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I've been toying with the idea of making a demo for the original Apple 2 (none of this GS stuff, not interested). I've done a few tests which seem promising enough...

I think we're quite done with the 2600 anyway (until somebody decides to make more demos, of course :)

IconoclaST, discouraging ?? no !!! as you see you've got a ful virgin territory to explore, no benchmark, nothing to prove, just have some fun and be the nearly first !

And a lot of time :) The apple IUI is already dead :)

So start slowly, write some little 6502 code, make it running on the apple IIe, play with the various graphic modes.... Don't think of writing a megademo in 1 month, just have fun !

And wait for the next trilobit demo :)

There si nothing like coding on a new territory...

Trilobit demo...

Might be a good way to draw some inspiration ;)

Perhaps I could manage to port tom/jones to Apple II? XD

/me remembers the old cracks before Karateka etc on Apple II... unsynced char scrollers etc <3 :)

No timers, no interrupts, awful graphics and sound. Why not make a demo for the KC85/2. It was more widespread here than the Apple 2. And it has 2 tone channels with 5 bit volumes, better graphics (attributes like CGA text mode, but 320x256) and a slow Z80 CPU (1.7Mhz) :D

There is room to do Apple II demos. Here's a raycasting engine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUN5CSWiLaw

You can also do 5-bit audio out of one speaker with no CPU time left (here are sixteen of them doing a song (see the motherboards behind the keyboard): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa_ONTDm35U

You can do 1-bit speech and two-voice music with tight loops but most attempts sound like crud: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW2kFcePevs

There is room to do a proper Apple II demo. I still consider the platform "virgin" because there hasn't been a proper megademo for it yet.

Mmmmmmm, Apple II beowulf cluster.

This is going to take a while...not that I expected it would take long. Now if I stick with it, eventually...I'll do this.

Perhaps this has indirectly been answered, but .ym files... (or any AY-3-8910-based chiptrack file, really) Are they simply just instructions for the music chip itself, or are they a combination of chip and CPU code, like a PSID file?

YM file, if you mean Leonard^Oxygene format, is a compressed dump (after a little header of course) of the 14 YM2149 registers BUT interlaced to maximize compression (LZH if I remember well).
It means that instead of having t0(values of reg0,1,2...,13),t1(values of reg0,1,2,...13), you've got all reg0 values, then all reg1 values...

So that's perfect for a cross platform player with some memory to first de-interlace them then replay but not for realtime playing on the Apple IIe... But YM file don't include a 68000 player (as SNDH files do)

So, why not usiong YM files but I guess best to first recompsoe them in temporal sequence. Easy to do :)

Ah, I was wrong, LHA packed, not LZH :)
http://leonard.oxg.free.fr/ymformat.html

Same thing.

Just listen to Apple2GS soundchip... its awesome...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMp7j77imD4

About YM files...
We have some converter to a format called AYC to use on the amstrad cpc... it's easier to depack and play in realtime on a slow cpu with low memory, maybe you can look at that.

Well, this is not a "demo" as you call them, but i really this apple II music video :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA-UqKAv1rE

i really " like " this

YM to AYC converter :
http://cpcrulez.free.fr/zip/index.php?download=YMCruncher_windows_0.8

Somebody has the AYC specs ?

maybe it's a good idea to look at mockingboard specs first...

http://cpcrulez.free.fr/zip/index.php?download=kitay
Amstrad player and converter for AYC with full sourcecode, and maybe some docs inside

Sorry...

http://www.pulkomandy.fluo.net/downloads/KitAYC-src.zip

Amstrad CPC converter and player sourcecode, in readable ASCII format :)