Dave Tribby's Apple II Page

Although I'm making a number of archives freely available for personal use, I'd appreciate it if you would not add them to other collections available for download without first getting my permission. You can find my e-mail at the bottom of this page.

Background

I bought my first Apple ][+ back in 1981. A couple of years later I upgraded to a //e, then in 1987 bought the ultimate: a ``Woz Limited Edition'' Apple IIGS.

My current system has an 8 Mhz ZipGS accelerator, an OctoRAM with 4Mb of memory, a SoundMeister, and a RamFAST SCSI card with Floptical, Zip, and hard drives attached.

I have another Apple IIGS running inside my HP9000 UNIX workstation, powered by Kent Dickey's magnificent emulator KEGS.

How I've Used My Apples

Apple Pascal

When I went shopping for a personal computer in early 1981, I wanted a system that provided a structured high level language with access to assembly language. A 64K Apple ][+ with Apple Pascal 1.1 (based on the UCSD Pascal system) provided just what I needed. When I upgraded to a 128K Apple //e there was a new version of Apple Pascal that took advantage of the additional memory. I never got ``into'' Apple DOS or ProDOS...they seemed so primitive compared to Apple Pascal. And the Pascal language was much more usable compared to BASIC. Too bad 99% of Apple II users didn't see it my way!

Apple IIGS programs

In mid-1987, I entered the mainstream of Apple II activity when I purchased an Apple IIGS and started using TML Pascal and the Apple Programmer's Workbench (APW) to create programs under ProDOS 16. Later I graduated to ORCA/M, ORCA/C, and GNO.

MIDI Synth

I tried to create interesting sounds on the GS using the sound and sequencer tools, but those looked pretty crude after Apple released the MIDI Synth tool set with System Software 6.0. Here are some programs I wrote to augment Apple's tools, plus a boatload of songs translated from MIDI to MIDI Synth.

GNO/ME

Since mid-1997, I've been on the team helping Devin Reade get the new version (2.0.6) of the freeware GNO Multitasking Environment ready. I've converted several utilities available from FreeBSD UNIX (including cat, uniq, head, tail, split, wc, cksum, cut, tr, and sed), taken Brian Kernighan's awk and made it work under GNO, and fixed problems in gsh (the GNO shell).

New to the Apple II?

A2Central.com Apple II Links

A2Central.com, created by Eric Shepherd and supported by Syndicomm, it the place to be! They have an excellent set of links on their site, in addition to lots of original content.

Apple II Related Site Links

Another good Web page for beginners is this one, created by Terry Allen.

Delphi A2 Forum

The friendly place for Apple II users to gather and talk. Visit the "A2 Forum" and select from any of the topics that interest you. You can look around as a "gutest", sign up for a free account (you'll be able to leave messages on the boards and the system will remember what you have read), or pay a modest fee and have access to the download library.

Usenet Newsgroups

If you have access to Usenet Newsgroups, try out the apple2 groups:

• comp.sys.apple2 -- Discussion about Apple II micros
• comp.sys.apple2.comm -- Apple II data communications
• comp.sys.apple2.gno -- The GNO multitasking environment
• comp.sys.apple2.marketplace -- Buying, selling and trading equipment
• comp.sys.apple2.programmer -- Programming on the Apple II
• comp.sys.apple2.usergroups -- All about Apple II user groups
• comp.binaries.apple2 -- Binary-only postings
• comp.emulators.apple2 -- Emulators of Apple II systems

Support Those Who Support You!

Shareware Solutions II

Joe Kohn has been writing professionally about the Apple II since the 1980s. He was writing the column ``Shareware Solutions'' for InCider/A+ when it ceased publication in 1993. He forged ahead with his own newsletter, Shareware Solutions II, which covers all aspects of Apple II activity. He distributes a significant number of Apple II software products. I met Joe at the 1993 Apple Expo West, and was privileged to drop by SSII galactic headquarters a couple of years later. The man knows his subject, and is ready to share his knowledge with whoever is interested.

Juiced.GS

After GS+ Magazine shut down in 1995, Max Jones started this quarterly publication dedicated to covering the Apple IIGS. A professional journalist, his writing is crisp and informative. He's a good editor, too, bringing in articles from a variety of experts. (OK...I wrote one small article for him, but I liked Juiced.GS even before he asked me!)

The Byte Works

Mike Westerfield has been writing programs for the Apple II since the late 1970s. He's a top-notch programmer, and produces the ORCA series of programming languages (among other products).  Mike has in recent years turned over distribution to syndicomm.com due to the costs associated with maintaining the distribution.

Return to the Apple II page maintained by Terry Allen

This page was last modified January 1, 2001, by