Category Archives: MacOS

Shoebill ported to Windows!

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Shoebill!

Shoebill!

Good news, as mentioned here, the Shoebill emulator was recently given some much needed SDL love, and ported to Linux.

Well that’s great and all, but the vast majority of people who run anything these days do it with Windows.  So I decided to try to get it to compile with MinGW to see how far I could get.

And the short version is that I got it working!

The long version is that in the first pass there is some SIGUSR2 stuff that is undefined.  And for a good reason, since it won’t work.  So I just commented them out.  The next minor problem was the lack of bzero.  Honestly I don’t know why bzero is missing from MinGW, but who knows why.

Shoebill also processes some internal macros with a perl script that for some reason was dropping in binary values into the source, making GCC mad.  I just commented out a line that was adding in more comments into the header.  This let me compile with a simple pass.

There was some issues reading the ROM file, since the 68000 is a BIG ENDIAN processor, and the 8086 is LITTLE ENDIAN, Shoebill makes extensive use of hotns and hotnl, ntohl, and ntohll.  These can be found in the winsock library, and even better they dont need any winsock initialization, they work right away.  I just have to make sure I include winsock2.h, and link against the winsock library.

However when trying to boot, the checksum was 0x00000000, not the expected value!   Luckily there was an assert to catch that and crash.  This led me to notice that in Linux files are opened in binary mode by default, while on Windows, they are opened in ASCII mode.  A quick change of all the fopen calls, and I was reading the ROM, but now crashing on the disk.

As it turns out newer versions of GCC go all crazy when it comes to structs, and try to automatically align to boundaries for quick access.  Which sound nice, until you try to read in some binary data, and expect things to be in certain locations and find out that your structure is larger than expected, and data is read in the wrong place.

The solution is to force the compiler to leave it alone with

__attribute__ ((__packed__))

HOWEVER as luck would have it, Microsoft apparently packs structures a different way, and you have to either make a macro to do a bunch of work to force it to make the structure 1:1 of what you expect, or use the CFLAG option of

-mno-ms-bitfields

And now MinGW’s GCC will build something along the lines of what it’d build on Linux.

Putting it all together, I amazingly got this!

Shoebill on Windows

Shoebill on Windows

Phew!  So for those interested, here is the source code drop(Use the updated one here!), and here is the binary.

If you ever wanted to see the “OS X” of the 1980’s, now is your chance!

reviving a G5

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This has to be one of the more convoluted things I’ve ever done.

So basically it starts like this, I left my quad G5 mac in storage, some 1,600 miles away.  I wanted to see if I could get a cheap mac, and I managed to get a $100 mac out here in Vegas.  Part of the reason it was cheap is because the OS was screwed up.. You’d be surprised how many people ditch good machines, because the OS is messed up.

So I figure I’d just pop in a 10.4 or 10.5 DVD set and boot up, format and all will be well right?  Well it turns out the DVD drive doesn’t work properly.  And I don’t have any old ATA/parallel style DVD drives on me.  So I’ve basically got a $100 paper weight.

Until I decide to try something insane, so I get the great emulator PearPC, and install 10.4 into that.  Sadly PearPC doesn’t support raw disks, otherwise my original plan of popping in the disk to my PC, running PearPC and having it install to \\.\PhysicalDrive2 didn’t work so well.  But at least I could create a small install of 10.4.6 which will boot on a G5.

Next I dug out the ancient ancestor of all the hackintoshes, the deadmoo 10.4.1 image, and got it running on VirtualBOX (set the IDE to P3 mode, otherwise its SLOW!), after converting the raw 6GB image into a VMDK.  I then could use Qemu’s disk image conversion program to convert the 10.4.6 disk I installed with PearPC into a VMDK which I could then mount under the deadmoo image.

With that setup, I could then use the diskutil program on OS X deadmoo, and create a compressed disk image of the PowerPC 10.4.6 .  Then VirtualBOX will let you link to a physical drive, with a command something like this:

VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename drive2.vmdk
      -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive2

With that done, I then could boot back into deadmoo with the G5’s disk attached, remove all the files/directories from the G5 disk (I didn’t format as I wondered if I format from an intel machine, would the endian be backwards making the filesystem unnecessarily slow?), doing the ‘repair permissions’ shuffle from the diskutil program, and then finally I could restore the PearPC compressed image of 10.4.6 onto the G5’s hard disk.

It worked.

Its a shame the PowerPC machines cannot boot from USB disks, otherwise there may have been an easier way…  Well that or order a DVD drive, but that’d take time…

So thankfully with emulation, disks that can work between machines, I was able to get the box up and running.

Mini vMac II for OS X (PPC)

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Emulators in Emulators..

I wanted to run some old 68000 programs on OS X, but as luck would have it, OS X 10.5 doesn’t support the classical environment, and the 10.4 discs that I have won’t boot on a G5.  So I don’t have a good way to get there from here.  However I did remember the great mini vMac is very portable, runs 68000 code great, and even can run 68020 programs with the experimental branches.. So I had to install OS 7 on a Windows machine with my last binary, configure the source there, then import it to my PowerPC, then build it on my G5.  The OS X PowerPC build is lacking sound (did the intel OS X have it?) but it runs!

For anyone that cares, my PowerPC binary is here.

I’ve just updated it to contain all the 32bit binaries…

$ file minivmac

minivmac: Mach-O universal binary with 3 architectures
minivmac (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386
minivmac (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O executable ppc
minivmac (for architecture ppc): Mach-O executable ppc

It turns out this is reliant on Carbon, which doesn’t allow for 64bit binaries…

SoftPC 3.1 for MacOS

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SoftPC 3.1 for MacOS

SoftPC 3.1 for MacOS

I had purchased this a while back on ebay for $15, and used it occasionally but ever anything that involved. Mostly because it’s dreadfully slow on an 030, and ever since the intel cpu has won out, it’s not all that needed in this day in age. But at the same time, its interesting to check out various emulators through the ages.

Installing it was way easier under Basillisk II, then running it is more smooth under mini vmac. Mostly because of it’s 68881 emulation, and also it just seems faster.

An 80286 in every box!

Running MSD shows that it does in fact emulate a 80286 processor!

So doing the only natural thing, I installed Microsoft C 5.1 but configured it only for OS/2 development, then used a old 286 dos extender I found, and blamo, it works!

Hello from protected mode!

The sad thing, is that it seems the 80386 & 80486 stuff was RISC (MIPS/Alpha/PowerPC) or 80486 based only. I’m pretty sure the version of SoftPC for NeXTSTEP did a 80386… I’d love a real copy of that, but I know there was a demo out there somewhere.

Anyways for it’s age, SoftPC seems to be about as annoying as any 286 computer was at the time. And as a bonus running emulators under emulators makes it about as slow as a 286..…

Duke Nukem 3D for the Macintosh (68020)

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mini vmac II duke nukem

mini vmac II duke nukem

I had no idea this even existed… I guess it’s to be expected, all the popular games of the time (doom) were ported to pretty much everything and anything.

So after stubmling across this site, Emacualtion, I had to fire this thing up!

The first thing I needed to do was get the latest source to Mini vMac. What is different about this is that you get the source from within the emulator. Basically you pass a program what config you want and it’ll spit out source code. So for me to build on windows, a mac II with 256 colors, I gave it..

-t wx86 -m II -depth 3

Easy right?

There is some help on the mini vmac site, but it’s kind of in places.

With the emulator built, the next fun filled thing was to dump the ROM from my SE/30, which was.. an exciting adventure in floppy disks, but with it in hand I was ready!

The next part of the puzzle was System 7.5.3, which apple still thankfully provides, along with HFVExplorer, and Stuffit, and I was all set to go!

I created a target diskette of 100MB, then used hfvexplorer to copy 7.5.3 and it’s 19 segments into the disk. Then I booted the emulator with a minimal System 7 floppy. I then installed 7.5.3 into the 100mb disk, then shut down the emulator. Then using hfv explorer, copy over Duke and stuffit.

Boot back into MacOS, install stuffit, and expand Duke and away we GO!

Naturally with the speed limits dropped it’s quite FAST! vMac doesn’t have sound yet, so it’s a silent experience but it works quite well.

mini vmac II duke

mini vmac II duke

The sad thing is that Doom requires 32bit mode, which it seems that Mini vMac can’t do just yet.

Sheepshaver

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SheepShaver on Windows

SheepShaver on Windows

I was hoping for this to be a full featured review but alas there are a few major issues to prevent wide spread use of this emulator…

First you really need access to a Power Macintosh of some kind to use this. You’ll need a ROM and a version of the OS that isn’t for free on Apple’s site. Right now I’m using my 7.6.1 CD to run stuff, and it works great. Honestly its way better than the real deal.. Unless you are running something CPU intensive… Like SIMH on MiNT (all 68000 code) on Sheepshaver (PowerPC emulator)… it can be quirky at times.

However let me say if you do have MacOS 7.6 – 9 you’ll love Sheepshaver. If you feel left out from the PowerPC to Intel transition and feel you need this old clunker around to run some 68000 apps or even PowerPC system 7-9 applications that are not carbon compatible, sheepshaver is freaking AWESOME.

I’m still running Vista x86_64 on my laptop where I do most of my work, so for me I needed to download Sheepshaver. Now it does mention it can run MacOS 7.5.2 however the copy on apple’s site is a massive disk image… So you’ll need a Mac to extract it… Yeah I know.  I did make an ISO image to help those who need/want it.

I haven’t tried it, however I do know that 7.5.2 did *NOT* work on my 5400. The good news is that the disk images work between MiniVmac & Sheepshaver. This has saved my sanity (perhaps yours as well!) This does mean that you can also use HFVExplorer to move files in/out of Sheepshaver. A word of caution, the SLiRP networking causes my setup to crash… I really don’t know if it’s Vista 64, and I’m not in the mood to test within Virtual PC… emulating within an emulator is a recipe for disaster.

Another thing you’ll need is the GTK+ runtime for the gui configuration… I found mine by googling the term “gtk-2.12.9-win32-2.exe” … For some reason sourceforge seems to have issues at the moment with its projects unless you know exactly what you are looking for.

That being said I love sheepshaver. I run it full screen at my laptops native resolution (1280×800) and with the sound on, and it FEELS like a Macintosh Laptop. Even my 1.8Ghz laptop feels snappier than the 120Mhz PowerPC.. But from the Sheepshaver site, they do say to expect to run at 1/8th the speed.. So my laptop “feels” like it’s 225Mhz. A SCREAMER! Of course this would be horrible for people expecting to run photoshop & friends.

There is no doubt about it, Sheepshaver is great for running old games and applications.

A few tips though. Turn off Virtual memory in Sheepshaver. There is no need for it, as it’s far better to allow Sheepshaver to just have more memory.. In this day & age odds are you can easily allow it to have 64 – 256 megabytes. While you are unable to turn off the disk cache, you should tune it down to 64kb. Although the CPU isn’t much faster than many of the Power Mac’s, the disk IO of a modern computer far exceeds it. Most computers are actually IO bound, so running older systems with faster IO gives the appearance of them running substantially faster. It’s only nested emulation that brings it out how slow it is.

I’ve also found that older version of the OS support more software, and run better.  That is 7.5.3, 7.6, 8.0 and 8.1.  8.5, 8.6 and 9.0 have more PowerPC hooks in them, and SheepShaver hooks the 68000 code to do it’s paravirtualization (it doesn’t emulate any hardware), and the more older tied to the 68000 code tend to be more stable.

That being said, running Mathematica, SoftPC, and Photoshop would not be a “good idea” if you are expecting faster performance. But at the same time, it’s great being able to run old software that you’ve purchased throughout the years.

Some 5400/12 – Performa 200 restoration notes

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(Image from Wikipedia) I never took a picture of mine.

(Image from Wikipedia) I never took a picture of mine.

I’ll throw out a little tidbit about the Power Macintosh 5400/120, otherwise known as the Performa 200. If you do not have any Mac OS CD’s this will be *VERY* hard to get going with nothing. The good news is that there are boot floppies available out there.

The bad news is that they are encoded in a method in which you’ll have to get access to a working Mac. If there was somewhere I could post these files forever I would.

Anyways the boot disk is this one:

5400-6400_Disk_Tools.img.bin

Which I currently see online here:

http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/apple/Apple_Software_Updates/English-North_American/Macintosh/System/CPU_Specific_Updates/6360-64xx-54xx/5400-6400_Disk_Tools.img.bin

Now it’s a diskcopy 6.4 image. Which you’ll need a Mac. I was able to finagle one from a Mac, however I’m wondering now if it’s possible to do this via emulation. During this whole resurrect my $12 Mac I’ve come across vMac, Basilisk II & SheepShaver.

I plan on doing some serious review, however it is worth noting that while both do run fine, they are actually buggy on weird stuff vs the real iron.

From what I gather with the boot disk, you can boot your Mac up, partition & format it, and install this super small bootable System 7.6 onto the hard disk. It will complain about you doing it this way, but it will work, allowing you to get the box up & running somewhat, to let you try some methods of getting the install disk for 7.6 onto your Mac.

It is worth noting that the 7.5.3 on Apple’s download site that is provided for FREE does *NOT* work on the 5400! I did at one point try it, and I got some wonderful message :

The System Software 7.5.3 Installer script does not recognize this Macintosh. Please use the original disks that came with your computer.

Sadly all information I see is that this thing shipped with 7.5.3 Oh well. I eventually found a boot floppy!

The site I gleaned this boot disk from was this:

http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/bootdisks.html

If anyone does anything MacOS for a living or is going to play with a Mac you ought to save the whole thing! It’s VERY useful, more so than Apple’s documentation.

Anyways I’ve tweaked up a copy of the SIMH PDP-11 to compile and do a small test under MiNT/MacOS. Tomorrow we shall see if it’s usable.