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Apple IIe Emulator Released For the Wii
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat Jan 03, 2009 11:30 AM
from the going-way-back dept.
from the going-way-back dept.
fortapocalypse writes "Yohanes Nugroho just released WiiApple, an Apple IIe Emulator for Wii. While the sound doesn't work, some games are playable (he shows a screenshot of Epyx Winter Games as well the execution of a program he wrote in BASIC). He's also released the source code. Using WiiApple requires the Homebrew Channel, which we have discussed in the past."
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Hardware: Unofficial Homebrew Channel For the Wii 150 comments
marcan writes "The Homebrew Channel is a tool that can be installed on any Wii (no hardware mods required) that lets you run unsigned homebrew software from an SD card, or upload executables via WiFi or a USBGecko. We've tried to make it friendly for users with a simple GUI, and powerful for developers with direct upload features and reloading which we hope will make testing less painful. The channel can be installed using a DVD if you have a modchip, or using an exploit in Zelda: Twilight Princess which only requires an SD card (or any future hack or booting method). Once installed, it simply shows up as a Channel on the Wii Menu, just like any official channel. Hopefully, this and other recent developments (such as the upcoming devkitPPC r15 toolchain, much improved and with many bugs fixed) will help make the Wii an appealing platform for DIY software. And yes, it also runs Linux."
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Woohoo, Robot War here I come (Score:1, Funny)
And Leather Goddesses of Phobos
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Castle Wolfenstien! Impossible Mission! Karataka!
Anyway...
I tried one of the online editors but I could not remember or find any of the commands for the Apple OS. Hwo the fuck do you use BRUN??? I cannot remember and it shames me deeply.
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What I remember is "20 FF 58". That means jump to subroutine at address $FF58, which happens to be in the ROM of the Apple II and contains the magical "60", meaning return. What is the point of jumping to a return? So that you can find out your own address by looking at the stack(*). From there, you could start relocating your code. Remember: no virtual memory, no pagination, no nothing. You had to find a way.
(*) and later discover that in the 1/million chance that you got an interrupt precisely during the
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Well, the good news is, the Woz already found a way for you: http://atariwiki.strotmann.de/xwiki/bin/view/Code/6502Relocator [strotmann.de]
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Welcome back, Bilestode, Wavy Navy, Lode Runner, Super Stellar Trek and Softporn Adventure!
Now if I could just find copies of those games....
ttyl
Farrell
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ftp.apple.asimov.net
*RUNS*
-uso.
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Sabotage [wikipedia.org]! The original of what you PC owners came to know as Paratrooper and iPod users as Parachute.
Some out with a IIgs emulator and I'll finish my port of this game to IIgs graphics.
Meanwhile I'll need to hook up my PowerMac 7500 (upgraded to a G3) to read my 3.5" ProDOS disks and get them onto a system with an SD card writer, and my IIgs to get what's still on 5.25" converted to disk images on 3.5" disks. (I don't know if the OS currently on the 7500 can do AppleTalk networking anymore.)
Wii emulator (Score:5, Funny)
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wrong kind of wii..
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Woohoo! I can start writing in LOGO again!!!
Green/Amber Turtle rules!
The Apple //e had crappy sound anyways... (Score:2)
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Some games supported the add in Mockingboard which provided more sophisticated synthesis. Ultima III, IV, and V all supported the Mockingboard. The Linapple emulator does support the mockingboard, so it should be possible on this Wii port, if they can get the sound working at all.
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I'm no fan of Apple (I prefer Commodore when it comes to the 8-bit era), but a stock Apple II can do more than just beeps and clicks - it can do full digital audio using pulse width modulation. I'm not sure of the effective resolution (more than 1 bit, for sure, probably closer to 6-8 bits), but I've heard at least a couple of examples of this, including a multi-voice music player, and it actually didn't sound half bad for an otherwise rudimentary output.
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There's just one problem with that. It can't.
At least not without additional hardware.
The Apple II has a 1 bit audio circuit, you control the audio by reading one location in memory.
But you did hear it do it, and that's purely because somebody was really good with assembly programming of that clicker - it could be made to sound like a multi-voice synthesizer with creative timing of the clicks.
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And depending on how those clicks were timed, the technique was probably pulse width modulation. It's simply the easiest way to turn a 1 bit output into something greater. At present, PWM is used commonly in CD players, motor speed controllers, and probably your PC's power supply. Hell, even a Commodore mouse uses it [1]. There's not much limit to the applications this method can be applied to. Higher drive current and/or voltage, a faster pulse rate, and finer pulse width granularity are usually bette
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So not having sound is really not a big deal. All it could really do was make beeps and clicks... sounding like a wannabe R2-D2.
Clearly you never played Ghostbusters [youtube.com] or that vertical scroller submarine game (anybody remember what I'm talking about?).
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Replying to myself (my bad) but the game was Sea Dragon [wikipedia.org] and included a quite clear voice that announced "Attention Captain. Your ship's computer is now ready. Please wait while I initialize the systems".
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Linapple (Score:4, Informative)
The Linapple port of AppleWin that this thing is based on is great. For the longest time there was no good option for the AppleII on linux. xapple2 only ran in 8 bits, blech. kegs was ok, but I could never get it to run Ultima II. AppleWin ran in wine, but it didn't like to be full screened. Mess worked ok, but there was a bug when swapping disks. When Linapple came around it was really nice. It was not perfect, iirc it won't take a disk image as an argument, you have to boot it through the GUI. But that's a small quibble.
In the end I just got a real IIgs. That's always the best way to go. BTW, have you seen the prices on DSDD media these days? One 25 pack of 5.25" media cost me just about as much as my IIgs did. But that's ok Wasteland is awesome!
Re:Linapple (Score:5, Informative)
About $1 a disk. Which isn't that bad. Not as good as they were back in the day, but probably not too far off after adjusting for inflation.
The best place I've found for floppies is (the oddly obvious) http://www.floppydisk.com/ [floppydisk.com]. The disks come well packed and are of high quality. I have not had a single disk fail. Not sure if that's cheaper than your current source, but it might be worth looking into. :-)
Parent
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Where the heck did you get Wasteland from? I succumbed to nostalgia, and downloaded some MS-DOS versions of wasteland. Holy Mother of God, CGA graphics sucked big time compared to Apple II Hi-Res. I played Wasteland on my Apple ][GS, and don't remember it sucking that much.
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I was able to track down some .dsk images and used ADTPro to transfer the disks over a serial cable. ADTPro didn't like the .nib files I found everywhere, so it took some looking but they're out there. It's highly worthwhile tracking them down.
Other than not liking my .nib images, ADTPro is a really nice program. It makes working with disk images dead simple, and bootstrapping itself on a naked apple II is pretty impressive.
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Depending on how many disks you are buying, you might want to consider purchasing a Semi-Virtual Diskette [rothfus.com].
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I think my next purchase for the unit will actually be one of the CF-IDE adaptors. Even a 64 MB card is a ton of space for an apple II. That does look like a cool project though.
Memories are Forever (Score:3, Interesting)
This is great... Now, all you have to do is install the preventive multitasking OS [ordinotheque.free.fr] I had written at the time then try to bootstrap Minix from it, and you'll have the best of the 80s.
So many memories, so little time. How many people on /. even have fond memories of the Apple II? Just showing my age I guess. Anyone below 30 who even knows what it was like at the time? I ran my first BBS on an Apple II. Kind of like slashdot, minus the traffic :-)
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I had an Apple //c for several years and many fond memories of games like "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego", various versions of Oregon Trail, the Stickybear edutainment titles, Wings of Fury, and even doing Appleworks spreadsheet work for my high school ROTC unit, after my //c had been retired.
We did typing class on the //c as well; I forget which program that was on ("Wonderful World of PAWS?), and also practice in "Bank Street Writer". My math classes included a couple sessions with an adventure/m
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Whippersnapper! Those 5.25" floppies were just the right size.
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Logo. Apparently, when I hit school in 1987, they had a lab full of Apple ][ computers, and I was teaching the teachers how to use it, having had an IBM Compatible grey box since 1985.... All we ever did with it was play around in Logo, and play Oregon Trail or other "educational" games like that.
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Anyone below 30 who even knows what it was like at the time?
I'm 20, the first computers I ever saw would have probably been an Apple II lab my school had. I can't quite remember what we did with them, I think there was a math or typing game that we loaded from those massive floppies.
At the time, they were the small floppies.
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(cue music)And so I plaaaaay my... Intel-e-viiiiision.(/cue music)
Intellivision rocks the world. I don't care what anyone says about the controllers. Dreadnaught Factor rocked. Utopia rocked. Shark! Shark! rocked. Space Spartans rocked. Astrosmash rocked. Burgertime rocked. Diner rocked. Thin Ice rocked. Vec--
Oh hell, just go here [intellivisiongames.com] and imagine that only 10% of that list sucks. And there you have the only ever instance of an inverted Sturgeon's Law.
Oregon Trail on the big screen! (Score:2)
Finally! (Score:2)
This is the most excited I've been since the Casio C-80 emulator was released for the Cray XT5!
Finally (Score:4, Funny)
Now I can play Oregon Trail the way it was MEANT to be played: by throwing my controller at deer as they run by.
(btw, if anyone knows where I can get a good deal on a new flat-panel TV, lemme know)
Since Wii has a Web browser. (Score:2)
Is it possible to use VirtualApple [virtualapple.org]? I assume no since Wii doesn't use IE and Firefox due to addons. :(
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The Internet Channel is Opera-based. It supports Widgets, but has no plugin architecture. Not that it would help. VirtualApple is written for Windows and Windows alone. It would be a major porting effort to make it work on another OS.
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Hmm, you need Windows for Firefox extension? That stinks!
Tagged Whoopdefuckingdo. (Score:2)
Who ever tagged the story with whoopdefuckingdo - thank you for the LOL moment.
Carry on.
Re:I wonder if... (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think so. I exchanged a few messages with hin in the past, and asked if he had tried any of the AppleII emulators, or had contributed his unique expertise to any of them. He said he thought they were neat, but didn't have the time to spend on looking at them or contributing. Too bad!
Parent
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Looks like the article has just been demoted to "Games". Seriously though, this is just the most recent in a long line of emulator ports to the Wii. The chaps banging Linux onto the Wii are doing a lot more interesting work.
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You do realize that most open source emulators and such compile on non-Intel platforms just fine, right? Many of us free software types aren't glued to a single architecture and cross-compiling isn't totally strange.
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You do realize that most open source emulators and such compile on non-Intel platforms just fine, right?
Actually, no. This is a myth. I've done significant embedded development on Linux (MIPS, PowerPC) and it's a MAJOR PITA to port many apps to non-x86 architectures in large part because the compilers suck. If you don't feel like re-wiriting large chunks of source code your x86 app is unlikely to work in PowerPC. Running a VM is cheating. Spend some time working on Gentoo, you'll notice there is a LOT more software for x86 than PowerPC. Look at the capabilities of PS3 Linux vs. original XBOX Linux. There is a
parent speaks the truth (Score:2)
dunno what asshat modded parent as troll, but the XBOX really is a true gem. there are numerous mature emulators available for the XBOX, and XBMC has a nice loader to access them all handily.
We cancelled our cable service recently, now we just use XBMC to watch tv shows and movies we download off the internet.
The interface is clean and intelligent, and it automagically downloads album covers, DVD covers & movie info from imdb, uses the milkdrop winamp plugin for visualization, and cooks you breakfast i
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Thanks. Whatever you think about Microsoft it doesn't detract from the utility of the original XBOX as a media center and game emulation box.
Especially XBMC was a REVOLUTION when it came out. To this day, it stomps all over everything in erms of codec support.
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Which ones? I've got Mario 64 and Ocaria of Time and both have audio, framerate, and REALLY NASTY clipping problems on the wii Virtual Console. These issues don't exist in my PC emulator (which is the same one I use on the original XBOX).
Have you ever played N64 games in a PC emulator? I thought not.
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Hmm, most of the homebrew stuff for the Wii can be distributed without having to worry about license agreements since most do not seem to be using official Nintendo license stuff. (As in the libraries are homebrew)
You have to violate the DMCA to run the hacks to allow you to run homebrew software, so this strikes me as a very fine distinction. MS isn't very aggressive with the XBOX developers BTW. I worked at Microsoft at the same time I was doing XBOX development and nobody said anything. I actually was offered help from XBOX developers because THEY were using XBMC.
Clearly the vendor most amenable to homebrew development is Microsoft, they now have a downloadable "Community Games" section on XBOX Live. Sony has also
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I think the "turtle" you are referring to is the LOGO programming language.
One of the things you can do with it is move a cursor around the screen to draw pictures, etc.
The cursor was called a turtle and may have looked like a turtle or perhaps a triangle.
The Turtle is a way to draw vector based images and was added to LOGO by its original inventor Seymour Papert, of MIT, so he could control his Turtle Robot to draw pictures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language) [wikipedia.org]
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Just download them from here (legally and for free) and play on your pc.
http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html [infocom-if.org]