Apple II Bits

Every April 1st, Juiced.GS publishes an April Fool’s joke, such as that we’d be encrypting all print issues, or cryogenically freezing our staff. Most readers find it amusing; some find it confusing ("Is this real?"); one found it so offensive that they cancelled their subscription.

To avoid a repeat of any extreme reactions, I aimed for this year’s to be so absurd that no one would ever believe it or feel betrayed by it: Juiced.GS was introducing JuicyBits™, an 8-bit cryptocurrency. How ridiculous! The processing power of the Apple II, while impressive for its time, was nowhere near the minimum to compute modern blockchains. Clearly the impossibility of anyone attempting such a thing made the press release an obvious joke.

Charles Mangin didn’t get the memo.

As detailed in his thorough blog post, Mangin was inspired not by Juiced.GS, but by last month’s KansasFest, to mine Bitcoin on the Apple II for real. With plenty of time on the ride home from Kansas City to theorize his approach, followed by some insightful assistance from Peter Ferrie, it wasn’t long before Mangin had an actual, working algorithm for computing cryptocurrency on his Apple II. Not only that, but he rigged a setup that outputs the computer’s video to Twitch, the popular streaming network, allowing us to watch the computations in real-time.

Watch live video from 8BTC on www.twitch.tv

Don’t sit on the edge of your seat waiting for that magic moment when a Bitcoin is mined, though:

… mining Bitcoin successfully at 3.8 hashes per second will happen, on average, once in 256 trillion years. But it could happen tomorrow. It’s a lottery, after all.

At this point, I’m not sure if the joke is on Charles or on Juiced.GS.

I thought I knew Charles Mangin: hardware guru extraordinaire, maker of connectors, adapters and miniature models. His RetroConnector brand has enabled Apple II keyboards to talk to USB-enabled machines, modern joysticks to be played on Apple II computers, and other interactions that span the eras. With a 3D printer, he’s created miniature working monitors and Raspberry Pi cases shaped like a IIe. Well before I ever met him at KansasFest, I was blogging about Charles putting computers in Apple II peripherals. Creating intergenerational hybrids is Charles’ niche.

Or so I thought. First, he started sharing his hardware knowledge in a video podcast series, How II. Then he was giving KansasFest sessions about music synthesizers. No 3D printers to be seen, but these topics could still be broadly categorized as hardware projects.

But now Charles is making a name for himself in a wholly new realm: software development. After tackling the significant task of teaching himself 6502 assembly, he released his first game, a Minesweeper clone. Then he innovated with an original title, Jumpy Guy. These are fun, simple games that demonstrate Charles’ growth in this new role.

Now Charles is punching his way through one of the most famous games of all time: Karateka. No longer the tale of a lone gamer storming Akuma’s fortress, Jordan Mechner’s first published title has been patched to enable a second player to control Akuma’s foot soldiers, putting some actual intelligence behind the hero’s adversaries and making it more akin to the Apple II arcade port Karate Champ.

I would ask Charles to detail his patch in an issue of Juiced.GS, but he has already been thoroughly transparent on his website, detailing the mere 42 bytes that constitute the efficient patch. The updated game is playable online on the Internet Archive:

In the course of reinventing himself, Charles has reinvented Karateka. But gamers are a hungry lot, and some are already clamoring for more features, including joystick input and network play. I’d rather wait and see what Charles does of his own volition: like Apple Inc., he has an uncanny sense for giving us what we didn’t know we’ve always wanted. Who knows where he’ll take us — and himself — next?

Having just started working at Automattic, I’m anticipating a future where I’ll spend even more time than ever sitting at a keyboard. Computers have been where I’ve spent most of my career, but they’ve always been interrupted by presentations, meetings, and the like. With even those now being done at a keyboard, I’m investigating ways to improve efficiency, such as switching to a DVORAK or Colemak layout.

Blogger and programmer Dan Luu recently identified another potential area of keyboard efficiency: latency. Regardless of the keyboard’s layout, the actual time between keypress and result can also vary among brands and models — and even eras.

Turns out keyboard latency is one area in which our Apple II computer excels. Writes Luu: “… computers from the 70s and 80s commonly have keypress-to-screen-update latencies in the 30ms to 50ms range out of the box, whereas modern computers are often in the 100ms to 200ms range when you press a key in a terminal.”

The author elaborates that modern keyboards themselves often have more, faster circuitry than an entire computer from the 1977 — yet, perhaps due to that simplicity, older keyboards are still faster:

consider that an Apple 2 has 3500 transistors running at 1MHz and an Atmel employee estimates that the core used in a number of high-end keyboards today has 80k transistors running at 16MHz. That’s 20x the transistors running at 16x the clock speed – keyboards are often more powerful than entire computers from the 70s and 80s! And yet, the median keyboard today adds as much latency as the entire end-to-end pipeline as a fast machine from the 70s.

Naturally, that led me to thinking that the best way to reduce my latency would be to replace my laptop’s inbuilt keyboard, or even its external USB or Bluetooth keyboard, with an Apple II keyboard — a connection made possible by Charles Mangin of Retroconnector’s keyboard shield. But, suspecting more steps between the keyboard and the computer would negate any improvement, I reached out to Charles for additional insight. He confirmed:

It would definitely add to the latency. The processor in the Arduino is running at 16mhz, and takes several cycles to register each switch state change. That is translated to the proper keypress, then it has to send that result as a USB signal, which takes more time. At best, it would be equivalent to a normal USB keyboard, but likely slower due to the Arduino overhead.

Alas, while the Apple II remains king of keyboard latency, that benefit is firmly tied to its classic architecture.

… The answer: replace my entire Automattic machine with an Apple II!

(Hat tip to mmphosis!)

I engage in as much online commerce as I do offline. Whether I’m buying a hot chocolate at the local coffee shop or going to the movies to see the latest Marvel movie, or I’m buying a book on Amazon.com or a mobile app from Apple, I don’t personally know the people handling my transaction. We’re polite to each other and treat each other with respect — as any decent human being should — but we don’t take the time to address each other by name or inquire as to each other’s wellbeing. Once the transaction is complete, the interaction is concluded and the relationship ends.

The Apple II industry is different. The size of each company is proportionate to the size of the community — that is, small. While my credit card receipts may show me to have patronized such companies as RetroConnector, a2RetroSystems, and Manila Gear (to name a few), I never saw it that way. Rather, I was supporting Charles Mangin, Glenn Jones, and Jon Co & John Valdezco. Each of these technical geniuses have long been members of the Apple II community, supporting it not just with their inventions (off which they rarely, if ever, profit), but with their camaraderie on IRC and Twitter and at KansasFest. Through their long commitment to the platform and their people, they’ve earned our trust, friendship, and patronage.

This reputation isn’t reserved to the privileged few who are able to make their way to KansasFest and meet these vendors; for example, Glenn Jones and Jon Co have yet to make their way from Canada and Australia to our Midwest convention. Given our geographic diversity, a lot of community-building is instead accomplished online. For my part, it’s not enough to let the Juiced.GS store’s automatic receipts be a new customer’s first impression. I personally email each new subscriber to ask them how they came to our publication and what their history with the Apple II is. You can say that I’m doing so to build customer retention or to scout potential content contributors — and you wouldn’t be wrong. But that alone would not be enough. I cherish my quarterly mailing parties where I get to see the name on each mailing label and recall the stories of each person this community has introduced me to.

I’ve grown so accustomed to these personal interactions that, when I have the opposite experience within the Apple II community, it’s noticeable and jarring. Such is the case with 8bitdo’s recent Kickstarter to create the AP40, an Apple II-themed game controller with Apple II-compatible wireless receiver. While I was excited by the prospects of the hardware, I was surprised to see it come from an organization our community had never heard of. I’ve since exchanged several emails with the AP40’s creators, but I never once had my inquisitiveness or enthusiasm reciprocated. When I mentioned possibly reviewing their hardware for Juiced.GS, they glossed over it; their emails are always signed with their company’s name, not an individual’s; the campaign had few progress updates; and the pitch video featured none of the talent responsible for the product. They seem utterly uninterested in the Apple II community or being a part of it.

If this were Amazon.com, a coffee shop, or Apple, I wouldn’t bat an eye at such behavior; it’d be expected. But in the Apple II community, AP40’s outsider status and indifference is unmistakeable. I was so disappointed and dissatisfied that I ultimately requested that my Kickstarter pledge be cancelled [see comments below for more details]. Maybe I’m a snob for refusing to associate with those outside some Apple II "inner circle". But I was always taught to "support those who support the Apple II" — and support takes many forms.

After appearing on the Retro Computing Roundtable #94, I ordered myself a Raspberry Pi 2. It’ll be my first single-board computer since the Replica 1 in 2009 — and frankly, I’m not sure what to do with it.

What I do know is that I want its presence and utility to be as influenced by my Apple II heritage as possible — and that means buying one of Charles Mangin‘s 3D-printed cases. Demoed at KansasFest 2014 and detailed in Juiced.GS, these nifty, tiny replicas are a marvelous marriage of new and old tech.

Mangin can now add "As seen on TV!" to his marketing copy, courtesy Ivan Drucker. As founder of Apple consulting firm IvanExpert, Drucker is the resident go-to guy when New York City’s cable news stations need a sound bite from a knowledgeable, articulate, and fashionable expert. That sometimes means a peek into Drucker’s work environment, as happened last summer when we spotted an Apple II sitting on his office desk.

Drucker was in the news again last week for the CBS news story "Stolen iPhone Turns Up In China":

Don’t blink or you’ll miss it: there’s Charles’ Pi case!

Meticulously freeze-framed to be as flattering as possible.

It makes me want one all the more. Ivan Drucker and CBS, you’re earning your commission!

(Hat tip to — who else? — Ivan Drucker)

From 2007 through 2012, I covered KansasFest for Computerworld, a magazine and website of which I was an editor. When I left that position in early 2013, I did so on good terms, leaving open the possibility of freelance work. I solicited suggestions from other Apple II users for how I might pitch coverage of this year’s KansasFest in a way that Computerworld hadn’t done before. Eric Shepherd proposed a series of attendee profiles, in the style of my previous coverage of BostonFIG. My editor loved the idea but asked that, instead of photos and writeups, I produce short video interviews.

I’d long wanted to shoot video at KansasFest, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so. Andy Molloy helped me vet a list of attendees with unique, discrete roles who would exemplify the Apple II community. Throughout the week of KansasFest, I cornered a dozen people: programmers, historians, artists, gamers, and more.

Computerworld published eight of the videos in the slideshow, "Who goes to an Apple II convention in 2013?", which went live last Friday. This morning, KansasFest’s official YouTube channel published an additional three. That makes eleven — the unpublished 12th video was one I shot of myself, as a proof of concept. No one needs to see that.

My thanks to all who contributed to this project! I hope the below videos serve as an example of the wonderful friends you can make at KansasFest. Click the thumbnails for an introduction!

The Artist

The Founder

The Speaker

The Historian

The Podcaster

The Gamer

The Emulator

The Rebel

The Inventor

The Old-Timer

The Profiler

The Programmer