Hack-a-Day | Open Apple

Open Apple #66 (December 2016) : Glenda “The Atom” Adams

Posted on Dec 28, 2016Feb 8, 2022 by Quinn Dunki

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:41:15 — 72.2MB) | Embed

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Glenda Adams, better known on the Apple II as The Atom. She was a cracker of some note back in the 1980s, and she shares great stories with us of her exploits in boot tracing, cracking, and distributing software in the glory days of the Apple II BBS scene.

We talk about the journey from programming to cracking, and back to programming again. We talk about the politics of the Apple II scene, and the unique experience of cracking software remotely. Think fixing your grandparents’ printer over the phone is hard? Trying cracking a game!

Can you deduce the release date of Fontrix by time-lining Apple II crack screens? We leave that as an exercise to the listener. Meanwhile, Glenda shares stories of porting Space Rogue, parties at Lord British’s house, and the old-school feel of early iOS development.

More information on everything discussed in this episode, after the jump.

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Open Apple #65 (November 2016) : Alex Lee, What Is The Apple IIgs?

Posted on Dec 5, 2016Feb 8, 2022 by Quinn Dunki

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:13:07 — 97.1MB) | Embed

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Alex Lee, purveyor of the canonical IIgs reference site What Is The Apple IIgs? We talk about what it was like being one of the brave few with this machine, and that feeling of living in a secret world of incredible graphics and sound that nobody else seemed to know about.

Alex walks us through the history of IIgs emulators, and all the ways that the IIgs Finder was actually better than the Mac. He also talks about the legal challenges of running an archive site like this, which luckily are not too serious for this obscure machine. We finish up with talk of the future of the site, and the difficulty of finding some really rare software packages- help contribute content!

Alex is also working on an Apple IIgs coffee table book. Help encourage him to finish it, because we all want to buy it very very badly. Just saying.

Keep listening, because you won’t want to miss Alex casually dropping the phrase “Late nineties and early naughties” in his charming Australian accent. Tune in as well to pine along with Quinn for the never-to-be Ultima VI.

Our apologies for this episode being a bit late. Combinations of illness, holiday commitments, and technical difficulties all conspired against us this month.

More information on everything discussed in this episode, after the jump.

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Open Apple #58 (April 2016) : Huibert Aalbers, IIGS Stuff, Taiwanese Ham

Posted on May 3, 2016Feb 8, 2022 by Quinn Dunki

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:07:21 — 99.0MB) | Embed

This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Huibert Aalbers, author of Soundsmith. It’s hard to overstate what a platform-defining piece of software this was for the Apple IIgs. Few people appreciated what the audio system in this computer was capable of, until Huibert unlocked it for the world to hear. Games and scene demos would use his tool for the entire life of the machine. Other music trackers came along in later years, but Soundsmith was always there. It turns out platform jealousy can be a powerful force indeed.

Meanwhile, we talk oranges, Taiwanese ham, dying young, and cramming IIc parts in your Franklin. We blow the lid off the French pirate sneakernet and complain about kids today and their disrespect for bytes.

After that, Mike finds beta ROMs, Quinn loses her sense of humor, and they both find GS RAM cards everywhere. It’s a IIgs themed episode- all the Ensoniqs and FTAs you can stand. If you’re an Atari user*, see if you can spot the backhanded compliment.

You won’t want to miss Huibert’s amazing project involving IIgs Epluché!

More information on everything discussed in this episode, after the jump.

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Open Apple #40 (October 2014) : Chris Torrence, Printers, Celebrating Lode Runner

Posted on Oct 19, 2014Feb 8, 2022 by Quinn Dunki

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:30:28 — 50.2MB) | Embed

This month on Open Apple, we talk to Chris Torrence, the new Roger Wagner Volunteer Archivist on behalf of Softalk magazine. Chris is a lifelong Apple II fan, and has recently undertaken the valuable effort of producing a book containing all of Roger Wagner’s Assembly Lines columns. This will include all of the articles included in Roger’s original book (Assembly Lines: The Book) as well as columns never before available in book form. He’s not just republishing the articles, he’s annotating, footnoting, and expanding on them as needed. It’s a terrific service for the community. We’ll dig into that, as well as Chris’ start in computing, and how he got to where he is today. We manage to get through an entire show without taking a cheap shot at Commodore, so you won’t want to miss this. Wait- no we don’t.

We also mark the passing of Lode Runner creator Douglas E. Smith, we talk about printers for some reason, and we talk about more eBay auctions on this show that doesn’t talk about eBay auctions. You won’t want to miss this month’s Weird Gaming, where we run the gamut from incredible educational games that didn’t get their due, to horrifying shareware games that can’t be forgotten quickly enough. We talk AppleSoft source code in Tech, and lots more. So drop your machine two inches, and let’s go!

More information on everything mentioned in the show can be found after the jump.

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