16 Sector has officially launched! The most mysterious site (and worst kept secret) in recent history has finally been revealed to the Apple II Community.

They’re back! Sirius 8MB RAM cards (special sale price $179), Focus IDE controllers ($99/$129 w/CF) plus shipping. GREAT NEWS! We have confirmed that Tony Diaz will have quantities of each item on hand for sale at KansasFest 2008.

Ferdinand Meyer-Hermann is very close to releasing his new Apple][VGA card for Apple II, II Plus and //e. The Apple][VGA interface is designed to display crisp text and images, with accurate color rendition on modern LCD monitors. The card does not support any IIGS video modes.

The price is expected to be between $150 and $200 USD plus shipping depending on interest. Contact Ferdinand for details.

Update: ReactiveMicro has made arrangements to demo the Apple][VGA at KansasFest 2008.

Alex “Lukazi” Lukacz of Brisbane Australia wrote in to tell us about his CHED project. The purpose of CHED is to completely replace the floppy and hard disk drives with a disk image-based system featuring an LCD interface. Alex has posted a few entries detailing his progress on CHED and pictures too. Check them out, it looks like an interesting bit of work.

At A2Central, we love reading about people like Alex in the community who share our passion for hacking on the Apple II. As retro-computing enthusiasts, we know all about the unique challenges of our hobby; restoring old (often hard to come by) hardware, adapting new gear to work with the old. The approaches we take to solving these problems differ and sometimes the results aren’t what we intended but we’re having a lot of fun in process.

Juiced.GS Volume 13, Issue 2 (June 2008) shipped on Friday to all subscribers. This issue features an interview with Henry Courbis of ReactiveMicro.com; Mike Maginnis’ review of ADTPro; a collective look at KansasFests past; a survey of disk copy protection methods by Antoine Vignau — and much, much more!

This is Juiced.GS’s second issue of 2008. Subscriptions are available for $18 for United States customers and $26 for international customers.

Glenn Jones of A2RetroSystems has confirmed he has another batch of the ever popular Uthernet card available for sale, at $89 USD, plus shipping. The Uthernet is an Ethernet card for slot-equipped Apple II series computers.

Last April, A2Central posted Glenn had 20+ cards available. They were all gone within a day or so. It’s a great add-on for your Apple II.

Update: Apparently Glenn has orders for all the Uthernet cards he has in stock. The good news, he’s ordered additional modules so there will be more available later.

Ryan Suenaga presents A2Unplugged, show #0027. This episode is entitled “Marinetti Programming Primer” an introduction to coding TCP/IP aware applications using Marinetti on the Apple IIGS.

A2Unplugged can be freely downloaded from the podcast’s web site, or subscribed to from the Apple iTunes store.

Vince Briel is taking orders for the updated Replica-1 TE (Third Edition). The latest Replica-1 revision offers a few new enhancements over the previous versions.

• Apple 1 compatible 44 pin slot
• Apple 1 compatible 44 pin edge connector
• Bread board area for hobby experiments
• Elimination of jumpers
• Improved video display using Parallax Propeller (works with most TV’s and monitors)
• No need for Apple 1 slot adapter because Apple 1 slot now onboard as well as original replica 1 connector
• User firmware updates. User can download firmware updates and install. No need to send in for new chips.

The Replica-1 TE is available as a kit ($149 USD, 2 week ship) or assembled ($199 USD, 1 week ship). Peripherals such as the Slot 1 Adapter, Multi I/O Card and the CFFA1 are fully compatible with the new Replica-1 TE.

All we need now is a switchable ROM so we can toggle between Integer BASIC and Applesoft Lite.

Tom Charlesworth has announced via comp.emulators.apple2 that AppleWin 1.14.2 is now available. AppleWin is a highly regarded, open source Apple //e emulator for the Windows operating system.

Changes:

• Support for Bulgarian clones: Pravets 82 & 8A
• Mouse can be configured to show/hide crosshairs; and can be restricted (or not) to AppleWin’s window
• Added ‘Send to CiderPress’ function via the context menu of the drive buttons
• Added support for “The Freeze’s” F8 ROM (Apple][ & Apple][+ only)
• Added -f8rom cmd line switch to allow loading a custom 2K Rom at $F800
• Support Shift-F9 to cycle backwards through video modes

Fixes:

• Mouse support for Contiki v1.3, Blazing Paddles & GEOS
• Mouse support now integrates much better with Windows (when in unrestricted mode)
• Extended HDD image file filter to include *.po
• [Bug #13425] Full Screen mode: drawing/erasing of the buttons on the RHS of the screen
• [Bug #12723] DOSMaster .hdv/.po images work
• [Bug #11592] Infiltrator now boots

Garberstreet Electronics is taking preorders for a new IIe Encoder board that interfaces an Apple IIe keyboard with an Apple II or II Plus. The price is $29 USD.

Update: Bill G. verified for me, that his encoder will also work with the Replica-1. That’s great news for me because I’ve been looking for a decent case to install my Replica-1 in, and all the expansion gear I have for it. Instead of hunting for a clone case, or using one of my original Apple II cases (argh!), I can instead use a very common Apple //e. I don’t mind that so much.

Bill Martens of A.P.P.L.E. wrote in to say, “Thanks to the FTA, Virtual Apple ][ website now has added support for Firefox 3.x. The Virtual Apple ][ website requires Windows based Internet Explorer or Firefox 1.5 through 3.x. You can also use the web site through Apple Boot Camp, Parallels or other cross platform based emulators.

With over 1400 Apple ][ and Apple IIgs games online, Virtual Apple ][ is the largest online emulator and is constantly adding new games to its library.