[Blindapple] Exciting news for the Blind Apple II emulation community!

[Louis Bryant]

My goodness! Thanks for this! You bet I'll be playing with this one.
Best, Louis

----- Original Message -----
From: Jayson Smith <jaybird at bluegrasspals.com>
To: Apple Discussions <blindapple at bluegrasspals.com>
Date: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 5:37 pm
Subject: [Blindapple] Exciting news for the Blind Apple II emulation community!

>
>
> Hi all,
> 
> It's finally happened, what we've all been waiting for. I didn't know 
> about it until a week or two ago, and I got it working this morning. I'm 
> talking about the MESS project emulating the Apple II systems. Not only 
> that, but someone decided to add Echo II emulation! Yes, you heard 
> right, at long last, you can get a feel for how the old systems really 
> worked for us blind folks back in the 80's without ever buying any Apple 
> hardware.
> 
> Disclaimer: The file I'm about to link to includes ROM images. It is 
> illegal for anyone to possess these ROMs unless they own the original 
> hardware, in this case, an Apple IIe Enhanced and a Disk II controller 
> card. However, since these files are absolutely necessary for the 
> emulator to do anything at all, I've decided to make things easier by 
> providing the ROMs.
> 
> If you'd like to take this emulator for a spin, you'll need to be 
> running Windows. MESS runs on many platforms, but Windows was the system 
> I chose for this quick distribution since it's what I most often use. 
> Download the following file:
> http://bluegrasspals.com/messapple.zip
> 
> Unzip it somewhere. In the disks folder are a few talking .dsk images 
> for you to play around with. To start the emulator with one of them, do, 
> for example,
> mess apple2ee comflop1 disks\egames.dsk
> 
> Yes, you do need to write apple2ee with two e's, since we're emulating 
> an Enhanced IIe. This system has an extended 80-column card, an Echo II 
> in slot 4, and a disk controller in slot 6. Once the program starts, you 
> may have to hit Enter to start the Apple. You'll notice that the Echo 
> speech sounds a bit fast, I noticed that too.
> 
> For the most part, things work like you'd think. F12 is the reset key, 
> left and right Alt seem to be open apple and closed apple. To quit, hold 
> down scroll lock, press Insert, and release both keys, then press 
> Escape. To make this work, if you're using Jaws, you'll need to 
> passthrough or have Jaws go to sleep or unload it. Same goes for Control 
> key commands in the Apple. I don't know how the arrows are emulated, so 
> I use the Control key equivalents, Ctrl+Have for left, Ctrl+Us for right, 
> Ctrl+Just for down, and Ctrl+Knowledge for up.
> 
> I don't know of an accessible way to switch disks during a session, so 
> you probably don't want to use this to play Eamon. The MESS UI doesn't 
> seem to be accessible.
> 
> Hope you can get something out of this! I certainly have enjoyed it.
> Jayson
> 
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