ShapeShifter (68k Mac emulation on Minimig)

[toastboy]

The new minimig core requires an RDB header on the HD image, winUAE-native images often leave this out.

Sorg points out how to make a working RDB disk in this thread
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2863

Once it's bootable, just copy everything over from your current image using winuae.

[jca]

There is also a lot of talk about IDEFix. Does it have to be installed and if so what is the procedure?

[toastboy]

IDEFix in this context is being used by people who have whacky settings in their RDB for the maxtransfer value, IDEfix seems to ignore this and force the values used by amigaOS to something more sensible, but it doesn't fix the RDB itself.

There have also been issues with RDBs that have a termination flag on them - "do not look for other disks after this one". So causing issues with detecting other disks attached.

Overall the new minimig core has exposed the fact that some of our HD images would not boot or work properly if written block-for-block to a real amiga's boot drive.

Creating a new RDB disk within the minimig core will make a nice clean disk with RDB that has correct settings, which can then be mounted in UAE for prep work. It's more work, but it's for the best.

[jca]

So the procedure is to initialize the HD image under Minimig, making sure transfer rate is < 0x1fe00, that they don't have a termination flag and proceed as mentioned a few posts above. No need foe IDEFix. Correct?

[toastboy]

If the drive is created in minimig with hdtoolbox, it'll get sensible defaults for maxtransfer and termination, you shouldn't need to check them.

[jca]

Thanks and another question: does this max transfer setting have a real effect under MISTer?

[toastboy]

maxtransfer used to be ignored by the old minimig disk subsystem, but now it's obeyed, even if it's a silly value.
The max value for IDE drives is "0x1FE00". Lower values might have a small performance impact when reading large files.

Bear in mind that we're talking about a good simulation of the real amiga disk subsystem here.

On a real A1200 2.5MBytes/s was considered fast.
On an A500 with GVP scsi drive (DMA direct to onboard fastram), 1MByte/s was pretty impressive.

With that in mind, the maxtransfer setting is unlikely to have a huge effect now that the system is backed by a modern SD card, you'll get whatever that elderly IDE bus can handle.

[robinsonb5]

maxtransfer used to be ignored by the old minimig disk subsystem, but now it's obeyed, even if it's a silly value.

It's not that MaxTransfer's ignored or obeyed by anything - MaxTransfer is nothing more than the maximum number of bytes scsi.device will attempt to transfer in a single transaction.

The IDE command set allows a maximum of just shy of 128k (0x1fe00) bytes to be transferred in a single command, so if MaxTransfer is higher than that, and you're accessing a chunk of a file that's larger than that, *and* your filesystem's not fragmented, so there are more bytes than that in a contiguous lump, then scsi.device will read the data in two consecutive IDE commands. The problem is in how it does that:

After the first set of blocks has completed, scsi.device assumes that the hard drive's taskfile registers will contain the CHS address of the last block read (as per the ATA-1 spec), increments them by one and starts the next transaction. Unfortunately that behaviour changed with ATA-2, and on command completion the taskfile doesn't have to contain the CHS address any more. (It's not forbidden, just no longer mandated). That's why the MaxTransfer problem cropped up with real hard drives, and (presumably) the new IDE subsystem isn't mimicking ATA-1 behaviour so it's happening again now.

(http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=759918&postcount=25)

The hardfiles that no longer work aren't images of complete hard drives, they're images of partitions. In the case of the Mac image, has anyone tried manually setting the device (scsi.device), unit (1 if 2nd device on 1st channel, 2 or 3 for the 2nd channel), and then firstsector=0, number of sectors = (filesize/512) - or mounting it as a ShapeShifter filedisk accessed over the shared filesystem, instead of as an Amiga drive?

[shaitan]

If I understand shapeshifter correctly, with the new support for Akiko should that be seeing some benefits as well?

[jca]

ShapeShifter working again with the latest Main update.

[meauxdal]

ShapeShifter working again with the latest Main update.

Just confirmed. Thanks for checking on it!

[bbond007]

If I understand shapeshifter correctly, with the new support for Akiko should that be seeing some benefits as well?

Aliko is not very useful in most scenarios.

The MiSTer Minimig's fast 020 CPU (pared with some fast RAM) can way outrun Aliko chunky-to-planar conversion.

Not to mention we have RTG that is much faster for ShapeShifter than AGA....

ShapeShifter working again with the latest Main update.

Just confirmed. Thanks for checking on it!

I did not have any issues with my ShapeShifter HDF as I always use RDB.

Anyway, the performance increase is great! Really helps with Mac-II stuff which typically is more HD intensive than Amiga stuff...

[jca]

....
I did have any issues with my ShapeShifter HDF as I always use RDB.
...

Di you or didn't you?

[bbond007]

....
I did have any issues with my ShapeShifter HDF as I always use RDB.
...

Di you or didn't you?

I did not have issue with my HDF, just my proof reading...

thanks. Corrected

[kamshaft]

Has anyone tried Shapeshifter with Amiga OS3.2?

I'm having trouble booting the Mac, I get the disk icon, and when I try to load a .dsk file. It crashes. What can I be missing?

[antonie]

Has anyone tried Shapeshifter with Amiga OS3.2?

I'm having trouble booting the Mac, I get the disk icon, and when I try to load a .dsk file. It crashes. What can I be missing?

Have a look at the work by @meauxdal. There is a thread "other computer systems/core" - macintosh plus setup that provides the detail you're looking for.

[douglasamcintosh]

I've managed to get Mac OS 7 - 8.1 working on the Mister after a fair amount of trial and error. Would have been wasier if I had RTFM manual but there you go.

Now I've done it I want to do it again ... but better.

What would be really good would be being able to access the CD drive from inside ShapeShifter. I can't even get the Amiga to see the CDs. Trying to mount them as device files from within ShapeShifter did not seem to work either ...

Is there an easy-ish guide on getting cd images working in ShapeShifter without having to slowly copy them into a mac image and then mount using Toast?

[zreck]

Hi, thanks for taking the time to work on this and your other mac disk image. Any chance I could get the link? you dont seem to have this one up on archive.org? Cheers.

ShapeShifter working again with the latest Main update.

Just confirmed. Thanks for checking on it!

[GASQBDUV]

Hi! I would love to get access to the HDF file.
Thanks!

[jca]

Send a PM to meauxdal.

[GASQBDUV]

Send a PM to meauxdal.

I would love to, but my postcount is too low for me to do that.

[jca]

PM sent.

[maharba]

Send a PM to meauxdal.

I would love to, but my postcount is too low for me to do that.

Hi there, my post count is also too low to PM meauxdal. I'd love to play around with this HDF file. Thanks for any help!

[maharba]

Wow, this is an amazing project, and was really pretty easy for me to get up and running-- thanks meauxdal!

I have two questions that I can't seem to figure out, maybe someone here already knows the answer:

1. How can I transfer files into the Mac volumes? I can see the CH1 and CH2 hard files from Amiga Workbench, but I have no idea how to access their contents. Other discussions in other forums indicate that Mac-handler will mount the Mac system disk as a folder in Workbench, but when I try that I get the message "device 'Mac:' is already mounted." It seems like Shapeshifter is using the same HDF files as the Amiga, so maybe that's why, but what other way could I access the Mac drives?

2. When I select any other 8-bit display size, I only get grayscale (no color display). I can get color in the other bit-depths, but those run slooooow (as documented). Is that what others are seeing too, or am I missing something.

Again, this is an amazing project, and I'm so grateful for all the work that was put into it!

[limi]

As the person that made the original script that meauxdal based his excellent work on, I can’t comment on the transfer part, but you should get 256 colors using the 8-bit display resolution, which triggers the “chunky pixel” mode using RTG, which is why it is the only performant mode. So you should be seeing color. When you say “any other 8-bit display size”, what exactly do you mean?

As for the disk image — yes, the original setup I made uses hardfiles that are hosted inside the Amiga FS — there’s a possibility to make separate image files that run “natively” as partitions instead of disk images on the Amiga FS, but the additional effort didn’t seem worth it to me, since it’s already one of the fastest classic Macintoshes out there. This may be necessary for the transfer functionality, I am not super familiar with the disk handler. Have you tried using Internet Explorer connecting to the internet as a way to get files onto the Macintosh side of things?

[Newsdee]

I've been getting back into Minimig recently, and been wondering how to do file transfer for Shapeshifter.

I found this article from Amiga France with some solutions (which seems to read OK with Google translate):
https://www.amigafrance.com/lere-shapes ... renouveau/

TL;DR it seems to need a way to get files into the Amiga first then use a program to write to the HDF hard drive. A

[limi]

The Shapeshifter image is based on MegaAGS, so will possibly have this included, but maybe it gets run before the shared drive is mounted. Try exiting the the MacOS part (by shutting it down), and you should be back to Workbench. You may have a MiSTer: drive available there. I’ll familiarize myself with the current Meauxdal setup sometime, but I don’t have the time to do so just yet. But, worth a try.

[Newsdee]

What is the WinUAE equivalent of the Minimig RTG setup? I tried to open the Shapeshifter HDF with it but it complains with:

The amount of memory you specified for the Macintosh is not available. Do you want to use the largest free block instead?

And then it fails to launch and many apps can't run due to having no memory.
Maybe I have no RTG memory configured?

My config on WinUAE is:

• A1200 with the shapeshifter KS ROM (that works on MiSTer)
• 2MB Chip RAM, No Slow Ram, 256MB of Z3 Fast Ram, 2MB of 32-bit RAM
• Shapeshifter support turned on in the ROM tab

I don't know what to choose for "RTG Graphics card"; I've tried Zorro II and III (UAE) and a few other,
but I get an error saying "cybergraphics.library" is not installed.

[maharba]

As the person that made the original script that meauxdal based his excellent work on, I can’t comment on the transfer part, but you should get 256 colors using the 8-bit display resolution, which triggers the “chunky pixel” mode using RTG, which is why it is the only performant mode. So you should be seeing color. When you say “any other 8-bit display size”, what exactly do you mean?

Thanks for your quick reply! After I shut down the Mac, in Workbench I open “Mac” (floppy disk icon), then the “755” drawer, then Shapeshifter. I click on “graphics” and then choose a new screen mode (for example, “1280x720 8 bit CLUT”), then I click “ok” and close the Graphics Settings window. When I click “start” I do in fact see the proper screen size, but it’s in grayscale (this is also the case when I save the configuration and restart Minimig). I should probably mention I’m outputting to HDMI, in case that matters.

*edit: 1280x720 seems to boot into color (I may have only tried it by starting Shapeshifter from Workbench, rather than saving and restarting Minimig), however only that size (and the default 640x480) seem to work. The other sizes are grayscale, and some are also very distorted.

As for the disk image — yes, the original setup I made uses hardfiles that are hosted inside the Amiga FS — there’s a possibility to make separate image files that run “natively” as partitions instead of disk images on the Amiga FS, but the additional effort didn’t seem worth it to me, since it’s already one of the fastest classic Macintoshes out there. This may be necessary for the transfer functionality, I am not super familiar with the disk handler. Have you tried using Internet Explorer connecting to the internet as a way to get files onto the Macintosh side of things?

My (extremely limited) understanding was that Mac-handler (in Shapeshifter drawer) would mount the Mac partition as a disk icon named “Mac” even if it was a hard file, as long as Shapeshifter was running. I could easily be mistaken, and may need to look into using a separate native image file. What’s also surprising is that there is already a disk icon named “Mac,” but it contains Shapeshifter and it’s mounted even when Shapeshifter is not running. Could it be that the issue is caused by two volumes using the same name? I tried renaming the “Mac” disk icon and restarting Minimig, but that just broke everything (maybe due to scripts looking for a “Mac” volume?). I just groping around in the dark here it could be that Mac-handler is already working and it’s just showing me the hardfiles as hardfiles…

I haven’t managed to get any network connectivity working within the Mac, but I’ll try that (if I can connect via FTP I should be able to copy files straight onto the Mac, so wouldn’t need to mess around with Mac-handler).

BTW, I can confirm that meauxdal’s bundle does indeed have the “Mister” shared folder set up in Workbench, so I can already get files onto the Amiga (halfway there!)

[bbond007]

I haven’t managed to get any network connectivity working within the Mac, but I’ll try that (if I can connect via FTP I should be able to copy files straight onto the Mac, so wouldn’t need to mess around with Mac-handler).

I used to use this thing called vlink(VirtualLink) on my A1200/060 and had great success.

http://aminet.net/package/comm/tcp/vlink

Anyway, it requires that you use MiamiDX. But the really cool thing is that using this method allows both ShapeShifter MAC and the Amiga to share the network connection. In this case PPP, on my real A1200 I use a PCMCIA NE2000 board.

So far I have not gotten this working on the MiSTer/Minimig/Shapeshifter, however I think the problem is my lack of understanding about MacTCP and if my problem is because OpenTransport is required which needs an 030+.

It VirtualLink might be worth looking into though.