Last Updated on: 4th January 2024, 04:52 pm
Web site: mrob.com/pub/xapple2/index.html
Category: Machine Emulators
Platform: Linux, Unix-like
License: GNU GPL
Interface: GUI
Wikipedia:
First release: 1994
xapple2 – a 64k Apple ][+ and 128k Apple //e computer. To use the emulator you need to acquire the original ][+ and //e ROM files which are not distributed due to copyright reasons.
The emulator reads standard 143360-byte and 232960-byte disk image files with .dsk and .nib suffixes respectively. You can also change any images with the extension .do to .dsk and they will work too.
The emulator reads user preferences from a .apple2 file located in your home directory. Copy the .apple2 file that comes distributed with the emulator to your home directory. You can edit the settings using your favorite editor, but most of the settings can be tweaked from within the emulator.
The emulator reads standard DOS3.3-order 143360 byte ‘.dsk’ images and raw-nibble 232960 byte ‘.nib’ images. The emulator can handle images which are gzip’ed as long as the suffixes are ‘.dsk.gz’ and ‘.nib.gz’ respectively. The emulator simply assumes that /bin/gzip is available to compress/decompress these images in place as needed and that you have permission to do so.
The images are raw binary dumps, containing the tracks from 0 to 34 from the original 5.25 disk. For the standard 143360 byte ‘.dsk’ format each track is partitioned into sectors of 256 bytes, numbered from 0 to 15.
The raw nibblized 232960-byte images are usually made of programs that have non-standard formatting as a means of copy protection. The nibblized format attempts to preserve the non-standard format, and so defeats the copy protection without “cracking” the program.
To transfer Apple ][ diskettes into one of these formats requires that you own an original Apple ][. Since the drives provided by the IBM PC’s are not compatible with the original Apple ][ drives there are no conversion programs directly available. If you have used other Apple ][ emulators it is most likely that the files will work with this emulator too. For more information on Apple ][ disk formats and such, see Beneath Apple DOS by Don Worth and Pieter Lechner, published long ago by Quality Software.
Originally created by Alexander Jean-Claude Bottema and updated/maintained by Stephen Lee, Aaron Culliney, Michael Deutschmann, and Tom Lear.