Macintosh Plus Setup

[vanfanel]

Are you guys getting sound effects to play in Lode Runner?
MiniVMac seems to play them fine using the same copy of the game.

[meauxdal]

Are you guys getting sound effects to play in Lode Runner?
MiniVMac seems to play them fine using the same copy of the game.

I thought the game was essentially silent, but it does look like it plays a little (horrible-sounding) jingle at the end of each stage normally. Wonder if this works if you run the game from a bootable floppy on the core or if something else is going on here.

Edit: Wait, you said sound effects. I may have to boot this up in Mini vMac and see what it does. I saw a video on Youtube that played an ending jingle, but still wasn't playing any SFX. I'll take a look at it.

Edit 2: I don't think this game has any sound effects (please correct me if I'm wrong). There is a short jingle when you finish a level. It works when you run the game from a .dsk.

[meauxdal]

New version (v13.02) of my hard drive image is out there, linked from the usual document. This is probably the most stable and polished release thus far.

[Solskogen]

New version (v13.02) of my hard drive image is out there, linked from the usual document. This is probably the most stable and polished release thus far.

Usual document? Sorry, I'm new to the MacPlus

[meauxdal]

New version (v13.02) of my hard drive image is out there, linked from the usual document. This is probably the most stable and polished release thus far.

Usual document? Sorry, I'm new to the MacPlus

Right, sorry, for anyone just joining - if you are interested in testing out my Macintosh .vhd files, please send me a PM or email or just reply here saying you're interested and I'll send you a link!

[Malaespera]

I would be happy to try your work with macintosh .vhd files.

[kathleen]

Also interested, PM sent @meauxdal. Thanks in advance.

[meauxdal]

I am so grateful for this community. Y'all have been great. Thank you for the support! I hope playing some of these old games gives any of you as much joy as it has given me!

I think something I'll do once the images are "done" more or less, is write out a beginner's guide to the core with the things I've learned, so people who have struggled with its setup (particularly re: installing games and applications onto the .vhd) but aren't interested in using pre-fab images can get up and running and experience the majesty this core has to offer as well. After all, part of the wonderful thing about computing is that everyone can make their setup their own through customization, application selection, and more.

Really, anything I can do to support the fabulous developers and users of this community. Thank you all for being great!

[jca]

Thanks for your work. I just tested the vhd with BasiliskII on MISTer and I can confirm that it works. I hope your guide will cover the updating of the ShapeShifter disk. For the Mac core it is easy using MiniVac and the 2 utilities to transfer files between the PC and MiniVac

[vanfanel]

Hey guys, is the massive crackling in Prince of Persia intro music supposed to happen on a real Macintosh?
I don't have one to compare.

[meauxdal]

Audio is weird. Some games (Lemmings, Warlords, Factory) sound essentially flawless as far as I can tell. MusicWorks seems perfect on some tunes, but has slight tempo hiccups on others. And some games like Prince of Persia sound very bad for some reason - at least in the intro. The in-game SFX seem fine.

Not sure we're going to find too many folks with real hardware to compare against. The only person I know with one politely declined to test stuff as he's not set up to get files onto his Plus right now.

What does PoP sound like under Mini vMac?

[jca]

...
What does PoP sound like under Mini vMac?

I tried to boot the vhd under Mini vMac but get a floppy with a question mark. I guess it is because of SCSI.

[meauxdal]

...
What does PoP sound like under Mini vMac?

I tried to boot the vhd under Mini vMac but get a floppy with a question mark. I guess it is because of SCSI.

Check the second download link in my doc - that one is a volume image that will boot if dragged onto Mini vMac. I'll test it myself here in a bit, just need to finish up some other stuff I'm working on first.

[jca]

I tried with MPEE-vmac.dsk but trying to run POP poped up "Sorry, a system error occurred. Unimplemented trap."

[meauxdal]

Here's a video of someone running it on real hardware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAu2lFBKNbE

Maybe this can help us identify what's going on.

[meauxdal]

I tried with MPEE-vmac.dsk but trying to run POP poped up "Sorry, a system error occurred. Unimplemented trap."

You need to do Special > Set Startup... > MultiFinder > OK, reboot, then drag the disk back onto Mini vMac to get it to run. The audio sounds the same in Mini vMac as it does in the MacPlus core as far as I can tell. We should try it from floppy disk and see how it sounds there.

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setstartup0.png (14.83 KiB) Viewed 44126 times

I only just found out about the above option. This impacts compatibility for a lot of stuff as I think it may only run in one or the other. It might explain some of the inconsistencies I've seen in testing...

[meauxdal]

I have made great strides in configuring the image lately. I'm very pleased with the state of it from that perspective.

I've added shortcuts in the Apple Menu for the System 7 OSes and configured OnCue for System 6 so System Picker is easily accessible right from the desktop. I also added some quick links to Word, Excel, and Photoshop so directory-diving is no longer needed if you want to quickly jump into one of these apps. NoFinder is available in System 7 variants, allowing you to free up additional memory for borderline games and apps.

The supplemental .vhd now includes additional System versions (these are more "clean", with fewer extensions and lower memory footprint), and even more are included on another bonus HD20SC image (all the way back to System 4.1). Earlier System images may be provided via .dsk, as System Picker does not work properly prior to System 4 - I experimented with it but I'd rather not have people get "stuck" in an older System, so I'm keeping them off the drive proper.

All that's needed is to test as many of these games as possible (I've added over a hundred new ones in v14.03) to make sure none of them annihilate the .vhd I might release this in some form (as a "beta" or "unstable" maybe) if people would like to help me run through as many games as possible? I'm a bit nervous otherwise with all the new stuff added that is as of yet untested.

E: Welp, I may have underestimated Here's a comparison of the number of games in version 12 against version 14 thus far:

Screenshot 2021-04-13 162015.png (18.21 KiB) Viewed 43967 times

[riksrandomretro]

New version (v13.02) of my hard drive image is out there, linked from the usual document. This is probably the most stable and polished release thus far.

Usual document? Sorry, I'm new to the MacPlus

Right, sorry, for anyone just joining - if you are interested in testing out my Macintosh .vhd files, please send me a PM or email or just reply here saying you're interested and I'll send you a link!

Hello there! I'd love to give the image a try as well. I'd PM but I'm too much of a noob... yet lol. Looks great and I have many fond memories of playing on the family Mac visiting my cousin as a kid.

[aixz]

could you please send the link to vhd ? many thanks

[meauxdal]

v14.03 is out now. A ridiculous amount of new stuff in this one. I did a very rough run through of things I thought might be problematic and it seems pretty OK. Let me know if you want to test drive it. If you download it, let me know how it works for you. I feel it's relatively close to complete, just needs people to play with it.

The main image is a little slow due to the large number of files. Desktop rebuilding is pretty painful - keep in mind you can crank the core CPU clock to 16MHz on the fly.

It's probably overstuffed to some degree. I'm fine with removing things that make sense to get rid of - let me know if you have suggestions for fat to trim. There's gotta be several dozen Solitaire games on here lol

[taiwanjon]

Hello, I just got my MiSTer working this weekend. Amiga is working great so now I'm trying to setup Mac and C64.

Meauxdal, do you mind to send me a link to your page with the images?

I've been a Mac user since 1994. Although my first Mac was an LC 575 (color & 040 processor), I also got a Mac Plus (I thought it was cute) that ran System 6 on floppy disk so I'm familiar with the OS and how it works. Honestly, I'm mostly interested in using MS Word 5.1, ClarisWorks, and playing some of the old black & white games from back in the day.

[FredFromBerks]

Hi Meauxdal, can I trouble you as well for a link to your page with the hard drive image ? New to the forum, I cannot PM just yet (apparently needs a minimum of posting activity to have access to the PM). Thanks !

[meauxdal]

New version is out now. The main image is a little slow but pretty damn stable now. There's still work left to do to make sure everything Just Works ... Macs are fickle things.

After Dark 2.0 is a highlight of the new additions. Love those fish and flying toasters.

Maybe I'll actually get a new ShapeShifter image out soon.

[Newsdee]

Looking great!

[akeley]

Many thanks for the link to your Mac resources, @meauxdal. Fantastic job! May I suggest uploading the images to archive.org? The Mediafire speeds are very low (I'm still trying to DL the big 2.8GB shapeshifter image), and I'm sure they would reach a much bigger audience on the archive as well.

Regarding the core itself, do you guys think it's worth asking for the VGA compatibility (or even 15Khz). Would it be at all possible?

[meauxdal]

Many thanks for the link to your Mac resources, @meauxdal. Fantastic job! May I suggest uploading the images to archive.org? The Mediafire speeds are very low (I'm still trying to DL the big 2.8GB shapeshifter image), and I'm sure they would reach a much bigger audience on the archive as well.

Regarding the core itself, do you guys think it's worth asking for the VGA compatibility (or even 15Khz). Would it be at all possible?

Re: archive.org - that's one of the destinations. Would also like to leave copies on Macintosh Garden. Just want to do a one-and-done there, more-or-less, particularly since the image had previously been a bit unstable and unpolished. And since I'm going to upload it in at least two places, having it be as stable as possible will help cut down on upload redundancy. The ShapeShifter image is still very very early days - compatibility is impossible to predict so every single game needs to be tested manually, and it's an extremely time-consuming process. I don't want to widely release an image that's just going to bork itself as soon as someone double-clicks on a landmine game that eats the .vhd whole

Re: 15KHz, 512x342 is ~21KHz, and currently the core is automatically scandoubled to 512x682 - you won't be able to use a 15KHz display with it. However, there is an additional bug or issue with the output on the latest test build which does 516 width instead of 512. This might be messing with VGA support, which I believe was working previously on some of the older builds (HDMI is fine).

[meauxdal]

Somewhat off-topic (maybe I should make a new topic?), but I have a request that would really help me with the ShapeShifter image. I need some kind of walkthrough on creating and formatting a bootable .hdf with large partitions.

Since ShapeShifter can mount Amiga partitions, I want at least two 2GB blank Amiga partitions. They might be able to be up to 4GB in size - I'm not sure ShapeShifter will accept them at sizes larger than 2GB.

In addition, I'd want two other partitions which are about 2.5GB each for storing additional Mac hardfiles and Shapeshifter configuration. These would be on top of whatever partitions AmigaOS 3.1(?) needs for itself. Presumably at least one extra for the boot partition.

Not being at all familiar with Amiga stuff really slows down my work on that project. I found the document linked below, but I'm not sure if it will get me all the way where I want to be. Need to spend some time with it tonight.

http://amiga.amedia-computer.com/docume ... nglish.pdf

[LamerDeluxe]

Not being at all familiar with Amiga stuff really slows down my work on that project. I found the document linked below, but I'm not sure if it will get me all the way where I want to be. Need to spend some time with it tonight.

http://amiga.amedia-computer.com/docume ... nglish.pdf

It's been a long time since I've done anything with my Amiga, but HDToolbox is what I remember always using for partitioning hard disks, I see it is part of the guide you found, so I'd expect that to work.

[meauxdal]

Still putting off creating my own .hdf as it's quite some work, but I got back around to doing more ShapeShifter testing. There are a surprising number of games that run well enough to be enjoyable. I spent a lot of time last night getting distracted from testing playing Theme Park, Castles: Siege and Conquest, and SimTower. Most surprising is in a lot of cases the sound seems to be pretty spot on - check out the Warlords intro music or SimLife's title card - definitely not a given in emulation.

[akeley]

I have done some hdf-ing before, both for my real Amiga and Minimig, but all on a noob-level. As an experiment I did manage to create a 6.5GB hdf today. It has 500GB WB 3.1 partition and 2x empty ~3GB ones. It seems to work in MiSTer. If you're still after it, I can try to help if you have any questions (or upload this hdf somewhere). Though, it's pretty much as the guide you linked to says.

Regarding PC VGA CRT display, I've tried it again and it does work, but the scaling is off - on both old cores, as well as the latest scandoubled one. At least on my generic VGA config (which works with most other cores).