mr. Grinch.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted April 3, 2014 Share Posted April 3, 2014 @TMR: In the captions you keep referring to the //e as a //c. Why? A typo to be sure.. Actually, it's a misreading; i wouldn't know one from the other because i've only ever seen a couple of Apple IIs "in the wild" over here (and one was in the early 1980s) so when it came to captioning those photos i tried to rely on the images themselves... and misread the badge on the case! i'll log into my blog and fix those captions in a bit. =-) Can you tell me what upscale converter you're using? The Amiga 600HD with CF conversion is using a cheap and cheerless generic upscaler from eBay which hates everything 8-bit i've ever thrown at it and isn't recommended even slightly. The Spectrum +2 has a Gonbes GBS-8200 (which needs to be cased up along with the DivIDE at some point... people always seem to enjoy prodding at the bare board electronics at events!) and that works pretty well even with my poorly soldered cable. The C64C is fitted with a Turbo Chameleon cartridge which has VGA out and there's a MyGica Gamebox HD connected to the Breadbin C64 with a 1541 Ultimate 2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Usotsuki Posted April 3, 2014 Share Posted April 3, 2014 It's actually easy. The //c is the one with the built-in floppy drive, and the Dvorak and 40/80 switches on the keyboard. =p Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkO Posted April 3, 2014 Share Posted April 3, 2014 It's actually easy. The //c is the one with the built-in floppy drive, and the Dvorak and 40/80 switches on the keyboard. =p And NO SLOTS!! Don't forget that.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 The "ongoing" project is just a text-based Snake style game (i was keeping things painfully simple to get a feel for the system) so colour isn't necessary, but all i really need is to have someone run it and compare the output to what Apple2Win kicks out; if there isn't any obvious tearing and it runs at the same speed it's all good. I would be willing to run it and capture it on video fer ya if you still need it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted April 5, 2014 Share Posted April 5, 2014 I would be willing to run it and capture it on video fer ya if you still need it Thanks, i'll be taking you up on that offer in a week or two when i've got out from under a deadline and tweaked the code a little. =-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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