VNCViewGS | Open Apple

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This month on Open Apple, we sit down with Kate Szkotnicki, long time Apple II fan and new addition to the retro community. We chat about her first impressions as a newcomer to the community, and the big splash she made at her first KansasFest. Kate is a cosplayer and frequent attendee of anime and comic cons, so she brought a very fresh set of skills and perspectives to KansasFest. Her presentation on making plastic parts (and candy!) with silicone moulding was very popular. Throw away your 3D printers- this is easier and better.

We also talk lots about John Brooks’ excellent work on updating ProDOS, Quinn says a bunch of stuff about Commodore that probably isn’t true, and Mike falls on his sword for getting everything wrong about Australian Apple II gatherings. Mike gets a record number of Apple /// references into this episode, so be sure to tune in and ignore that.

Breaking news! Between us recording and releasing this show, John Brooks has updated ProDOS to 2.4.1. Also, we worked out that the MegaBeep ROM is in fact compatible with it, contrary to the opening of the show. Listener James reported an issue that we believe was actually a bad ROM. If you are a MegaBeep owner, don’t hesitate to use it with any version of ProDOS, including John Brooks’ excellent new 2.4 updates.

Thanks to Brian Wiser of Call A.P.P.L.E. for permission to use the interview clip with Mike Harvey and John Leake.

Happy 30th birthday, Apple IIgs!

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:42:13 — 122.6MB) | Embed

This month on Open Apple we sit down with Robert Bowdidge, one of three interns at Berkeley Softworks who ported GEOS to the best line of 8-bit computers. We talk about what a great place Berkeley Softworks was, along with the power of good tools and proper software engineering. Robert has great memories of the culture there, the GUI technology they had built, and the brilliant people who built it. Apparently GEOS existed for some other 8-bit computer as well, but we imagine it was slow and child-like. Users probably bought it at K-Mart or something.

After the interview, Mike and Quinn delve into their personal memories of GEOS, along with a couple of new projects they both did with the environment. Mike works on GEOS file conversion, and Quinn sorts out all the drivers so you don’t have to. We’re even having a contest this month! Download Quinn’s Ultimate GEOS disk image and find the secret phrase. First person to do so and email us at feedback (at) open-apple (dot) net wins nothing at all!

We also talk some news- lots of really great hardware is coming down the pipe. You won’t want to miss Javier Rivera’s hands-on with Plamen’s IIc VGA adapter, and the Uthernet II is now available. Don’t miss out! We talk some Woz, we talk some French Touch, and we revisit KansasFest yet again.

Celebrate GEOS with Quinn and Mike this Hallowe’en!

GEOS Disk Image guide:

D1S1: Boot / Desktop disk
D1S2: Demos
D2S1: Drivers
D2S2: More Drivers
D3S1: GeoWrite
D3S2: GeoPaint / Desk Accessories
D4S1: GeoSpell / LaserWriter tools
D4S2: GeoDictionary

A quick sidebar on show length- yes, this episode is almost 3 hours again, but we really did try to make it shorter. We’ll continue to try and compromise a bit on this, so thanks for your patience!

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

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Open Apple #63 (September 2016) : Kate Szkotnicki, ProDOS 2.4, KansasFest

Open Apple #52 (October 2015) : GEOS! Robert Bowdidge, and more GEOS!

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