Macintosh Plus Setup

[pgimeno]

Is a .VHD the same as a .DSK? I have seen lots of forum posts suggesting using dd to read and write microSD cards for SCSI2SD and this generates .dsk files.

There's really no standard for DSK or VHD, but as used by MiSTer they both are raw files and dd generates raw files, so in this case, the answer is yes.

[thorr]

Is a .VHD the same as a .DSK? I have seen lots of forum posts suggesting using dd to read and write microSD cards for SCSI2SD and this generates .dsk files.

There's really no standard for DSK or VHD, but as used by MiSTer they both are raw files and dd generates raw files, so in this case, the answer is yes.

Thanks! I was able to get it working with my SCSI2SD / Mac LC III.

[jordi]

Seriously no one notices the missing audio chips?

[Malor]

It's such an unstable core that I hardly had time. IMO, it really shouldn't be distributed in its present sad state.

[bbond007]

It's such an unstable core that I hardly had time. IMO, it really shouldn't be distributed in its present sad state.

Entitled comments like that are certainly not going to encourage any developers (such as alanswx) who have spent time making substantial incremental improvements to this core over time...

Also, how do you propose testing people test this core if its not distributed to anyone? Are the developers also responsible for doing all the testing? If so, that goes against common "best practices".

Finally, who determines the "readiness" of each core for distribution?

[Malor]

Well, I'd argue that it staying up for five minutes at a time would be a good first filter.

[bbond007]

Well, I'd argue that it staying up for five minutes at a time would be a good first filter.

Well, maybe not everyone has that same experience.

I've left it running the Afterdark screen saver running for way longer than 5 minutes with no issues. just sayin'

[jca]

I don't remember having major issues with this core but it was a long time ago. MISTer Basilisk II by bbond007 is interesting; this is not a core but a software emulator running on the ARM side. You get better resolution, color, more advanced MACs, good floating point performance

[Malor]

You know, it just occurred to me that my criticisms may be unfair, because I might have been testing the core with a failed fan. I didn't discover it until like a month later, but it could have burned out sooner than I realized. My particular DE-10 is not at all happy about being hot, and gets very unreliable in some cores. (weirdly, it seems fine with the PS1, which you'd think would be more likely to fail.)

I may be blaming the Mac Plus core for local hardware issues.

[Malor]

I spent some time yesterday with this core, and it was indeed my lack of cooling that was causing the ridiculous instability. It works pretty well now that my DE-10 has a fan going all the time.

However, the key repeat issue is so bad that the core is unusable for anything requiring more than mouse interaction.

[rhester72]

The key repeat issue was fixed in an unofficial rev of the core (that I believe was referenced in this very thread).

[cathrynmataga]

Seriously no one notices the missing audio chips?

Hmm, I've been playing "The Oregon Train" and it has been kind of quiet. I did make it all the way to Oregon, so no stability issues that I can see. I'm using System 7.5.5

[jordi]

Seriously no one notices the missing audio chips?

Hmm, I've been playing "The Oregon Train" and it has been kind of quiet. I did make it all the way to Oregon, so no stability issues that I can see. I'm using System 7.5.5

Yep, lode runner is very noticeable. e.g. It's missing all the lasers sound

[cathrynmataga]

That's this thing here that's missing? This is a general overview, but it's missing specifics on the registers. Maybe it's a mistake telling Mac that it's a SE if this is absent, that games might fallback to Mac+ sound if it's set to +?

https://se30forever.com/sound.html

[BigMac2]

That's this thing here that's missing? This is a general overview, but it's missing specifics on the registers. Maybe it's a mistake telling Mac that it's a SE if this is absent, that games might fallback to Mac+ sound if it's set to +?

https://se30forever.com/sound.html

The Macintsoh SE and Macintosh SE/30 are 2 different product, To my knowledge the Mac+ and SE doesnt have the Apple ASIC sound chip.

[cathrynmataga]

Oh, wait, you're right. SE/30 is 68030, which Mister is not, for sure.

[jordi]

Oh, wait, you're right. SE/30 is 68030, which Mister is not, for sure.

I don't know about verilog, but I asked for help some days ago

It looks that Mac core doesn't have an implementation of this chip that mac plus has.
But colecovision chip does it!

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ColecoV ... _audio.vhd

So (from my ignorance), it's just a matter of connecting it?

[cathrynmataga]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_SN76489

No, wait, this doesn't mention Mac. I'm pretty sure Mac never had a sound chip like the Atari ST has a sound chip. That it only had D-A and software mixing. Are you sure sounds are really missing? You have a game that plays a sound on other Mac+ software emulators that are silent in Mister? If so,maybe just a bug (which makes it harder to fix though.)

[MrMartian]

My schematics for a Mac Plus doesn't show any kind of real sound chip.....

[thisisamigaspeaking]

My schematics for a Mac Plus doesn't show any kind of real sound chip.....

Pretty sure a Mac Plus has 8-bit DAC sound, and that's all. 80s era Mac games had sampled sound and the OS used it.

[Malor]

I can confidently assert that early Macs had a DAC of some kind. I don't know any details at all, but they definitely had one.

[jordi]

My schematics for a Mac Plus doesn't show any kind of real sound chip.....

https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads ... und.41778/

It is mentioned here with schematics

[cathrynmataga]

This says Mac+ has a 6522 as a square wave generator. 6522 controls all kinds of stuff, keyboard, etc, so must be some bits of this in the core already.

http://www.mac.linux-m68k.org/devel/plushw.php

[jordi]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_SN76489

No, wait, this doesn't mention Mac. I'm pretty sure Mac never had a sound chip like the Atari ST has a sound chip. That it only had D-A and software mixing. Are you sure sounds are really missing? You have a game that plays a sound on other Mac+ software emulators that are silent in Mister? If so,maybe just a bug (which makes it harder to fix though.)

This says Mac+ has a 6522 as a square wave generator. 6522 controls all kinds of stuff, keyboard, etc, so must be some bits of this in the core already.

http://www.mac.linux-m68k.org/devel/plushw.php

you are right

here is mentioned:

The sampled sound engine piggybacked on the video circuit. As the raster scan returned from the right side of the screen to the left, one byte of data was placed into a PWM generator instead of the screen. This provided 8-bit sampled monaural sound sampled at the 22.25 kHz horizontal blanking rate. General purpose 6522 outputs could mute the sampled sound, or set its volume to one of 8 levels of attenuation.

A square wave generator was included on the 6522. One of its two timer circuits could be set to toggle the mute output periodically. This could produce frequencies higher than 11 kHz.

This system was not compatible with the Lisa / Mac XL hardware, which in other respects could run Mac software with commonly available software/firmware modifications. Running programs on Lisas which made use of the Mac sound features would cause severe video problems and system crashes.

I guess the core is missing that part?

[LamerDeluxe]

The 6522 VIA chip is used in a lot of MiSTer cores, so that should help.

[anderse77]

I have applied this to a fresh mister.ini, with mixed results. Without any tweaks the image is narrow, with OSD's Full Screen it fills the screen but scaling is flawed (can see it on text in games, otehrwise it can look deceptively good). I can actually get a proper scaling using Wider HV-integer and then stretching image horizontally on my monitor. But even with the latter at 100 there are still substantial black bars on both sides.

Would you mind taking a look at my attached mister.ini? I'd love to get this sorted, it's my last CRT frontier. Got all the other CRT-friendly cores working.
EDIT: forgot to add that I'm using Direct Video. I don't think it matters though because the other cores aren't affected.

Something is wrong here. The scaler should not be active, thus the scaling options for integer v/h should not have any effect. As I wrote before and you can see in my photo, the correct aspect ratio is very close to 3:2 and should not fill the full screen height.

I am not near my MiSTer this weekend, I can check again on Monday. I can test direct video as well, I have the adapter.

Macplus core won't work at all with direct video on a crt. Black screen.

[jordi]

how do you get Sound on Basilisk II for older games? I am using the archive.org image, but running bbond's Basilisk in Mister.
https://github.com/bbond007/MiSTer_BasiliskII

Some people say that it requires to Install QuickTime 2.5 to make sound work in System 7.1 in BasiliskII.

[rhester72]

Some sound just doesn't work, unfortunately - it's a core issue, not a setup issue.

[meauxdal]

Someone pointed out to me that there were some old Macintosh virus files in some of the HyperCard stacks in the last release of I did of the big games/apps pack. Those have been sanitized with Virex 6.1, and the pack has been reuploaded. Search for 'MacPack-20240219 for FPGA' on a certain archive site.

[meauxdal]

New version! The thing to search for is 'MacPack-20240226 for FPGA'. Now with Macintosh SE ROM support.

Please note, I don't recommend using the 010 or 020 instruction sets in conjunction with the SE ROM. It seems to cause hardfiles to corrupt.