What it is

The Appletini ONE already carries most of an Apple //e: the soft 65C02 that powers its TransWarp accelerator, the Enhanced //e ROM, shadow RAM, a cycle-exact video renderer, and a shelf of virtual cards. ONE//e adds the missing piece, a virtual motherboard: keyboard, speaker, soft switches, paddles and annunciators, driven by a free-running Apple bus generated inside the FPGA.

Select it from the boot menu and the card runs the ROM cold start on its own, the way a US Enhanced //e does. The card’s own hardware is all there: SmartPort and Disk II storage from the SD card, the HDMI picture with every video mode, the virtual Phasor, and USB input.

ONE//e is one way to use the card without an Apple. The other is Multitini, a second firmware that runs a Commodore 64, a Game Boy / Game Boy Color, a Genesis / Mega Drive, a Nintendo Entertainment System, a Vectrex or an Apple IIgs. It uses the same jumper and power supply.

What you need

• The Appletini ONE, out of the Apple.
• A jumper across the two holes at the top left of the card, next to the power jack. In an Apple the card is powered by the slot’s +5 V. Outside the Apple, the jumper supplies the 5 V the card needs from the DC input; without it the card stays dark out of the slot. The jumper only powers the card: it does not choose the firmware or the mode.
• The 12 V power supply on the card’s DC input (an optional extra when you reserve).
• An HDMI display on the mini-HDMI port.
• A USB keyboard on the USB-C port. A standard hub lets you add a joystick, gamepad or mouse.
• An SD card with disk images, or the preloaded card with the demo disk.

Audio comes out of the 3.5 mm jack (or optical, if fitted), as always. There is no audio over HDMI.

Turning it on

Open the Appletini menu, go to Boot Settings, and select ONE//e standalone. The row reports OFF, RUNNING or LOCKED. The card first checks that the slot connector is quiet, then isolates its bus drivers, and only then starts the virtual machine. The menu closes on its own once the //e is running.

The choice is saved on the SD card and survives a power cycle, so the card starts ONE//e next time if its safety checks pass. It is a global setting; profiles neither set nor clear it. Any detected Apple-bus activity stops the session at once. A confirmed continuing hazard also saves it OFF; a brief connector glitch can leave the saved choice intact, but cannot restart the session during that boot.

LOCKED means a start would currently be refused. Once the connector is quiet and the row returns to OFF, select it again to start a new session.

Keyboard & joystick

A standard USB keyboard becomes the //e keyboard, US layout, with Shift, Caps Lock, Ctrl combinations, arrows, Delete, Tab, Escape and the numeric keypad. Left Alt or Command is Open Apple; right Alt or Command is Closed Apple. Held keys repeat after half a second, ten per second.

Two shortcuts reset the virtual //e. Both use forward Delete, not Backspace:

Each fires once per press, and neither touches the slot connector’s reset line. Ctrl+Delete needs firmware F1.3.1.

Supported USB HID gamepads, wired DualShock 4 controllers and the supported Xbox One USB ID can supply paddles and buttons. Open USB > Joystick / Paddles to map each of four paddles to a device and axis, with inversion, sensitivity and deadzone controls. The live preview shows raw and mapped values. The lowest connected joystick supplies PB0–PB2; each paddle can use a different controller. Paddle timing counts native Apple cycles at every speed.

For games with digital gamepad-card support, select 4Play (four players) or SNES MAX (two players) on the Slot 2 tab. That choice replaces the virtual mouse card and uses separate player assignments. See the input guide for controller IDs, mapping and slot-2 software compatibility. Release held controls when closing the menu so ONE//e can resume.

The screenshot and TransWarp speed keys from Boot Settings work as usual. Reset, Open Apple, Closed Apple and Pause/Break are fixed in ONE//e; the other USB bindings stay editable.

Disks & boot

ONE//e boots from whatever Boot device names: the SmartPort volumes or the Disk II floppy images on the SD card. Disk II boot requires Slot 6 to be enabled on its tab, just as on a host Apple. Turning Slot 6 off, or loading a profile with a Disk II boot target and Slot 6 off, selects SmartPort instead. WOZ, DSK, DO and PO images all mount. The image browsers also open TXT notes without changing the mounted disk.

The SD card can still be mounted over USB-C or shared over FTP to move images on and off.

Video & sound

The HDMI picture is the same as in an Apple: text, lo-res, hi-res, double hi-res, Super Hi-Res, SHR4, Video-7 MIX, and the CRT effects. Choose NTSC (262 lines) or PAL (312 lines) timing from the ONE//e video standard row in Boot Settings; it appears only while ONE//e is active, and a change takes effect at the next virtual reset.

The //e speaker is mixed into the analog audio output alongside the virtual Phasor and the Disk II drive sounds.

The Video tab selects one of six output resolutions from 1024×768 to 1920×1080 and a Max, 1x or 2x picture size. These apply immediately; the separate ONE//e NTSC/PAL choice above controls the virtual Apple timing. See Video for display requirements, bezels and monochrome Dot bleed.

Speed & memory

ONE//e runs on the same 65C02 core as the accelerator, so every TransWarp preset from cycle-exact 1 MHz up to 33 MHz applies, with the 1 MHz lock and video-sync options. The speed keys step it live; a speed chosen before ONE//e starts is used from its first instruction.

For TURBO, first check Enable TURBO speed on the TransWarp tab, then select it after 33 MHz. TURBO uses a faster execution path with no fixed MHz rating. The fixed presets remain available for software that needs exact CPU timing.

The machine is a 128 KB Enhanced //e plus the accelerator’s 8 MB of RAM.

Safety

In an Apple, the card drives the slot bus. Standalone, it must not. A supervisor in the FPGA owns that decision: it watches the slot connector’s clock and select lines (PHI0, 7M, Q3 and the selects), refuses to start ONE//e until they have been silent, and if any of them ever moves it cuts the virtual machine in under a microsecond, before firmware is involved. Firmware saves the mode OFF after confirming a continuing hazard; a quiet connector alone never restarts a stopped session. Address, data, IRQ, INH, DMA and reset drivers are all held off for the whole session.

Limits

• The 8088 coprocessor needs the Apple’s bus and is not available in ONE//e.
• There is no cassette port, and no game-port output for the annunciators or utility strobe. The cassette latch exists for software that toggles it; cassette input reads low.
• No physical Disk II drives, and no physical cards of any kind; it is the virtual hardware only.
• The keyboard translator uses a US layout. Caps Lock works, but the keyboard’s LED does not follow it.
• Storage, sound, video and input are covered above. The other virtual cards are on the same virtual bus and should behave as they do in an Apple, but not every card has been through its standalone compatibility pass yet.

Questions? Ask the community on the Appletini FPGA Discord or get in touch. Read how the virtual bus and safety guard are built on the Developers page.