Tag: Mac mini

Open Apple #31 (Oct 2013): Brendan Robert, Lawless Legends, Texas, and Wayne Green

Open Apple #31 (Oct 2013): Brendan Robert, Lawless Legends, Texas, and Wayne Green

Posted on by Ken Gagne

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Brendan Robert

This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with Brendan Robert of the Java Apple Computer Emulator (JACE) and Apple Game Server. Innovative cross-platform tools are being used to bring Lawless Legends, an original 8-bit RPG, to the Apple II and Commodore 64; as part of the programming team, Brendan takes us behind the scenes. He lives in a lawless land himself — the Old West of Texas, where gaming icons Ion Storm, Zynga, Lord British, and Rooster Teeth reside. But when it comes to games, sometimes you can’t do better than Tetris, of which there are many new and devious deviations. We get rid of old toys, like a SCSI CD-ROM 7-disc changer and a LANceGS card, so we can all have room for new toys, like A2CLOUD, Apple2Pi, BenchmarkeD, AppleIIWorks Envoy, and Final Cut Pro X. And sadly, Wayne Green of InCider and Byte has passed away; we remember his magazines fondly.

Click past the jump for links mentioned in this episode.

Introduction (0:00 – 11:50)

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Charles Mangin's Apple IIe newsletter signup station

Charles Mangin’s Apple IIe newsletter signup station

Posted on by Ken Gagne

In July 2011, Ryan Vesler of retail store Homage found the site Apple II Bits and contacted its owner, Open Apple co-host Ken Gagne with a request:

I have a retail store in Columbus that sells classic t-shirts with
nostalgic artwork.

I would like to build some kind of Apple II looking computer that
collects email address for our mailing list (and maybe allows people
to sign up for a free prize pack)

Thinking about having some kind of Mac Mini operate inside an old
shell.  I was wondering if you would be interested in working with us.
We could price something out and see if it’s worth your while…

Ken put Ryan in touch with Charles Mangin, about whom Ken had blogged back in 2010. Years later, on the September 2013 episode of Open Apple, Charles related the product of the resulting collaboration.

Charles did indeed embed a Mac mini inside an Apple IIe for Ryan’s store in Columbus, Ohio. The display screen for signing up for Homage’s newsletter, though powered by a Mac mini, is designed to look like it belongs on the green phosphor screen. It fits right in with the store’s variety of nostalgic memorabilia, from an NBA Jam arcade cabinet to a Hulk Hogan cardboard standup.

Photos are courtesy Ryan; see more shots of his store at Columbus Underground.

Nice work to all parties involved in reminding the the public of Apple’s roots!

Open Apple #20 (Oct 2012): Ewen Wannop, Spectrum, the next Apple II, and Mac Mini

Open Apple #20 (Oct 2012): Ewen Wannop, Spectrum, the next Apple II, and Mac Mini

Posted on by Ken Gagne

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:37:32 — 55.2MB) | Embed

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Ewen Wannop

This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken chat with Ewen Wannop, British programmer of 16-bit telecommunications programs such as Spectrum, SAM, SNAP, and SAFE. The hosts share feedback galore from the last episode and contemplate how to record a live show. After catching up on some headlines from last month, we plow forward, celebrating the return of an interactive fiction publication and grumbling that even beginner IF can be as obscure as the medium is infamous for. The September 2012 issue of Juiced.GS just shipped, and with it, a look at what features a hypothetical System 7.0 operating system would include. Is it reasonable to consider that a software upgrade warrants a hardware bump, and what the next model of Apple II would look like? Photos of Steve Jobs in his natural habitat show an Apple stronghold as Spartan as ever, but you can decorate yours with Melissa Barron’s screenprints from Etsy. There’s a Disk II floppy drive on eBay that holds within it a working Mac mini — a cool hack, but is it worth a cool grand? We question the value of purchasing free software on eBay and marvel at everything from lighters to thumb drives in the shape of an Apple II.

Click past the jump for links mentioned in this episode.

Introduction (0:00 – 13:08)

Continue reading “Open Apple #20 (Oct 2012): Ewen Wannop, Spectrum, the next Apple II, and Mac Mini” →