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Re: Who is still using apple2 in 2026?

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Groovy hepcat Paul Guertin was jivin' in comp.sys.apple2 on Thu, 7 May
2026 01:48 pm. It's a cool scene! Dig it.

> On Thu, 5 Feb 2026 02:47:04 -0000 (UTC), bikliadik2071
> <bikliadik2071@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I have them, but I haven't used them lately.
>> Glad to meet you all here.
> 
> I have a few Apple II computers that still work well, but I
> mostly use emulators.

  I'm still using my old Apple 2c. I recently bought a smartport
micro-SD card adaptor. I've installed a couple of downloaded .po hard
drive images on it, and am working my way through the games on them to
see which ones are good to play. (All too few, I'm afraid!)
  Although one of the images doesn't seem to be working. It's not
booting. I'll have to look into that.
  And I can't seem to access the images at all from ProDOS booted from
the internal floppy drive. I'll have to look into that too.

> I teach computer science in college, and this term, as the
> capstone project in a computer architecture course where
> students built their own 4-bit computer from 74LS chips,
> they are using Merlin to program a lo-res Apple II game in
> assembly language. For most of them, it's their first contact
> with 8-bit development, and after a crash course in 6502
> architecture, I gave them a bunch of manual scans and
> told them to get to work!

  Sweet! You can get alot out of assembly programming, getting down to
the nitty-gritty of the machine, learning what makes it tick and how to
make it do what you want it to. The old hardware makes this a not
insurmountable task.
  A while back I was writing a graphics/games library in assembly. I've
got sidetracked (as I frequently do) on other projects, and haven't got
back to that yet. But I will someday.

> It's a pleasure seeing them discover assembly programming.
> They really enjoy it and some of them are putting long
> hours into their program .I'm seeing Minesweeper, Pong,
> a text mode Geometry Dash, Space Invaders, Snake, and
> more.

  Anyone come up with original ideas?

> No doubt some teams are using AI to get some help but
> that's fine, as long as they can explain their program to
> the class -- there are orals at the end of the term in a
> couple weeks.

  As long as they understand what they're doing, not just copy-pasting,
they should be alright.

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Thread

Who is still using apple2 in 2026? bikliadik2071 <bikliadik2071@gmail.com> - 2026-02-05 02:47 +0000
  Re: Who is still using apple2 in 2026? Brian Patrie <bpatrie@bellsouth.spamisicky.net> - 2026-02-05 23:17 -0600
    Re: Who is still using apple2 in 2026? Oliver Schmidt <ol.sc@web.de> - 2026-02-07 23:33 +0000
  Re: Who is still using apple2 in 2026? Charlie <charlieDOTd@verEYEzon.net> - 2026-02-06 13:15 -0500
    Re: Who is still using apple2 in 2026? Jan Poulsen <jpo@tiggr.dk> - 2026-02-09 10:07 +0100
  Re: Who is still using apple2 in 2026? datajerk@gmail.com - 2026-02-07 18:41 -0700
  Re: Who is still using apple2 in 2026? Paul Guertin <paul@guertin.net> - 2026-05-06 23:48 -0400
    Re: Who is still using apple2 in 2026? Peter 'Shaggy' Haywood <phaywood@alphalink.com.au> - 2026-05-10 14:27 +1000

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