Apple II software still being sold | Hacker News Reader

Apple II software still being sold

store.syndicomm.com

56 pointssmalltalk14 comments

Atari 2600, too. AtariAge.com runs a store that produces and sells cartridges of homebrew development efforts. http://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_list&c=21

If you think the Apple II is a challenge, try programming for the Atari 2600. 128 bytes RAM, 4K ROM, two hardware sprites. And no frame buffer; "video memory" consists of a couple dozen registers. The graphics chip is one-dimensional; to draw a picture you must refresh its registers after the electron beam draws each scanline. It literally uses the phosphor on the TV screen as the frame buffer.

You can do "racing the beam" tricks with midframe graphics changes on many machines, Apple II and C64 and Amiga and even a DOS PC, but it's required to even display a picture with the 2600.

Nick Montfort's book, Racing the Beam ( http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-beam ), goes into more detail.

Programming for the Atari was one of my favorite coding challenges. I think the web offered a lot of similarities in the past decade (trying to make an unsuitable platform perform magic) and somehow jumping into 6502 assembly and trying to trick beautiful graphics out of the pithy TIA felt extremely satisfying.

We in the Oric-1/Atmos scene are still producing software for these 8-bit machines. (I say we, I'm just a participant in the party as a CLOAD'er, mostly, but one of these days that bit will flip..)

Anyway, there is a huge resurgence of interest in these kinds of old machines, which frankly: still work, even if their users have all died or moved on to other things.

Old computers can still teach every new generation a lot of things about the world, so instead of pitching that stuff out folks, consider the oil-debt of what it took to build (i.e. a lot) before your relinquish the right to make it boot.

My old machines still provide hours of mirth and adventure. I could put one on the 'net, but then again a big reason to have this machine is entirely not to have it on the 'net! :)

(Edit: http://oric.org http://forum.defence-force.org/)

As I recall, this shop was run by Eric Shepherd up until 2011 [1] before he transferred control to Tony Diaz.

Shepherd is an author of many fine Apple II and Apple IIgs apps, including the excellent IIgs emulator Sweet16 [2]. Now, he's a technical writer for Mozilla. Awesome guy.

Diaz... runs Apple2.org [3], and I'm ashamed to admit I'm not aware of anything else he's done for that community. If anybody else could fill in, feel free.

[1] - http://a2central.com/3234/syndicomm-changes-management-maint...

[2] - http://www.sheppyware.net/software-mac/sweet16/

[3] - http://apple2.org

I like this gem on the website:

“…while at present I'm not encountering any shipping delays, orders can take some time to ship. If you have a need to get an order processed quickly, please say so in your order comments!”

Just say so in the comments? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before online anywhere! :D

These guys sell new cartridge releases for Commodore 64 and Atari jaguar: http://rgcd.bigcartel.com/

They are "a retro game publishing business".

There are people still developing and selling BBC Micro games on cassettes: http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/wiki/index.php/The_Krystal_Co...

Yup, I'm not suprised. Not a huge market for it but it says on the website its just a 1-person part-time thing. You have to buy the software because theres simply no other (easy) way to get stuff onto a computer that old. The Apple II is a collectors item, and hackers love to tinker with old interesting stuff like that.

I'm not suprised by the price either. The same thing happened with floppy disks. You'd think they'd be really cheap, but in reality they're more expensive than CDs sometimes. The demand is lower, so not as many are made, and they don't get the benefits of scale to cut the price.

Go try to buy some ram for a 386. Let me know how much it costs.

Try to buy a Amiga or a Spectrum +3 in Ebay, they not are cheap.

I can sell you some old RAM modules.... :)

These guys are selling new Apple II software, too -- Apple II DMS Drummer Software:

http://www.8bitweapon.com/store.htm

It is a sample-based music sequencer, which is fairly amazing considering the audio hardware in the Apple II was only capable of producing a "click" when a bit of memory got poked. (Getting that clicker to play back waveforms is all a matter of clicking at the right times.)

“New from Apple, the HyperCard IIGS Developer's Kit consists of two 800K disks.”

I bet it’s way better than the old one!

http://store.16sector.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&#...

Amiga upgrades and other peripheral still being sold, designed, and builded. (http://www.amigakit.com/)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com