Dapple Emulator Series / News: Recent posts

The original Dapple is now maintained again - we have a new developer working with us on the project and he's very gung-ho about updating this program, it's now using Allegro instead of raw MCGA, and it runs on Linux. (The zipfile contains a binary only for DOS - for Linux you need to run ./mk.sh to compile it.) It's incomplete but I think it's off to a great start.

We're slowly porting the very ugly, very DOS-specific code of our emulator to Linux. We have got it to build, but that's all so far. The development work is in CVS. (It does NOT work right now!)

Okay, since Dapple ][ 0.26 has been up there hasn't been a lot of activity on our parts (I am the only developer with a SourceForge account). Some work has been proceeding in the meantime, and we hope to include source for some of the firmware and a 6502 cross-assembler with the package. A new version shouldn't be too far over the horizon.

Also, I am considering the possibility of a native Win32-based emulator; a lot of the video library already exists (DirectX!) and I just need to find a compiler and figure out how to build stuff, and make sure that the team is on one page in this regard. I'm thinking Watcom 11.0c with the OpenWatcom Windows API right now.... read more

Dapple 1.00pt8 has been released. This version passes the Apple //e (Enhanced version only) self-test procedure (Ctrl-Alt-F9) and has internal support for the 80-column card (although the 80-column video modes are not emulated - we're working on that).

A bug in the CPU core was found and repaired by Holger Picker. I will mail the patch to Marat Fayzullin on Tuesday when my e-mail is back online (I am ABEND on Monday). This affects "Jeopardy!" and possibly "Spy Vs. Spy" and "Frogger". As a result I released 0.94a as a hotfix.

I am still bughunting, as Copy ][+ 5.5 and Pitfall 2 are still not working properly.

Dapple/NDapple, the free, open-source Apple // emulators, have been updated:

Dapple 0.85 features Pseudo-Format, which almost makes Slot 5 transparent to the user. Any error-free 3.5" 1.44MB disk may be "formatted" for use with ProDOS using Filer, Copy ][ Plus or any other formatting utility that Dapple can run.

NDapple 0.21 features the beginning of a Dapple-like interface, which can be called at any time by pressing F6 (F10 in Dapple); the file dialogs are pathologically buggy, and the notes contain a sample session with edebug trying to figure it out - the problem appears to be __findnext()?... read more