For several years in the early 1990s, Apple Computer Inc sponsored the annual "Apple II Achievement Awards" as a way of recognizing and paying homage to those prominent individuals and companies who were producing outstanding Apple II products. In 1991, Tom Weishaar was awarded the "Apple II Individual Recognition" award, and in both 1990 and 1991, Tom Weishaar's A2-Central newsletter was awarded the prize in the "Best Publication" category.

In January, 1985, the premier issue of the Open-Apple newsletter appeared. Written and published by Tom Weishaar, that monthly eight page newsletter established itself from the very beginning as the pre-eminent technical journal for intermediate level Apple II users. Featuring such columns as "Digging Into DOS," Picking Up Applesoft," "Go, Logo, Go" and "Ask Uncle DOS," Open-Apple was clearly geared towards programmers, power users and those who wanted to gain a technical mastery over the Apple II computer.

Open-Apple succeeded beyond Weishaar's wildest dreams, and to this day, many Apple II users still consider it to be their favorite Apple II newsletter. By 1989, Tom hired Dennis Doms to become editor of the newsletter, recently renamed A2-Central, while Tom went about expanding his Resource Central organization into a veritable Apple II publishing empire.

In February, 1989, A2-Central-On-Disk first appeared, and that 3.5" disk contained the full text of the current month's A2-Central newsletter, as well as an assortment of the latest shareware and freeware programs for the Apple II. By utilizing compression software, each issue of A2-Central-On-Disk contained more than a megabyte of current Apple IIe/IIc and IIGS freeware and shareware.

Then in late 1992, Apple Computer discontinued the Apple IIGS, and many companies involved with the Apple II started to suffer financial setbacks. By June of 1993, things started to unravel for the Resource Central organization, and it was announced that after 8.5 years of publication, the paper based A2-Central newsletter would cease publication. The newsletter, however, was destined to live on as a disk-based publication in A2-Central-On-Disk, and that lasted until February of 1995, at which time, Tom Weishaar's organization ceased to exist.

Now, in 2002, every word that appeared in every issue of Open-Apple, A2-Central and A2-Central-On-Disk is available on CD-ROM. In the 10+ years that the newsletter was published, a total of 8.8 megabytes of text was written by some of the finest Apple II writers who ever graced our community. Included also is every single A2-Central-On-Disk that was ever released from February, 1989 until February, 1995, for a total of 73 disks.

The CD-ROM is a hybrid-CD which will work on an Apple IIgs (equipped with a SCSI-based CD-ROM drive), a Mac, or a PC. For convenience, all the materials are provided in various formats, for use with all the popular Apple II emulators that work with either Mac or PC computers.