Macintosh Plus Setup

[antonie]

It's been a while since I did the install. Did I just rename them? Possibly, but I cannot recall.

[wark91]

A vhd MacOS 7.1 working with last updates of alanswx on Mac Plus Core.

[retrodroid]

A vhd MacOS 7.1 working with last updates of alanswx on Mac Plus Core.

This file didn't work for me, just hung on the "Welcome to Macintosh" screen. The older file from a few posts back does work fine for me though.

[wark91]

Could you please try this RBF from discord #test-build ?

[antonie]

This worked like a charm!

The keyboard now works a lot better. Thanks @alaswx

Out of curiosity what other improvements have been made to the core...it's been an orphan for a while and I'm glad to see there is interest in improving it.

[jca]

The new OS 7.1 vhd does not work with the official release of the core but works with the core posted above. I see a big difference in the OSD: the official core supports 1 vhd named HDD while the new core supports 2 vhds named SCSI6 and SCSI2. These 2 cores seem totally different.
One thing I noticed concerned the screen. I use HDMI 1080P and the screen is slightly offset to the right and the rounded corner on the right side are off screen.
Edit: The screen is not offset to the right, it is cut on the right side: when going from Full Screen to Original size the screen is missing pixels on the right side.

[meauxdal]

Thank you to everyone working on this core.

I can confirm that on the MacPlus_20210315.rbf test file above, the right side of the image is cut off by a few pixels. The OSD for this core could also use some more love, there are no options to unmount disks or drives currently (e.g. Amiga core allows you to press Backspace or hold Menu Cancel and press Menu Confirm to unmount a drive). This works, actually! It would still be nice if it showed you the currently mounted drives in the OSD.

On the plus side, the Scale options are working (they were broken in the test from the previous day), allowing for HV-Integer scale which is very useful on classic Mac operating systems where checkerboard dithering is the order of the day.

Is there any documentation on the new options in the core? SCSI6 and SCSI2? TG68K CPU options (I follow these speed things up, at least )?

Has anyone been able to successfully mount two hard drives at once? I can get a 2GB .dsk (renamed to .img so the MiSTer will acknowledge it - maybe .dsk extension support can be added, that should be a relatively small job I'd wager) to boot into 6.0.8, but I couldn't figure out how to boot 2 drives at once, or if that's actually supported yet... I'd considered maybe the two options in the OSD are actually two different types of drive? I've had success mounting my 2GB 6.0.8 system drive using the SCSI6 option, at least.

[jca]

You can unmount the drives by using backspace but do not forget first to press enter like if you were to mount the disk and instead of selecting one just press backspace.
SCSI6 will give the SCSI ID of 6 to the drive and SCSI2 for ID 2.
You can mount 2 HD, SCSI6 will be the boot drive and SCSI2 a data drive, you cannot boot from SCSI2.
If you do not have any disk mounted but have a boot.vhd in the games/MACPLUS directory it will boot from it with SCSI ID 6.
But there is something strange with mounting and unmounting disks which I did not quite figured out:
I have DISK1 mounted on SCSI6 and start the core, it boots from DISK1. I shutdown the MAC, go into the OSD, unmount DISK1, mount DISK2 on SCSI6 and save settings.
If I restart the MAC by clicking on the Restart button of the Shutdown screen or just reload the core it still boots from DISK1 (may be not every time, I have to do more testing). When this happen I go back to the OSD, unmount all disks, save settings, start another core, go back to the MAC core and get the MAC icon with the ? as there is no boot disk. Now if I mount DISK2 on SCSI6 it will boot from DISK2.
On my system I give the extension VHD to my HDs in order to be consistent with other cores.
The addition of being able to select different type of 68K and clock is really nice: if you use the 7.1 disk posted earlier you need to set the memory to 4MB and it takes forever to boot with 68000 at 8MHz. What a difference with 68020 at 16MHz!
Now I have to do more testing running programs: a previous post mentioned that the KB is fixed which is a very good thing as I stopped using the previous core in order not to go insane with this KB from hell.
Congratulations and many thanks to the developers.

Edit: I also noticed something strange with mounting HDs: when you mount a disk a copy is made in games/MACPLUS with a name in the form .fuse_hiddenxxxxxxxx.
This is a waste of space and seems to happen only with this core (for example this does not happen with AO486).

[antonie]

Thanks for the new updates!

I notice that the keyboard cursor behaviour is not quite right.

In MS Excel (don't ask....) pressing the cursor keys randomly display characters on screen (usually "+", "a", "c", "j").

Otherwise, great work!

[meauxdal]

Can anyone share a ~224MB bootable image for 6.0.8? Really, just something in a happy medium between 20MB and 2GB would be useful, as the former is somewhat too small, the latter probably too big, and I haven't been able to generate a hardfile of anything in between yet that the MiSTer core will accept yet. Either that, or if anyone could help explaining the process for creating a system image that the MacPlus core can boot. I can create hard disk image files, then install 6.0.8 onto them in a way that allows them to boot in vMac Mini, but those same files don't appear to be recognized by the MacPlus core.

[alanswx]

Can anyone share a ~224MB bootable image for 6.0.8? Really, just something in a happy medium between 20MB and 2GB would be useful, as the former is somewhat too small, the latter probably too big, and I haven't been able to generate a hardfile of anything in between yet that the MiSTer core will accept yet. Either that, or if anyone could help explaining the process for creating a system image that the MacPlus core can boot. I can create hard disk image files, then install 6.0.8 onto them in a way that allows them to boot in vMac Mini, but those same files don't appear to be recognized by the MacPlus core.

It needs to have the scsi driver on it. See: http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index. ... romScratch

There are some images that are already made:
http://www.savagetaylor.com/2018/01/05/ ... d-adapter/

[meauxdal]

*Very* helpful, thank you Alan - the SCSI driver is crucial! Looks like SoftMac can interface with virtualized (and real!) SCSI devices, and as such is capable of installing the SCSI driver to HFS disks via the Apple HD SC Setup via System 7.3.5 or later: https://www.savagetaylor.com/2018/09/10 ... g-softmac/

I don't have a GNU/Linux OS handy at the moment and adding the Windows Linux subsystem to the layers of abstraction I'm fumbling my way through seemed like a bridge too far, so just in case this is useful to anyone else, here's roughly what I did
1. Create a blank 224MB (or whatever size you want) volume in BasiliskII (GUI > Volumes > Create...)
2. Configure SoftMac: enable Windows file access, then set first SCSI device to SavageTaylor's 2GB bootable 7.5.5 file, and the second to the volume you created in step one. Use the Quadra profile
3. Boot into System 7.5.5 in SoftMac. Initialize the volume you created when prompted
4. Browse the 7.5.5 hard drive. Double-click Apple HD SC setup 7.3.5 (Patched) to select and format the volume you created (this installs the SCSI driver)

To additionally make this drive bootable to 6.0.8, use Mini vMac:

5. Drag .img files for System Startup, System Tools, and System Additions from the installation floppies for System 6.0.8 onto the Mini vMac window after launching it but before booting into an OS - you should boot into System 6 via the System Startup disk
6. Drag your initial volume onto the Mini vMac window
7. Browse the System Startup disk and double-click Installer
8. Select the initial volume and install System 6

Edit: I think the above won't work as Mini vMac doesn't like the SCSI driver and needs volume images. You can use SoftMac (or Basilisk, or SheepShaver) to install the OS - just mount each of the System disks in the UI before booting and run through the Installer on the System Tools disk. You can also use the Apple Legacy Recovery CD - Google and Archive.org are your friends.

Not sure if this will be too helpful on its own as it mostly just regurgitates info from the link above, and doesn't cover most of the configuration for Basilisk and Mini vMac, but hopefully it prevents someone else from spending as much time as it took me to get something of my own making booting on this core!

Or... you could just download the .vhd attached to this post!

ETA: Here's a bonus musical video that some of you may get a kick out of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHVA4wNqSE0

[iainjh]

Hi all

I'm not having much success running MacPlus. I just get a white screen with repeated vertical 'lines'. Oddly if I enter the mister Ui on changing ram I can sometimes ellicit an angry beep from what I hope is the 'mac' core.

On boot, no matter which cpu 6800,68020, with 4mb ram; just a white garbled screen. I've tried various result ions in mister.ini with no effect. The core reports output and Misters' screen res as per the pic attached.

I'm using the MacPlus_20210315.rbf as provided just above by wark91 and the 6.0.8 vhd as provided by meauxdal

I get nothing but a plain white screen with MacPlus_20210303.rbf

My boot.rom and boot.vhd are on usb/games/MacPlus/

The rbf is in the _computers folder on the boot micro-SD

Any clues please to what to try next?

TIA! and congrats on progress so far!

Iain

[alanswx]

Do you have a rom

[iainjh]

hi

yes I think so - from here:

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/MacPlus ... r/releases

its located on a usb key, in games/MacPlus/boot.rom

[jca]

What is the status of the core?
The latest OS 7.1 VHD posted in this thread does not work with the official release 2021/03/03 but works with the rbf posted in this thread 2021/03/15.
Shouldn't the official repository be updated?

[iainjh]

I got it working, I tried another bios file/ boot.rom. maybe I'd copied an incorrect file earlier

Now I need find how to install or copy stuff over!

Thanks!

hi

yes I think so - from here:

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/MacPlus ... r/releases

its located on a usb key, in games/MacPlus/boot.rom

[ericgus09]

Im not sure who is working on this core these days but any chance we can get the Midilink/UART added to the MacPlus core?

[alanswx]

I keep working on the uart but I am not making good progress. I think I need to get an emulation and verilator setup to figure out which bits I am not setting correctly.

I am not seeing any of the data written from zterm when I type letters.

[jca]

What is the status of the core?
The latest OS 7.1 VHD posted in this thread does not work with the official release 2021/03/03 but works with the rbf posted in this thread 2021/03/15.
Shouldn't the official repository be updated?

Today's update fixed the "problem" and is now booting the OS 7.1 VHD. As a bonus the screen got back its rounded corners on the right hand side. The addition of the RTC should allow the use of OS 7.5 and the VIA, I suppose, for serial communication.
Thanks to the developers. MISTer impresses me more and more almost daily

[MiSTer_Kirk]

Is there ever a chance this core can run on a CRT ?
The original Mac Plus had a built-in CRT, although I'm not sure if it was higher res than a normal CRT, or if it was 15khz or not.

[alanswx]

It should work over vga.

[dmckean]

Is there ever a chance this core can run on a CRT ?
The original Mac Plus had a built-in CRT, although I'm not sure if it was higher res than a normal CRT, or if it was 15khz or not.

The original hardware used 350 line modes and scanned at 22khz. So like EGA on the PC or medium res in the arcade.

[alanswx]

This core is doubled. 512x640. 1024x768 or something

[ericgus09]

I keep working on the uart but I am not making good progress. I think I need to get an emulation and verilator setup to figure out which bits I am not setting correctly.

I am not seeing any of the data written from zterm when I type letters.

Thank you for trying .. I appreciate it ..

[jca]

I made a quick test of OS 7.5:
From https://www.savagetaylor.com/downloads/ ... macintosh/
Type Drive (2GB) System 7.5.5

I changed the extension to VHD and it booted right away. An error/warning poped up regarding Adobe Type Manager which is installed on this drive. Looking in the System folder there is the file ~ATM 68020/030/040 so I changed the CPU to 68020 and rebooted.
I did not do much testing but it seems to work.

[meauxdal]

Just a heads up for anyone pushing the envelope with this core - be very cautious about attempting to load into 6.0.8 with a mounted .vhd that has more than about 10,000-11,000 files on it or so - in my case it was like 1.8 GB of files. System 6 is capable of addressing 2GB partitions, but it needs to first read the drive hierarchy in order to (re)build the desktop file under normal circumstances. This process, if you have too many files, seems to crash 6.0.8, even if you give it 4MB of memory. An identical drive with this issue should load fine under System 7. In System 6, you'll see a long wristwatch animation, and eventually a flashing empty dialog box, something like this:

text1.png (13.96 KiB) Viewed 50164 times

and after some more time waiting it might show you some kind of corruption like this and freeze completely:

corrupt1.png (196.27 KiB) Viewed 50164 times

If you restart the core, you might see an error:

repairs1.png (89.93 KiB) Viewed 50164 times

I wouldn't recommend repairing here, as it is very likely just going to crash again in a similar manner, and it might take your .vhd down with it. Instead, try loading into System 7 (tested with 7.5.5) and allow it to completely rebuild the desktop file (a progress bar should pop up before the desktop fully loads).

I've had better luck booting into 6.0.8 with too many files on my .vhd when using the System Picker and booting directly into 6 via 7 from the same .vhd. It gave me an error about not being able to fully rebuild the desktop file, but I was able to mount the drive and browse the files after clicking OK on the error, apparently normally.

(just for the record, I'm pretty sure all of my troubles here are limitations on real hardware, not indicative of any issue with the core!)

[jca]

I have a 1GB OS 6.0.8 which does not contains that many file but sometimes the following happens:
I shutdown the Mac, I change the boot drive to a different VHD and boot the Mac.
Now if I do the same thing to set the boot drive to 6.0.8 it sometimes boots up with the warning saying that the drive needs minor repairs.
The disk repair proceeds and succeeds. I did not figure out the exact conditions for this to happen as it seems to be random.

[ericgus09]

If you have Basilisk II installed you can try the repair by booting with that instead..

[jca]

A while back I made a post about these hidden files with a name in the form .fuse_hiddenxxxxxxxx which have a size identical to some of my VHDs. These files are deleted files which where opened by some process while being deleted. They should disappear when said process close them or after a reboot. This does not seem to work and they stay there forever. I confirmed they where not in use using the lsof command and I deleted them and recovered more than 4GB of disk space. The strange thing is that it happened only in the MACPLUS directory, it just may be a coincidence.