BlueFlash: Bluetooth for the Apple II

Never say die to the old Apple II. A hacker named Vinchysky has melded a Disk ][ controller card with a Xilinx FPGA, which in normal-person-speak means he's enabled you to plug a Bluetooth dongle into an Apple II.

The hookup itself is basically just a USB connection, so you could conceivably transfer in any files you wanted from either a USB drive or a Bluetooth connection to any PC (or any Mac, or any iPhone... or anything with Bluetooth at all... Mind boggled yet?). The writeup of how Vinchysky created it is interesting, while a little on the technical side. Then again, the guy is working technical magic, so we'll let him have his jargon.

And the best part is that we're told this thing will be offered for sale-- he's planning to send them out at a tidy $160, within the next few weeks. If you've got an Apple II sitting around that you're just jonesing to get hooked up to a Bluetooth device, this is what you've been waiting for.

[via MacBytes]

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Source: http://vinchysky.angelfire.com/

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Hardware Hacks Odds and ends Bluetooth Retro Mac

Never say die to the old Apple II. A hacker named Vinchysky has melded a Disk ][ controller card with a Xilinx FPGA, which in...

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orig_club_soda

if only I could get bluetooth on my OS 9 iBook!

August 14 2007 at 9:56 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Cyborg28

I can't help but wonder how many times more powerful the usb/CF interface card running a 57 MHz ARM processor is than the Apple ][e? I'm sure I've missed the point here... but I wanna play games on the ARM.

August 14 2007 at 11:03 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Huxley Dunsany

I just wanted to add that I learned of the BlueFlash in early July, and contacted Vinchy to express my interest in purchasing one. Not only did he promptly reply to my message, but he was both very informative and extremely friendly. I'm really looking forward to the release of this gadget - I'm currently having fun transferring disk images from my MacBook Pro to my snazzy 'new' Apple IIGS via a Serial-to-USB cable, but Vinchy's solution looks much nicer! Anyway, major kudos for this project - it's great to see continued support and development for older, classic systems like the Apple II.

August 14 2007 at 1:40 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Collin

Awesome! Hack on.

August 13 2007 at 9:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply