Since 2010, the KansasFest Committee has recognized members of the Apple II community who have made significant contributions to the Apple II, either in promoting or developing for the platform during its active years, or in helping to advance or preserve the Apple II since its production had been discontinued.
This year, we recognized three individuals:
Plamen Vasilov of A2Heaven delivers innovative and useful hardware for the Apple II, including battery-backed memory cards, VGA video adapters, a floppy drive emulator, and sound cards. Most recently, he introduced a 16.6 MHz accelerator for the Apple IIe. He uses modern components to deliver products that are smaller, are lower-power, are lower cost, and have more features than previously available, and he is both advancing and preserving our favorite computers.
Glenn Jones with A2 Retro Systems connects our Apple IIs to modern computer networks and the Internet with the Uthernet expansion card. He released the latest generation of this card, the Uthernet II, in 2015. Besides facilitating file transfer and preservation, his work enables new telecommunication applications for the Apple II, such as Web browsers, e-mail clients, Web servers, and chat clients. The potential of Glenn’s work is not yet fully realized, and he is helping to advance what’s possible with our machines.
Quinn Dunki embodies the hacker spirit that founded the Apple II. She designed and built her own 6502-based computer, Veronica. She has disassembled and improved the Apple IIc Plus ROM and has prototyped an Apple IIc with integrated monitor and mass storage. She has contributed original software libraries for Apple II sprite, mouse, and GUI programming, and she created a tool that greatly simplifies 8-bit assembly programming. Most significantly, Quinn inspires others through freely sharing her knowledge and expertise.