Overview

The Appletini ONE is a single peripheral card for the Apple II slot bus. An FPGA, paired with two ARM Cortex-A9 processors running at 766 MHz, watches the bus every cycle and reconstructs, in real time, the machine’s video, memory and peripherals, then presents them through modern connectors: a digital display over HDMI, storage on an SD card, a network jack, and USB for input. Nothing about your Apple //e is modified; the card provides, from one slot, what used to take a stack of separate boards.

Because the emulation is driven by the real bus rather than a software model, the results match the hardware being emulated at the cycle level: timing-sensitive demos, copy protection and raster tricks behave the way they do on the genuine articles.

Compatibility

The card presents itself to software as multiple original cards. If acceleration is enabled, you will see the machine as an Enhanced Apple //e, whether your system is enhanced or not. This card iteration is certified for Apple //e systems, both unenhanced and enhanced, NTSC and PAL.

Support for Apple II/II+ (including EuroPlus) and Apple IIgs is still in testing and is not guaranteed for this iteration of the card.

For experimental IIgs use, install the card in physical slot 7 and set that slot to Your Card. The IIgs profile allows video capture and slot-7 services, but blocks all Appletini-emulated cards in slots 1–6, plus TransWarp, RamWorks and the 8088. This applies to Appletini's emulated cards, not separate cards installed in the IIgs's other physical slots. See the developer notes for the full limits.

In the box

Every order is the Appletini ONE card itself. Optional extras, priced separately, can be added to a reservation:

• 12 V power supply
• Mini-HDMI cable
• SD card, preloaded with firmware and the demo disk
• Mini keyboard (USB)

The card ships with current firmware already installed. The demo disk and future firmware updates are free downloads on the Downloads page.

Getting started

With the machine powered off, seat the card in any free slot. It always uses slot 7: either install it in slot 7, or use another slot and leave slot 7 empty of any card. Connect a display to the mini-HDMI port and an SD card if you have one. Power the machine on; the card initialises and mirrors your Apple //e to the HDMI display. From there its on-screen configuration menu controls the rest.

Press A at the A:APPLETINI boot prompt to open the menu with the Apple keyboard. Select a SmartPort drive and choose a disk image. Enable the virtual cards you need; fresh settings leave acceleration and the optional slot cards off. To use the real-time clock, fit a CR2032 battery in the holder on the back before installing the card.

The board carries its own connectors for everything it provides: mini-HDMI out, an Ethernet jack, USB-C, a 3.5 mm audio-out jack, a micro-SD slot, and a DC power input.

Video

A per-cycle renderer reconstructs the Apple //e picture exactly as the machine generates it and outputs it as a clean digital signal over HDMI. Both NTSC and PAL timing are reproduced faithfully, including the color-fringing behaviour software relies on. PAL goes a step further, with extra timing-exact modes that reproduce every video glitch of the real machine; we expect to bring the same to NTSC in a future update.

Output resolution & picture size

Choose Video > Output resolution. Changes take effect immediately and save with your settings and profiles. The default is 1920×1080; five smaller outputs are available:

Size multiplier offers Max, 1x and 2x. Max uses the largest integer scale that fits, centered on the display; 2x is limited to 1x where needed. Borders scale with the picture and may clip at the screen edges. Smaller outputs use a compact menu with all tabs along the top.

The display must accept the chosen timing, especially 1200×800 and the lower resolutions at 50 Hz; the card does not choose a mode automatically from the display’s capabilities. Custom bezel PNGs must match the output width and fit its height. Full-output screenshots use the selected resolution.

Super Hi-Res & SHR4

Beyond the standard text, lo-res, hi-res and double-hi-res modes, the card renders Super Hi-Res and the extended SHR4 family, including 3200-color, RGGB, PAL256 and double (interlaced and page-flipped) modes, for artwork that goes well past what stock hardware could show. Interlaced hi-res and double-hi-res (HGRi, DHRi) render with your choice of paged weave or field merge.

Video-7 RGB

The renderer also understands the extended modes of the Video-7 and Chat Mauve RGB cards, including MIX, which puts color and monochrome on the same double-hi-res scanline, so software written for those cards displays as intended.

SuperSprite

A virtual SuperSprite (TMS9918) overlays hardware sprites and its own graphics modes on top of Apple //e video, composited into the same HDMI output.

Text overlay

Software can also draw a crisp VT100- or CP437-style text layer over the picture, in 16 colors with a cursor, straight from a buffer in Apple RAM. The demo disk’s text overlay program shows it; the interface is documented for programmers on the Developers page.

Display effects

The clean digital picture can be dialed back toward a CRT, to taste: scanlines, phosphor blur that softens the image like a CRT spot, a glow halo around bright pixels, bloom, and ghosting that lets bright pixels linger and decay across frames like real phosphor persistence. Each effect is a separate switch in the video menu. Use one, all, or none.

Scanlines darken the repeated rows of the enlarged picture. At 2x height, Light, Medium and Strong keep 75%, 50% and 25% of each dark row; at 4x, one, two or three rows are black. At 1x they have no effect.

Pixel mask, beside Scanlines, adds a screen texture to the Apple picture and its border: Aperture grille (repeating RGB columns), Shadow mask (the same columns staggered on alternate rows) or LCD grid (every third row and column dimmed). It is Off by default. The pattern follows output pixels, so its pitch stays the same at every picture size; the bezel, menus and status overlays are not masked.

In Monochrome output, Dot bleed softens the gaps between dots in legacy video. Choose Off, Light (the default), Medium or Strong beside Phosphor blur. It works with the other CRT effects; SHR uses its own rendering path.

Custom character sets

Video > Video ROM picks the character ROM the card draws text with: the built-in Enhanced US //e ROM, or a 4 KB or 8 KB //e character ROM file from the SD card. Apple II programs can also upload a complete character set of their own through the card’s SmartPort, for new fonts or text-mode graphics, and put back the menu’s choice when they exit. Either way only the card’s HDMI picture changes: the motherboard’s character ROM and its composite output keep their own glyphs. The Glyph Lab demo shows what the upload can do; programmers will find the interface on the Developers page.

Screenshots

Two USB bindings on Boot Settings save PNG screenshots to the SD card’s screenshots folder at any time, not only in the menu. Keyboard keys and controller buttons can both trigger them, and the file is written in the background.

• PRTSCR A2 saves the Apple picture alone, at a fixed size (1120×768 for legacy modes, 1280×800 for Super Hi-Res), with scanlines but without the other effects or the pixel mask.
• OUTPUT SCREEN saves the whole HDMI output at the selected resolution, including the pixel mask and every CRT effect, exactly as it was on screen when you pressed the key.

Stop USB or FTP SD sharing before taking a screenshot; the card shows STOP SD SHARING FIRST otherwise.

Acceleration & memory

A virtual TransWarp-class accelerator runs the CPU well beyond 1 MHz, with fixed presets up to 33 MHz. Software that depends on exact timing keeps working: a 1 MHz lock and a video-sync mode let code slow to real speed exactly where it must, so raster effects and timing loops can use native timing with any fixed preset.

Storage keeps pace: SmartPort transfers and Disk II reads are accelerated under warp too, so booting and loading speed up along with the code.

The card adds 8 MB of fast RAM to the machine, plus a separate 32 MB RAM disk for near-instant storage.

To enable acceleration, restart, press A during boot, open TransWarp, and select Accelerate the Apple II. Fresh settings leave it off. Speed keys change a running accelerator; when it is off they show TW: OFF and leave the speed unchanged.

On an Apple //e, a saved accelerator starts before the boot prompt appears. The prompt and the boot menu run at 1 MHz, so their timing stays native, and your saved speed takes over as soon as the card hands off to the boot disk.

Slowdown window

Like the real TransWarp, the accelerator can drop to 1 MHz for timing-sensitive slots. After each touch of an enabled slot it stays at 1 MHz for the Slowdown window set on the TransWarp tab: 32, 64, 128, 256 or 512 cycles, and so on up to 65535. The default is 512 cycles. Pick the shortest window that works for your software; a very fast speed or a long beam-synced effect may need a longer one.

TURBO

Check Enable TURBO speed in the TransWarp tab to add TURBO after 33 MHz in the speed selector. It uses caches and a faster execution path, so its rate depends on the program and has no fixed MHz rating. The checkbox defaults to off. Turning it off while TURBO is selected returns to 33 MHz.

The 1 MHz toggle and timed I/O slowdowns still apply. Use a fixed preset for software that depends on exact CPU cycles or intermediate writes reaching the motherboard display. The developer reference explains the timing and memory behavior.

With the virtual Disk II enabled in slot 6, TURBO pays an idle timing cost even while the drive motor is off, which can slow speed-sensitive programs such as Speed Race. Check Disable DiskII Acceleration on the TransWarp tab to remove it; slot 6 stays available and disk accesses run at the normal 1 MHz.

Sound

A virtual Phasor (a dual Mockingboard with stereo synthesis and speech) lives in the card and plays through the onboard 3.5 mm analog audio jack, or an optical digital output if you’ve fitted one. There is no audio over HDMI. If you own a real Mockingboard or Phasor, it keeps working alongside the virtual one.

Enable the virtual Phasor in the menu when needed; fresh settings leave it off. Disk II can also mix motor, seek, track-zero and drive-door recordings into the output, with controls on its own tab.

Speech

Both Phasor speech chips are SSI-263s, synthesized natively in the FPGA. The Phasor tab sets speech against the music channels:

• SSI volume: −5 to +5 dB in 1 dB steps. The default is 0 dB; Enter returns to it. Firmware F1.3.0 also makes speech about 6 dB louder at every setting, after a comparison with a real Mockingboard. A volume saved by older firmware keeps its value, so lower it if speech is now too loud.
• SSI0 pan and SSI1 pan: 0 (left) to 15 (right). SSI0 starts on the left and SSI1 on the right; Enter selects the near-center position, 8.

Volume changes the mix only, never speech timing or pitch. Each chip stays active in Mockingboard-only mode when software uses it.

Storage

The card provides storage several ways at once:

• SmartPort hard-disk volumes from the SD card, bootable
• Disk II emulation with true WOZ support, for bit-accurate copy-protected disks as well as DSK/PO/DO images
• A 32 MB RAM disk for fast scratch space

The SD volume supports FAT32 and exFAT. Enable Slot 6 on the Disk II tab to use the virtual floppy controller. Disk II boot requires that setting; turning it off also changes Boot device to SmartPort. This rule applies in standalone mode too.

Browse images and read notes

The SmartPort and Disk II image browsers select the first usable image. Unsupported files and images mounted in another drive are grey and skipped; names beginning with a dot are hidden. Select a brown .TXT file to read it without changing the mounted disk. Up/Down scroll by line, Left/Right or Page Up/Page Down by page, and Esc returns to the same place in the browser. The reader displays up to 256 KiB and marks longer files as truncated.

Mount the SD card on your PC or Mac

Connect the card’s orange (top) USB-C port to a computer and start SD Card Remote Mounting from the on-screen menu: the SD card appears on the desktop as an ordinary USB drive, ready to copy disk images and files both ways. It’s a dedicated maintenance mode: the card pauses its other duties while the computer has the disk, then resumes when you eject on the computer and exit. To skip the USB cable, share the SD card over FTP instead.

Networking

A virtual Uthernet II connects your Apple //e to a real network through the onboard RJ45 jack, speaking standard TCP/IP. The bundled demo disk includes a text web browser and an image viewer that streams pictures from the internet straight into Super Hi-Res.

SD card sharing over FTP

The SD card can be shared over FTP: start sharing from the Ethernet tab of the on-screen menu, and any computer on your local network can browse the card, download files and upload new ones, so you can move disk images on and off without ever ejecting the card. Access is limited to your local subnet. While sharing is active the card’s SD and network are dedicated to it; stop sharing and everything resumes where it was.

Printing

A virtual Super Serial Card in slot 1, with a color ImageWriter II behind it, turns printing into files. Print the way you always did (PR#1 in BASIC, or select a Super Serial Card and ImageWriter II in your software) and each page is saved to the SD card as a PNG: US Letter, 144 dpi, in color, with the four-color ribbon faithfully emulated (overlapping strikes even mix their ink).

It runs the real Super Serial Card firmware, so Ctrl-I commands behave exactly as on the genuine card. A form feed completes a page immediately, and a job closes a few seconds after the Apple stops sending, so a partial last page is never lost. The Printing tab of the on-screen menu manages it all, with a printout browser that previews, renames and deletes pages.

Enable the Super Serial Card in the Printing tab before printing; fresh settings leave it off. The virtual Super Serial Card shares slot 1 with the virtual Uthernet II without conflict; printing and Ethernet work at the same time.

Input

Connect a USB mouse, keyboard or supported wired gamepad to the green (bottom) USB-C host port, directly or through a standard USB hub. Select Slot 2 > Mouse to present the mouse to Apple software as an Apple Mouse Card. Slot 2 defaults to Off. A USB keyboard controls the Appletini menu; in ONE//e standalone it also becomes the Apple keyboard.

Supported controllers

Generic USB HID joysticks and gamepads with at least two absolute axes or a D-pad hat are supported. Wired controller support also includes DualShock 4 (054c:05c4 and 054c:09cc) and Xbox One devices with USB ID 045e:02ea, including the tested EG-C50700X clone. Xbox 360 uses a different protocol and is not supported by this driver.

Joysticks & paddles

USB paddles require active TransWarp on a physical Apple. They also work in ONE//e. Connecting a supported controller selects USB input; disconnecting the last controller restores the physical game connector. Open USB > Joystick / Paddles to choose each of four paddles and adjust:

• Device: Auto or USB input 1–8. Each paddle may use a different controller.
• Source: Auto, X, Y, Z, Rx, Ry, Rz or Off.
• Invert, Sensitivity (25–200%) and Deadzone (0–50%).

The live preview shows raw axes, mapped paddles, buttons and whether game input is available. Auto uses the lowest connected joystick slot: X/Y for paddles 1/2, Rx/Ry for 3/4, falling back to Z/Rz. For two separate sticks, choose X/Y on one device for paddles 1/2 and X/Y on the other for 3/4. Missing devices, missing axes and Off center the affected paddle.

The lowest connected joystick supplies the three Apple buttons: the first three HID buttons, Xbox A/B/X, or PS4 Cross/Circle/Square. USB input numbers are shared with keyboard and mouse interfaces and can change with connection order. Use the preview to identify them. Opening the menu centers game paddles and releases buttons while the preview stays live; closing it restores input.

4Play & SNES MAX in slot 2

Choose Slot 2 > 4Play for four players with directions and three triggers each, or SNES MAX for two players with all twelve SNES controls. These virtual cards work with or without TransWarp and in ONE//e. Only one slot-2 card can be selected at a time; leave physical slot 2 free when using it.

Each player offers Auto, USB 1–8 or Off. Auto keeps a player assigned while that pad remains connected. The D-pad takes priority over the left stick. The face buttons map by position: Xbox A/PS Cross is SNES B or 4Play Trigger 1; B/Circle is A or Trigger 2; X/Square is Y or Trigger 3. SNES MAX also maps the top face button, shoulders, Select and Start.

The game must support the selected card in slot 2. Software fixed to a slot-4 gamepad address needs a setting or patch. These cards have separate player settings from the paddle mapping above; their software interfaces are documented for developers.

Z80 & 8088 coprocessors

Slot 5 hosts a coprocessor of your choice, selected from the on-screen menu:

• A virtual Applicard puts a Z80 in the slot, running CP/M software at up to 80 MHz, with 2 MB of its own dedicated memory: decades of business and development software, far faster than the original card managed.
• A virtual ALF AD8088 Plus puts a 640 KB 8088 in the slot, enough to boot MS-DOS on your Apple //e.

One coprocessor runs at a time, and physical slot 5 must be free of a real card. The 8088 shares the bus with the accelerator, so it runs with acceleration switched off; software that calls the original ALF PROM’s graphics routines isn’t covered yet.

Configuration

An on-screen configuration menu, shown over HDMI, controls every feature: which peripherals are virtual, acceleration speed, video options, audio, storage mounts and input bindings. Settings are saved to the SD card as profiles, so the card comes back the way you left it.

At boot, press A to use the Apple keyboard in the menu. During normal operation, long-press your USB OK binding (Enter by default on the keypad, or the mouse wheel button). Use USB controls in that menu: the physical Apple keyboard still reaches the running program. USB key and button bindings can be changed only in the menu opened from the boot prompt. A binding can be a keyboard key or any of controller buttons 1–32; the joystick preview shows which button is which. With the menu open, unbound LB and RB (L1/R1) switch to the previous and next tab.

Boot Settings also holds Startup firmware and Switch to Multitini, for cards that have the second firmware installed; see Multiboot & Multitini. The About tab shows the installed firmware and Golden Boot versions.

Fresh settings keep SmartPort available and leave TransWarp, Ethernet, printing, slot 2, Phasor, the slot-5 coprocessor and Disk II off. Existing saved settings still apply after an update. Enable only the virtual cards you need, with their physical slots clear of conflicting cards. The slot map lists the choices.

Firmware updates

The Appletini ONE is fully field-updatable from the SD card. Its flash holds a small Golden Boot updater and, since firmware F1.3.0, room for two firmwares side by side: Appletini, the Apple II card described on this page, and Multitini, which turns the card into other machines (see Multiboot & Multitini). Get the latest Appletini FIRMWARE.BIN from the Downloads page (each release lists what changed), then:

1. Save the file to the top level of the SD card, named exactly FIRMWARE.BIN. You can write it like any file on the SD card, even when it's mounted from inside the Apple.
2. Turn the machine off if it is on, and wait 10 seconds.
3. Turn it on again. The screen stays dark for almost a minute while the firmware is installed.
4. Once it is installed, the machine boots. For good measure, do one more power cycle: off, wait 10 seconds, on.

When the update succeeds the card renames the file to FIRMWARE.OK. If it fails, copy a fresh FIRMWARE.BIN onto the card and go through the steps again. Normal firmware updates leave the Golden Boot recovery path intact, and an Appletini update leaves an installed Multitini untouched. Firmware F1.3.0 also runs on the older Golden Boot already on your card; you only need the new Golden Boot to add Multitini.

Golden Boot

The Golden Boot is a small updater with primary and backup copies that normal firmware installation never erases or writes. It runs on every power-on, before any firmware. It starts the SD card and looks at the top level for firmware files. For each one it finds, it checks the image, programs it into its slot, reads back every byte to verify it, and only then marks the slot valid and renames the file from .BIN to .OK. Then it checks the firmware it is about to start, in full, and starts it.

Golden Boot B2, the multiboot version, looks for FIRMWARE.BIN, FIRMWARE-APPLETINI.BIN and FIRMWARE-MULTITINI.BIN, in that order. The file’s contents, not its name, decide which slot it goes to, and installing one firmware never disturbs the other. It starts your saved startup firmware; if that one is missing or damaged, it starts the other verified firmware instead. Older B1 Golden Boots know only FIRMWARE.BIN and a single firmware slot.

A failed or interrupted update leaves the .BIN file in place and the slot unmarked, so the next power-on tries again. If no valid firmware exists at all, the Golden Boot waits for a new image over the card’s USB serial port instead.

Updating the Golden Boot

With Appletini firmware F1.3.0 or later, update the Golden Boot from the menu:

1. Copy the BOOT.BIN you were given (the Appletini F1.3.1 release includes Golden Boot B2.0.6) to the top level of the SD card.
2. Stop USB SD sharing and FTP SD sharing if either is active.
3. Restart the Apple and press A at the A:APPLETINI boot prompt to open the menu. In an Apple, the update is available only from this first menu, before the card hands off to the boot disk; a menu opened later shows Update Golden Boot from the initial boot menu. In ONE//e standalone it is available at any time.
4. Open the About tab. Beside Golden Boot: and its installed version, choose Update Golden Boot.... The button appears only while BOOT.BIN is on the SD card.
5. The confirmation starts on Cancel. Move to Update and reboot with Left/Right and press Enter or your USB OK binding.
6. Keep the card powered until the card has restarted and the normal firmware is back. The Apple is held in reset meanwhile.

When the update succeeds, BOOT.BIN becomes BOOT.OK and About shows the new Golden Boot version. Multitini’s System page has the same Update Golden Boot... action.

With older firmware, or if you prefer the serial console, the original procedure still works. It needs firmware F1.0.1 or later, however old the Golden Boot already on the card is:

1. Install a FIRMWARE.BIN of F1.0.1 or later as above, and boot it.
2. Copy the BOOT.BIN to the top level of the SD card.
3. Stop USB SD sharing and FTP SD sharing if either is active.
4. Connect the card’s orange (top) USB-C port to a computer and open its control serial port at 921600 baud, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit, no flow control. If no serial ports appear, you may need to install the Silicon Labs USB-to-UART bridge drivers.
5. There are two serial ports, the debug port and the control port; the control port is generally the higher-numbered one. Type ? and you should see a list of commands. If you see nothing, try the other serial port.
6. Enter :selfupdate and press Enter.
7. Keep the card powered until all automatic reboots finish and the normal frontend starts again.

Both ways are built to fail safe. The firmware verifies BOOT.BIN and the installed recovery firmware before it writes anything; if a check fails first, nothing is changed and the cause is reported (on screen from the menu, on the serial port from the console). It then writes and verifies a backup copy of the Golden Boot, boots through it, and only after that repairs and verifies the primary copy. Do not remove power before the normal firmware returns.

Multiboot & Multitini

Multitini is a second firmware for the card. Instead of serving an Apple II, it loads complete FPGA machines from the SD card: a Commodore 64, a Game Boy / Game Boy Color, a Genesis / Mega Drive, a Nintendo Entertainment System, a Vectrex and an Apple IIgs at nearly 60 MHz. With Golden Boot B2.0.6, Appletini and Multitini are installed side by side and you choose which one starts. The Multitini page explains how to use it.

Installing Multitini

Starting from any Appletini firmware and Golden Boot, you need two downloads, both linked from the Downloads page: the Appletini F1.3.1 release, with FIRMWARE.BIN and BOOT.BIN (Golden Boot B2.0.6), and the latest Multitini release. The Multitini zip has one top folder that holds FIRMWARE-MULTITINI.BIN and a multitini folder.

1. Copy all four to the top level of the SD card: FIRMWARE.BIN, BOOT.BIN, FIRMWARE-MULTITINI.BIN and the multitini folder. If the card already has a multitini folder, merge the new one into it so your games and settings stay.
2. Turn the machine off, wait 10 seconds, and turn it on. The Golden Boot on the card installs Appletini F1.3.1 as described above; an older Golden Boot ignores the other files.
3. Press A at the A:APPLETINI prompt. The About tab now shows Firmware F1.3.1. Follow Updating the Golden Boot: Update Golden Boot..., then Update and reboot.
4. Keep the card powered. The card installs Golden Boot B2.0.6 and restarts through it. The new Golden Boot then installs Multitini from FIRMWARE-MULTITINI.BIN, renames it to FIRMWARE-MULTITINI.OK, and starts Appletini again.
5. Check the result: About shows Golden Boot: B2.0.6, and Boot Settings > Switch to Multitini reads Reboot card.

Choosing a firmware

• Boot Settings > Startup firmware chooses Appletini or Multitini for every power-on. Enter, Left or Right changes it, and it is saved in flash straight away, outside your profiles.
• Boot Settings > Switch to Multitini restarts the card into Multitini for this session only; the startup choice stays as it was. Pending disk and settings writes are saved first. Finish screenshots, print jobs and SD sharing before switching. The program running on the Apple loses the card’s services.
• In Multitini, System > Startup firmware and System > Switch to Appletini do the same in the other direction.
• A power cycle always starts the saved startup firmware. If that firmware is missing or damaged, the Golden Boot starts the other one.
• For recovery, the Golden Boot listens on both of the card’s USB serial ports for one second at power-on. Open either port at 921600 baud before powering on (the serial settings above) and press ? as the card starts. At the cmd> prompt, type boot appletini or boot multitini to start that firmware once.

The multiboot rows are dimmed until Golden Boot B2 is installed, and a switch is offered only when the other firmware is installed and verified.

Installed in an Apple //e, Multitini takes its 5 V from the Apple and needs no jumper; the Apple only powers the card. Out of the Apple, the card needs the standalone jumper and the 12 V supply, as for ONE//e.

Updating later

With Golden Boot B2 installed, copy a new FIRMWARE.BIN (Appletini), a new FIRMWARE-MULTITINI.BIN, or both to the top level of the SD card and power-cycle. The Golden Boot installs each one into its own slot and renames it to .OK; a file that fails stays .BIN and the others still install. Keep only one file per firmware on the card. A BOOT.BIN still waits for you to start the update from the menu.

Going back to older Appletini firmware

Golden Boot B2.0.6 can reinstall an Appletini release of F1.1.0 or later: put it on the SD card as FIRMWARE.BIN and power-cycle. It goes into the Appletini slot and starts for that boot; Multitini, the startup choice and your SD files are kept. Firmware older than F1.3.0 has no multiboot menus, so to reach Multitini from it, use boot multitini on the serial port, or install F1.3.0 again. Update the Golden Boot first if you want both: an older Appletini cannot update it from the menu.

Demo disks

A bootable demo disk shows off what the card can do, including:

• A raster-bar demo that stays locked at any acceleration speed
• A side-by-side 1 MHz-versus-warp speed test
• A Super Hi-Res image viewer
• A text web browser and an internet image viewer over Ethernet
• A VT100-style text overlay drawn over the Apple picture
• An 8088 item that boots MS-DOS 2.0 on the virtual AD8088 and runs an animated cube demo
• House of the Rising Sun, sung by the Phasor’s SSI-263s over its four AY chips

It’s a free download on the Downloads page, as a ZIP holding the 32 MB .po image, and comes preloaded on the SD card if you ordered one. The demo disk is not otherwise included with the card. Its sources and build tools live in appletini-software. Enable each demo’s required virtual cards before running it.

The Downloads page also has the Appletini Invasion shooter demo, the FATDOG MAGIC picture gallery, games built for the card (DOOM GS, Appletini Bosconian, and The Bilestoad and Pinball Construction Set in Super Hi-Res), Phasor music and test disks.

Glyph Lab, a separate 800 KB disk, shows off the custom character sets of firmware F1.3.0: three animated 40-column text scenes, each drawn with a font it uploads to the card. Keys 1–3 pick a scene, Space pauses, A resumes automatic scene changes, and Q or Esc restores your character ROM and quits. Mount Glyph-Lab.hdv on a SmartPort drive and boot it; it needs no acceleration or extra memory.

FAQ

Does it modify my Apple //e?

No. It sits in a slot like any other card and reads the bus. Remove it and your machine is exactly as it was.

Can it run without an Apple //e?

Yes. In ONE//e standalone mode the card is a complete Enhanced Apple //e on its own: pull it out of the Apple, power it from the 12 V supply, plug in an HDMI display and a USB keyboard, and it boots from the SD card. See the Standalone Multitini page.

Can it be something other than an Apple II?

Yes. The second firmware, Multitini, runs a Commodore 64, a Game Boy / Game Boy Color, a Genesis / Mega Drive, a Nintendo Entertainment System, a Vectrex and an Apple IIgs at nearly 60 MHz on the same card, in or out of the Apple. It is installed next to Appletini; see Multiboot & Multitini.

Do I still need a monitor?

You need an HDMI display for the card’s output. Your original composite or RGB monitor still works too, but only unaccelerated and only from motherboard RAM (all modes with 128 KB fitted; otherwise 40-column, lo-res and hi-res).

Can I use my real cards too?

It depends, there were so many cards and so many different configurations. Real Mockingboard/Phasor run alongside the virtual ones. The original Apple mouse card does not work on the ONE due to a stronger than normal pull-up on the IRQ line. We hope to resolve this in a future card. The workaround is to use a USB mouse through the virtual mouse card. One advantage of the virtual mouse card is that it fixes an important bug in the original Apple mouse card firmware.

How do I get software onto the SD card?

Three ways: put the SD card in any reader; connect the card’s orange (top) USB-C port to a PC or Mac and mount it as a USB drive; or share it over FTP on your network. The last two work without ever ejecting the card.

When does it ship?

Shipping starts October 2026, in small first-come batches. Reserve to hold your place.

Where can I ask questions or share my setup?

Join the Appletini FPGA Discord to talk with the community. For reservation questions or a private message, use the contact form.